This episode of the My First Million podcast features an interview with serial entrepreneur Kevin Ryan, who discusses his experience building and scaling multiple billion-dollar companies, including DoubleClick, Business Insider, and MongoDB. Ryan shares his unique approach to identifying business opportunities, the importance of speed and execution, and his philosophy on hiring and team building.
Topics: Entrepreneurship, Startup Strategy, Business Scaling, Hiring, Venture Capital, Market Trends, Product Development
Introduction [00:00]
Sam Parr: You, you like violate this rule that I have for myself and uh you you do it so wonderfully, which is focus. Or at least it appears as as you do. You like launch like, I don’t know, how many companies a year do you launch?
Kevin Ryan: Eight.
Sam Parr: Eight? God damn.
Meeting Kevin Ryan [022:45]
Sam Parr: All right, we’re live. Kevin, do you, this is Kevin Ryan. Do you remember me?
Kevin Ryan: I don’t remember where we met. I know we’ve met, but I don’t remember where.
Sam Parr: That’s good. Okay, you don’t have to remember. So basically, I’m going to tell you why this is funny. So basically, I’ve studied you for maybe 10 years. So you started, uh, you were the president of uh and CEO of DoubleClick, which had like a a billion dollar plus exit, and then you have started like four or five companies that are one’s worth, I think 28 billion today, one’s worth uh uh you have a couple billion dollar exits, but you started Business Insider, and I cold emailed you maybe 50 times. And one of those times, because I admired you so much, and we’ll talk about your career, but I I wanted to be like you. And one of those emails you finally replied, and you just said like, “Thanks for the updates, whatever.” And then I lied and I said, “I’m going to be in New York tomorrow. Can I get 20 minutes of your time?” And you let me do that. And I came to your office for literally 20 or 30 minutes. We had such an impactful conversation, and then you did another follow-up call with me, and I have the notes from those calls. And this was in 2017. And you made a bunch of predictions about my life as well as the media business and a few other things that were 100% true. And I refer back to that note sheet on a consistent basis to help make some decisions.
Kevin Ryan: Oh, interesting. Well, I’m glad I sometimes I get lucky and I get it right.
Sam Parr: And you want to know what? Your your PR people cold emailed us to get you on the pod. So the tables have turned, my friend. Welcome to my world.
Kevin Ryan: Exactly.
Sam Parr: But I just want to say like, I’ve admired you for a long time. You’re you’re a really big deal to me and so I’m so happy that we’re able to like finally do this. This is awesome.
Shaan Puri: And Kevin, uh you don’t know me, but I I did not stock you. I did not cold email you. In fact, I was a little bit uh just jealous of you because I was at the time working in a um when Sam was telling me about you, I was working at a uh startup incubator studio. And so we were launching four or five companies a year. And um after three, four years, I was like, I don’t know if this model even works. I just feel like it’s like this because there’s something inorganic about the studio model versus like just a normal startup that that comes from an entrepreneur solving their own niche. And he’s like, “Well, I don’t know. Let’s get Kevin Ryan seems to do it. He’s cranked out four or five billion dollar companies out of this.” And I was like, “Huh, I guess I should shut up and uh just you know, I guess not the model that’s the problem. It’s me.” Uh so you know, I I I think not only is it cool that you built big media companies, it’s cool that you made the the studio model work when very few people have been able to do that.
Kevin Ryan: Yeah. No, no, I still enjoy it. Uh by and large, it’s still working. You know, things go wrong. It’s not, I wouldn’t say it’s easy, but we have a lot of companies that are doing really well and in different sectors. And so that’s what’s so fun. And look, there there are more things to be done. There are many problems in society that have not been solved.
The Origin of AlleyCorp [03:14]
Sam Parr: And basically, the high-level story of you is you uh you had like a normal corporate career, but then you kind of like worked your way into uh DoubleClick, which eventually, I think became Ad AdWords at Google.
