Accelerating Success: How One Entrepreneur Turned an Artist’s Mind into a Businessman’s

Erick Sauxedo (EO Mexico City)

EO’s Accelerator program, which is designed to help small businesses scale to $1 million in annual revenue, is celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year. Along the way, more than 2,000 participants have graduated to full EO membership. To mark the occasion, we are sharing stories of EO members who have leveraged their time in the program to transform their businesses and accelerate their entrepreneurial journeys.

Erick Sauxedo and his friends-turned-business-partners found relative fame early in their careers. Together, they launched a design firm and one of their initial offerings—a fiberglass furniture line—garnered critical acclaim. Prominent design magazines featured their creations. Galleries around the world invited them to exhibit their work, so Erick hopped from his home in Mexico City to shows in New York, Paris, and Milan. The only problem? The plaudits did not translate to sales.

“We were investing a lot of money, and the fame was fun,” he says. “But in the end, I was like, ‘I cannot eat the fame.’”

Their company offered a range of products and services—from furniture to signage to murals to industrial and mobile app design—but lacked a specific focus and expertise. That eventually caused a fissure, with Erick feeling pulled toward developing art for corporate spaces after the company won an Architectural Digest award in 2014 for their work in that field. His partners, meanwhile, wanted to orient the business around product and graphic design. Those cracks eventually led to a permanent split among the former friends.

So, Erick struck out on his own, forming Pentagono, an art-driven business focused on corporate space transformation. It brought otherwise bland corporate spaces—think lobbies and meeting rooms—to life through art.

Alone for the first time in his career, Erick needed a means of channeling his vision into a viable business. He found EO’s Accelerator program, designed to help early stage businesses like his scale to $1 million or more in annual revenue. He soon learned how to add structure and focus to an idea that, ultimately, has turned Pentagono into an international leader in a niche, but in-demand, market. “It was an amazing time for me to redefine and to focus on what I wanted,” he says. “We won’t do graphic design. We won’t do branding. We won’t do mobile. We won’t do any of those things. We will only focus on art. That’s the moment where everything changed.”

Filling a Blank Canvas 

When he began Accelerator, Erick realized he needed to turn an artist’s mind into a businessman’s. In his coaching sessions with seasoned entrepreneurs, he learned about the little things that add up to success: holding daily huddles with clear next steps; developing a cadence of monthly and quarterly strategy meetings; and understanding the fundamentals of hiring and personnel management.

He learned about the big things, too. Specifically, establishing long-term goals and developing a clear strategy to achieve them. What are the benchmarks the company should expect to hit in one year, or in 25 years? How many clients should Pentagono seek to engage? How many square meters of office space could they transform in a year’s time? How many artists could they add to their database?

“Understanding what it meant to have a purpose,” he says. “It was a really beautiful process.”

Pentagono found its earliest clients in Mexico City, including a prominent insurance firm. But Erick’s aims were bigger.

Today, the company has enlisted artists to design spaces and create unique works for global brands like TikTok, Netflix, Adidas and Uber, each piece of art evoking themes relevant both to the business and the office’s location. The art ranges from colorful murals to sculptures to industrial design that meshes form and function, with Pentagono serving as the translator between the business’s wants and the artist’s vision.

“Putting it down on paper after several years and understanding that my purpose is to connect that gap between art and business,” he says. “It's so much easier to share that with the people on the team and with the clients: ‘This is what we're doing.’ That was a turning point from Accelerator.”

Pentagono's work on display at Adidas Mexico.

Picture Perfect: Reaching Milestones and Global Impact

By 2019, Erick had graduated from Accelerator by hitting the $1 million annual revenue threshold. Given that success, he had no hesitation about joining EO as a full member, and was immediately exposed to a different class of entrepreneur.         

“These guys are selling $1 million,” he says. “They already have a different type of mentality…Of course I want to join this new way of thinking.”

Upon joining EO, Erick promptly volunteered to serve as EO Mexico City’s Accelerator Chair and, after two years in the role, was elevated to be the region’s Accelerator Expert in 2022-23, helping guide other EO chapter leaders across the Latin American and Caribbean region.

Motivated by the program’s impact on his own business, he began organizing Accelerator summits in Central and South America, and attended local Accelerator learning days, coaching sessions, and accountability groups. He found the experience enriching, but yearned for more support for the program in his region. With more resources dedicated to Accelerator in Central and South America, he believes the program could flourish there.  

Though he left EO’s path of leadership, he remained an EO member of through the chapter in Mexico City and still serves as a coach for other young EO entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, Pentagono’s footprint continues to expand: His company is working on a space for Microsoft in Miami and has executed major projects in Seattle, Columbia, and Chile. Today, Pentagono has collaborated with more than 230 artists and has 3,500 in their database who have expressed interest in working with them. By 2050, he hopes the firm—currently with a 15-member team—will have collaborated with as many as 10,000 artists, the sort of ambitious long-term goal for which Accelerator taught him to strive.

An unexpected benefit? As Accelerator chair, Erick was invited to attend the 2019 Global Leadership Conference in Macau for training and networking. By chance, he met a woman who worked in the city and who would go on to be his long-term partner. Today, she lives with him in Mexico City and the two share a child.

“Everything that’s been happening is a consequence of joining EO,” he says. “It’s amazing.”

Interested in participating in EO Accelerator? Learn more here.

Pentagono's work at TikTok's Mexico office.