Kevin Ryan: Exactly. Yeah. So Google bought it for about $3 billion in 2007. Uh, remember we started in 1996. I was there for nine years. It was public for seven years. First four years went from 10 people when I joined to 2,000, which was so crazy in 25 countries. So that’s why I spent my early 30s doing. Um, then we spent three years bringing it back to 1,000 people as the internet collapsed and 70% of our clients went bankrupt. So don’t do that. Uh, then we we had huge market share, controlled basically ad technology and so then uh Google bought it. And then I started uh Business Insider, you know, Mongo and Gilt.
The “One Chart” Business Model [04:03]
Shaan Puri: I want to point one thing out in this journey, by the way. Your career starts at Prudential. Uh, so shout out to all the listeners out there who are in boring companies right now, boring huge companies, consultants and bankers out there. There is hope for you yet. Um, so you did like Prudential, Euro Disney, blah, blah, blah. And then you joined DoubleClick as employee 20, but you you they brought you in I guess as like a senior person at the time.
Kevin Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. Uh what happened is I had launched an internet website for EW Scripps, which is a media company, and I was the COO and CFO of a division of that company. Wasn’t it basically just like Gilbert Comics or was it?
Kevin Ryan: Exactly. Yeah. Gilbert Comics and and we had other comics. We owned Peanuts and a lot of other ones. But on a relative basis, it became very successful as a website. We sold uh advertising, uh e-commerce. Uh so things that were not that easy to do because we didn’t have the vendors at the time. So I went to the parent company and said, “Look, we should build up an internet division.” And they said, “No.” And so I thought, you know, I actually believe that the internet’s going to be a huge, which is obvious now, but you know, a huge part of the next 25 years. I want to go do this full-time. So I was going to go start a company. I ran across DoubleClick that was already in the ad tech space. They convinced me to join them instead of starting my own company. I became the the the CFO, the CFO, the president, and then the CEO.
The “One Chart” Business Model [05:18]
Sam Parr: And then when we met, you basically you you kind of outlined after selling DoubleClick, you said basically, my partner Dwight and I, we came up with this thing where we called it AlleyCorp and we’re like, you we get like two or three, maybe even one good idea a year, and then we find good people and we give them $300,000 and we say, you have six months, let’s see if we can make this work together. And you did that with Insider, Business Insider, which I think had a $500 million exit. You did it with Zola, which is still running and it’s kicking ass, I believe. You did it with with Gilt, which I think got to like 500 million in sales, but it didn’t end up working out wonderfully, I think you said.
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, we we sold for 250 million, which was less than we thought, but it’s still obviously a, you know, a real number.
Sam Parr: Good, yeah. Great. And then you you can go ahead and correct me, but you’ve done this with like four or five companies. I I remember this meeting from 2018. I said 300,000. That was wrong, right?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we started each company with a million dollars. So 500,000 from each one of us. And that was for Gilt, Business Insider, and Mongo. Uh and then we I did after that, Dwight semi-retired and so I did that with uh Nomad, I did that with Zola. Uh and now by now I put about a million and a half dollars in each company when we start them.
Sam Parr: Which isn’t a significant amount of money for how big, I mean, I I Mongo DB right now is trading, I think at I think its market cap is $26 billion today. I’m sure at its at COVID peak, it was like 40 or 50. That that’s not a lot of money for the outcomes.
Kevin Ryan: No, no. And look, we had to raise a lot of money. I mean, Mongo between being a private and public company, raised and lost a billion dollars before they had a profitable quarter. And now already make $300 million a year in profits. So that’s why it’s so valuable is because it’s a it’s just an incredible company, growing quickly, enormous market share and it’s going to grow for the next 10 years. It’ll be a $50 billion company.
The “One Chart” Business Model [07:12]
Sam Parr: Well, you told me in our call, you said, one of my notes is basically, if you’re not hiring fast enough and and by the way, this is like this is the VC route, but you said, if you’re not if you’re not hiring fast enough and losing money, aka investing, you either haven’t figured it out or you don’t believe that your idea is good enough. Um, and so you need to go grow grow faster.
Kevin Ryan: Well, and but you you don’t want to grow fast just to grow fast. If you have a good idea and if you’re hiring a salesperson who costs 150,000 and they’re selling $500,000 worth, you need to hire those people all day long. Because you have an opportunity. And if you have other products to create, you should hire these engineers to to build it. So again, it’s not spending money to spend money, but if you’re building a big company, it’s going to take eventually 1,000 people or 2,000 people to do a billion dollars in revenue.
Sam Parr: Well, you and your your analogy was, you go, “Look, if I if my idea is good enough, I’m going to build a machine that turns $1 into $2. And if I have that machine, what are you going to do? You’re going to go get as much money as you can and back that truck up into that machine and dump it in there.”
Kevin Ryan: Exactly.
Sam Parr: Now, there are times in various companies where it doesn’t make sense to invest a lot more money because we’re not getting the return. You know, you run out of market share, uh it’s not as big a market as you think, something’s not working as well. And so then the right thing to do is to not invest. And I have companies right now that we’ve cut 30% of the people in the last year because given this market and what they were doing, we had too many people.
The “One Chart” Business Model [08:42]
Shaan Puri: So there’s also a note in that call that I thought was really useful. So I’m looking at Sam’s notes from your call like back in 2016. Sam’s building the hustle. He’s trying to figure out what to do next. I I assume you were considering raising money because you wrote this down and I thought it was uh it’s obvious when you hear it, but I I most entrepreneurs I don’t think think this way, which is you said, “Let’s say you’re going to raise $2 million at a $20 million valuation. So you’re going to dilute 10%.” And you’re saying, “You just have to ask yourself, if I took that $2 million and I invested it into growth, people, whatever, over the next 18 months, is our company going to be worth more than 10% versus if we do not? And if it is, then I need to do that. I should do that trade. And if it’s not, I should not.” And uh did I capture the the logic properly there?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah. No, exactly. That’s what you have to look at. And you know, you don’t you don’t want to raise too much in that round because if you sold 10 million, then that’s very expensive capital. If you think it’s going to be worth $100 million someday or $200 million, you should raise that money later. But you do need to get moving and time is never on your side. You know, any good idea I’ve come up with, eventually, even if it’s six months later, three other people are going to come up with the same idea. So you need to move quickly. People tend to they most people understand the the risk of doing something, they understate the risk of not doing something.
The “One Chart” Business Model [10:03]
Shaan Puri: Can you tell us a story where moving fast either benefited you or cost you big in one of these races that you ran?
Kevin Ryan: Absolutely. So DoubleClick is the perfect example. We expanded to 25 countries before our first country was profitable. So if we were a big company, everyone would have said, “Look, let’s wait and see and make sure our model works.” But the result was if you were Procter & Gamble or Caterpillar or IBM, who did you work with? You worked with us because we had operations in 25 countries and you have offices in those countries. You didn’t work with our competitor who had offices in six countries. As a result, we swept the market. We lost a bunch of money, but we were able to fund it. And that is the reason today, 25 years later, that, you know, uh Google still has a commanding share. It’s because we got it early on and it’s never been given up. But you’re taking a chance. I mean, there are there are times when you invest in something and it it doesn’t work that well and you’re like, “Wow, we should have waited.” You’re out of time to wait.
The “One Chart” Business Model [11:01]
Sam Parr: What insight was Insider, Business Insider, was that? So you sold DoubleClick, you back then when you and I met, you actually told me how much money you made off the DoubleClick sale. I won’t say it unless you want to say it. But did you um, which I thought it was amazing that you told me this. I was like, “Damn, this guy is helping me out so much by telling me all this information.” Did you you and Dwight get together to start, I don’t know if you call it an incubator or what whatever you call AlleyCorp, but did you was Insider the first idea that you had and what led to that, what led to the insight to start that?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so the Insider idea was so simple that you can’t even give us credit for it. So this is 2007. I love business publications and media publications. So I I’m a sort of a compulsive reader of that. And I didn’t have the publication I wanted. And it’s so hard to to remember for people today that the Wall Street Journal and Business Week at the time did not basically did not update their websites during the day.
Sam Parr: That’s crazy.
Kevin Ryan: Crazy. You’re thinking that’s impossible. And the reason is that they were still on that schedule of the paper comes out the night, you know, the the morning. Articles have to be done late at night. And so at 10:00 a.m. 10:00 a.m. no one’s updating anything. And so they just had not adapted. And don’t forget, uh your we only got mobile phones in 2008. And so then all of a sudden, all day long, you’re in the taxi, of course you want to get an update on what’s happening. So we the things we did are so obvious and done today, but they were we were early, which is updating things continually, writing stories that were not complete in a way. We’d hear a rumor that X company was buying Y company. We’d say that’s what we’re hearing. And you know what happens when you write that? Someone from that company calls this, “Yeah, actually, it’s true.” Um, and so then you get more information. And so you maybe write four or five stories during the day as you get more and more information. And we also had a point of view. So, you know, we’d write, uh so and so just overpaid for a company. It’s more important that we have a smart point of view than that we’re right in the long term. And so, and we did a great job of making sure we showed up in search results. So, again, everyone does that today. At the time, no one cared about headlines because if you had Business Week magazine, does the headline result in more revenue for you? No. But when we we would AB test three headlines very quickly on a story and realize what was working. And so, you know, what I’m proudest of is that Business Insider is at 300 million uniques today and never spent $1 in advertising.
The “One Chart” Business Model [13:32]
Sam Parr: Yeah, you told me, well you said you you said we were just we were going to just churn out these articles, which um is common now, but you go you had this really cool insight. You go, it’s kind of like Honda in 1985 versus General Motors. Americans laughed at the Honda uh car. They said, “This is just too flimsy, this isn’t good.” But they’re going to like capture some market share and they’re going to improve. And you said, it’s kind of like that with Business Insider. The the the quote, the critics or the the real people in the industry, whatever you want to call them, they laughed at you and they said, “This is just low quality, this is junk.” And you’re like, “But we’re going to get more traffic than you.” And I think it took like five years or something, but we got more traffic than Wall Street Journal and now they’re looking at us like, “Holy crap, you surpassed us and we can afford to have more substantial journalism that maybe is taken more seriously if if that’s even uh something you care about.”
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, I I would guess by 2015, we had seven people covering military and defense. That’s deep coverage. I mean, you you you have a lot, you’re writing great stuff. In the beginning, obviously we had, you know, five journalists covering the whole world. It’s not going to be amazing. But that that is a good parallel and we it the product did get better over time. We started winning awards. Uh but it always was intended to be a different positioning. It was punchier, it appealed to younger people, uh it was opinionated, you know, it was just a different product. Uh but I think I think the company, you know, we Henry Blodget, who’s still the CEO, has done an extraordinary job in over 15 years and a lot of these insights came from him. And he was one of seven people I interviewed for that job and he killed it.
The “One Chart” Business Model [14:13]
Shaan Puri: What did you see in him that uh made you pick him?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, I know if you remember, it was a bold choice because Henry had had some issues on Wall Street. Um, so you some people felt like he was tainted. I knew that he and the the issues by the way were I think he got accused of was it insider trading or he got banned. No, not insider trading at all. What happened was at the time what was standard there was that uh the Wall Street analyst would come pitch the company that was going to go public and they would say, “Look, we’re going to great write great things about you.” Which is potentially a conflict with their recommendations to their uh their the the companies, their investors. So, um everyone did that. Henry actually wrote internal emails saying, “I feel really uncomfortable with this.” Which then was used against him. You know, no one else did that. And so legally, I don’t think he did anything wrong. Uh I everything he wrote was approved by his superiors and and order. But anyway, uh you know, some people felt like he was tainted. I didn’t at all. Um what I did know is he was an incredible writer and he was a perceptive journalist. He was writing pieces for the Atlantic. I mean, he’s just so good. I mean, he’s so talented. And he also, he truly understood internet journalism. So the people I interviewed for the Wall Street Journal basically just wanted to redo the Wall Street Journal and which we don’t need. Uh Henry had was was fresh. He had never really worked in a newsroom, which could be viewed as a weakness. I viewed it as a strength. And so he changed the rules and we were willing to do that and he did an incredible job.
The “One Chart” Business Model [16:43]
Shaan Puri: You know, that same strategy of kind of like start with the content quickly that gets traffic, don’t try to be don’t look for kind of like the peer acclaim in the industry, look for what the market wants and then over time improve the quality. That was also BuzzFeed’s strategy. But today I’m looking at the BuzzFeed stock, it’s 36 cents, it’s a $50 million market cap. What do you think they got wrong or what happened to BuzzFeed? Because it seemed like they were they had that whole that same playbook and Jonah Peretti, if you ever hear him talk, he seems like, you know, whip smart in the same way.
Kevin Ryan: For me, it’s very clear and I I felt this from day one, even when they were theoretically worth $2 billion. I rarely ran into someone who said, “I love reading BuzzFeed every day.” I I don’t believe they built up a true brand. They showed up in search results, they got traffic, but there were, you know, many, many people that religiously read Business Insider every single day. So it just had a brand that I think was much stronger and more defined.
The “One Chart” Business Model [18:04]
Sam Parr: And you you you guys have another uh funny part about you, which is I was telling my wife this because we were talking I was telling her I was going to talk to you and I was going and and I follow Dave Portnoy on on Twitter from Barstool. Business Insider is the only one to get one up on him. So you guys had this you guys had this article about some some stuff that he had done and he went ape shit. He went crazy and Business Insider had the best response, which was no response. You guys didn’t reply to anything and it’s the only time I’ve ever seen Dave Portnoy get one up.
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, I wasn’t really involved with that whole exchange that happened after uh I we sold the company. So, well, I thought it was pretty funny and I uh I thought it was I thought Business Insider actually handled it wonderfully and they were the first people that I’ve saw that got one over on him.
The “One Chart” Business Model [18:37]
Shaan Puri: You know, you know Kevin, um you you guys have had so many hits come out of the studio and um as somebody who ran a studio for six years and uh did not have billion dollar hits come out of it, I got to know, what’s the uh what’s the secret? What you know, what what was it that you guys were doing differently? And I’m sure you’ve talked to many other people. You’ve seen many entrepreneurs start these labs and you’ve probably seen the same results that I have, which is that very, very few come up with anything that works. What do you think you guys did differently than others?
Kevin Ryan: So it’s not that, you know, detail-wise we did anything differently. At the end of the day, this is a simple business, but hard to do. In other words, you need a good idea and you need a good team. Uh so that’s just there’s nothing else. Uh so, you know, we’ve had some good ideas. Uh we do a lot of research, you know, at any one time we’re doing deep dives. So someone will spend two and a half months interviewing 50 people, doing the same thing that I would do if I were an entrepreneur about to start a company. So we have a lot of knowledge. There’s a 50-page deck, we’ve really gone into it, and then we’re committed and then we go hire a great team and we help that team. But again, it’s a little bit like watching, you know, I don’t know, a good basketball player, a good soccer player. We know what they do. We can see what they do. Can I do what they’re doing? Not very easily. So I think we’ve executed well there. And you know, we have a bunch of people including myself, have a lot of experience doing this. It’s just a series of judgment calls. You know, I think uh I’m able because of the track record, able to convince some good people to be CEOs. Um, that’s important too. And we, you know, we spend a lot of time helping them. So I chair 12 companies. So about half my time is spent focusing on those 12, which are 12 of our most valuable companies, uh to really guide them and make sure that they do as well as possible.
The “One Chart” Business Model [20:22]
Shaan Puri: Walk us through like one of those ideas. So Okay, so for example, two and a half years ago, so I’m uh I’m very interested in psychedelics for mental health. I’m the leading funder of the Yale Center for Psychedelic Research. You know, I’m involved with a bunch of things, non-profit research for, you know, pushing psychedelics forward so they can be legalized either by by the FDA or by state. So with that context, two and a half years ago, I said, “Let’s do a deep dive and see if we can come up with a for-profit idea.” So first of my team works with me, interviews 50 people, you know, we’re talking to everyone, and we come up with a solution that was partly influenced by some of the work that’s been done at Yale, and we started a company called Transcend. The person on my team actually, which is unusual, spins out to become the CEO, uh Blake Mandel. Big article in uh the Wall Street Journal about five months ago about Transcend because we we started off with a million and a half dollars, but we raised $40 million about a year to a year and a half later in two tranches at $80 million pre. So big, big, big, big step up, big valuation, and we have a compound that you haven’t heard of going through the FDA process. It’s in phase two trials right now. Uh and so people are obviously optimistic about the future, like the team, like the execution. Uh we did some things very well there. We have been awarded patents. For example, if you follow this industry, you know that you can’t patent MDMA or mushrooms because those have been around for a long time, but we actually did get a patent for methalone, which is the compound that we’re working on. Uh so so far so good. Now, there’s still risk, but that company is, you know, we currently have a $50 million position based on our $5 million that we’ve invested so far, and we think it has a lot of potential.
The “One Chart” Business Model [20:49]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [21:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [21:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [22:22]
Sam Parr: What is that deck look like? You said they they do like a or I think a 50-page memo or deck, I’m not sure what you said. Do you have a structure for it?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, it’s generally one just talking about the industry, where are the problems, where are the pain points, and then where are the opportunities? What’s the product idea? So one of the reasons I do almost nothing in e-commerce these days is because I don’t see the problem. We solved the industry solved the problem. I mean, if you name anything on the planet Earth just about, you know, you can find a site, they’ll have 10,000 of them. It’ll be sent to your house by tomorrow. Man, I don’t know how to do better. That problem is solved. Whereas when I, you know, when I started Gilt, you actually couldn’t get Mark Jacobs at 50% off online. Uh just no one offered it. And so we offered it and people went crazy over that. Uh so e-commerce is very mature. Frankly, media is pretty mature right now. There’s a lot, you know, not that people say to me, “I just can’t find what I want to want to read.” Uh but even you know, once in a while we’re working on one idea right now, the early stages in the media space, uh but not not sure yet. So we’re looking for problems. The health one of the reasons I like healthcare is because it healthcare is not solved. You know, as you guys know, you you have knee surgery, either you or your insurance company are going to pay a crazy amount. One, there’s too much knee surgery. It’s going to someone’s going to pay 40,000, yet in France, it’s 20,000 and the results are better. So, can it be done better? Yes, it can be done better. You 20 times more black women die in childbirth than in Sweden. Yes. Is that something that is just inherent and is always going to happen? No. We don’t do enough prevention. There are many structural issues in healthcare that have not been solved and we’re we’re solving some of them.
The “One Chart” Business Model [23:05]
Shaan Puri: It sounds to me like what you do is you look think about what the world going to look like in 10 years. Um, you know, either what’s a problem that just if somebody could solve it, that would be a major major unlock or hey, the the puck is going this way. And then then it sounds like you say, um, cool, let’s go find out everything we can learn about that space. We we go in kind of uh open-minded about what problem we’re going to solve. We try to figure out uh where all the pain points are and then it sounds like you’re looking for what I’ll call the big obvious problem, which is if it’s too complicated and nuanced, it doesn’t sound like you’re that interested. It’s like uh, hey, you can’t find luxury fashion online for 50% off, right? Okay, that’s like a big obvious problem. It doesn’t take that much explaining or expertise to even understand the problem. Maybe the solution might be might take some expertise, but the problem should be in your face. Um once once you’re looking in that industry. Um we uh we have this thing we say on the podcast, which is that there are businesses that that their business plans that are what I call one chart businesses. You could just look at one chart and it just tells you, oh, that’s Yep. That’s so obvious. Like we were looking at one that was around um uh in the death space around cremation. And it was like cremation went from, I don’t know, 7% of all things to like 50%. It’s now the majority of uh of of of what choices people make when um when it comes to a funeral. And this is like that’s a one chart business. So you can look at nothing else and say, all right, I know there’s big I know there’s opportunity when I look at a chart like this. Um is is that does that jive with your way of thinking or do you have anything you can add to to our understanding of that?
Kevin Ryan: No, no, absolutely. I mean, I’ll give you another one. The cost of labor is going to just keep going up. And so, you know, waiters were paid $15 an hour, now it’s $20 to $25 an hour in New York. Unless we change immigration or something fundamentally changes, that could be $30 an hour. So you know what? Over time that changes the calculus of automation. Whether it’s making french fries, whether it’s through this, we’re all going to have to find ways to use less labor. Uh and so when cost of tech goes down and the cost of labor goes up, what does that tell you? More automation is going to happen. Uh so I’ll bet on that trend all day long. You know, we’re an investor in a company that gives robotic massages. There’s 17,000 open positions for massage therapists in this country. Wow. And so, you know, there’s hotels that just can’t offer massages because they don’t have the people. So, you know, we hope they’re going to offer a a massage. So that that’s just one example, but I have 10 others.
The “One Chart” Business Model [24:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [25:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [26:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [26:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [27:16]
Sam Parr: What does that deck look like? You said they they do like a or I think a 50-page memo or deck, I’m not sure what you said. Do you have a structure for it?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, it’s generally one just talking about the industry, where are the problems, where are the pain points, and then where are the opportunities? What’s the product idea? So one of the reasons I do almost nothing in e-commerce these days is because I don’t see the problem. We solved the industry solved the problem. I mean, if you name anything on the planet Earth just about, you know, you can find a site, they’ll have 10,000 of them. It’ll be sent to your house by tomorrow. Man, I don’t know how to do better. That problem is solved. Whereas when I, you know, when I started Gilt, you actually couldn’t get Mark Jacobs at 50% off online. Uh just no one offered it. And so we offered it and people went crazy over that. Uh so e-commerce is very mature. Frankly, media is pretty mature right now. There’s a lot, you know, not that people say to me, “I just can’t find what I want to want to read.” Uh but even you know, once in a while we’re working on one idea right now, the early stages in the media space, uh but not not sure yet. So we’re looking for problems. The health one of the reasons I like healthcare is because it healthcare is not solved. You know, as you guys know, you you have knee surgery, either you or your insurance company are going to pay a crazy amount. One, there’s too much knee surgery. It’s going to someone’s going to pay 40,000, yet in France, it’s 20,000 and the results are better. So, can it be done better? Yes, it can be done better. You 20 times more black women die in childbirth than in Sweden. Yes. Is that something that is just inherent and is always going to happen? No. We don’t do enough prevention. There are many structural issues in healthcare that have not been solved and we’re we’re solving some of them.
The “One Chart” Business Model [28:07]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [29:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [30:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [30:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [32:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [33:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [33:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [34:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [35:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [36:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [36:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [38:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [39:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [39:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [40:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [41:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [42:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [42:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [44:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [45:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [45:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [46:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [47:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [48:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [48:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [50:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [51:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [51:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [52:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [53:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [54:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [54:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [56:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [57:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [57:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [58:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [59:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:00:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:00:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:02:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:03:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:03:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:04:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:05:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:06:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:06:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:08:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:09:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:09:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:10:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:11:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:12:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:12:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:14:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:15:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:15:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:16:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:17:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:18:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:18:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:20:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:21:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:21:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:22:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:23:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:24:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:24:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:26:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:27:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:27:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:28:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:29:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:30:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:30:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:32:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:33:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:33:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:34:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:35:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:36:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:36:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:38:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:39:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:39:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:40:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:41:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:42:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:42:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:44:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:45:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:45:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:46:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:47:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:48:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:48:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:50:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:51:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:51:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:52:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:53:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:54:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:54:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:56:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:57:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:57:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:58:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [1:59:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:00:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:00:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:02:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:03:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:03:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:04:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:05:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:06:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:06:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:08:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:09:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:09:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:10:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:11:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:12:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:12:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:14:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:15:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:15:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:16:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:17:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:18:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:18:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:20:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:21:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:21:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:22:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:23:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:24:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:24:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:26:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:27:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:27:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:28:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:29:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:30:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:30:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:32:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:33:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:33:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:34:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:35:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:36:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:36:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:38:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:39:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:39:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:40:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:41:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:42:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:42:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:44:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:45:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:45:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:46:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:47:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:48:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:48:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:50:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:51:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:51:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:52:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:53:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:54:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:54:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:56:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:57:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:57:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:58:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [2:59:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:00:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:00:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:02:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:03:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:03:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:04:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:05:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:06:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:06:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:08:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:09:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:09:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:10:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:11:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:12:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:12:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:14:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:15:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:15:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:16:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:17:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:18:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:18:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we can do better. Right. And that’s why like, you know, Henry was the perfect person coming from outside. You know, when I started Gilt, none of my initial five people had worked in the fashion industry. But we understood the problem. It wasn’t that complicated. So we could create something that was that was interesting and unusual. Uh, so that’s the right approach. We just started a company in assisted fertility. So I’m sure you guys know you have friends, you know, who are getting IVF. I did it. Yeah, my my brother and his husband, you know, uh had a child through surrogacy, freezing eggs. That’s going to grow for the next 10 years for all the reasons we know about, people having children later, sperm counts are down, bunch of things. So we did we sign we started a company what, four months ago. We put in a million and a half dollars and we just signed a term sheet to raise, you know, five and a half million dollars. Um, a lot of people wanted to do it. People are excited about the team. Uh, we have, you know, good set of people, uh, mostly from Stanford Business School on this team and it’s a big space. So, I’m I’m going to bet on that team and that trend for a while.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:20:07]
Sam Parr: What about um like with Mongo DB? So um that was started I think in 2007. So AlleyCorp was like a little bit early. Did you have a team helping you research ideas back then?
Kevin Ryan: No. I didn’t. That was purely Dwight, myself, and Elliot Horowitz, who was the most brilliant young engineer at DoubleClick. Now, out of 700 engineers, if you could pick out one person other than Dwight, you would have picked him. And so we started a company together in 2005 called ShopWiki, which is a search engine for shopping. Did okay, not great. We sold it in 2007, made a little bit of money, and then said, “What are we going to do next?” And so came up with this idea, uh started working on it. It was a very hard slog. It’s very easy to feel good about it right now. For three years, we had zero revenue. So not easy to keep funding, going back to VCs with zero revenue. But we had a lot of people using it, so, you know, we broke through that. But we had some ugly financing rounds. You know, especially back in 2009, 2010, that was not a good time to be raising with no revenues. Uh then finally Sequoia came in and then we raised a lot of money and now it does getting close to a $2 billion run rate.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:21:21]
Sam Parr: Did that company make you a billionaire?
Kevin Ryan: So, yeah, I mean, look, for all of us, it definitely uh yeah, we all made lots of money on that on that company, definitely.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:21:30]
Shaan Puri: Those three years with no revenue, uh at the time, were you like people just don’t understand that this thing is uh like others don’t see it, but I see it, or were you like in the fog of war, you’re like, “I don’t know if this is a thing, if this is going to make it, but um you know, let’s keep going.”
Kevin Ryan: No, no, I would say that all of us were nervous because uh you know, you like to have revenue and you’re going to run out of money at some point. What helped us on the inside was that the utilization, the number of people using the product was free, was growing every single month all over the world. So there’s, you know, probably 50,000 small companies using the product. And so, you know, there were hundreds of meetups about Mongo and people were showing up and we can see in a way that the dogs liked the dog food. Uh we just needed to then make it good enough that larger companies would pay money for it. And then we got there and and the rest is history.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:22:22]
Sam Parr: What are you consuming on a daily basis to spot these trends?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so tons of things. No one thing. I’m on, you know, many, many uh newsletters that are industry focused or general focused or science oriented. I I read 40 books a year. I mean conversations with people all the time where you know, there’s a lot of learning. Uh and then people on my team are more specialized than I am. So, you know, I have two MD MBAs who are head up our healthcare practice and then people below them that have worked in healthcare. So they’re thinking of very specific issues that I probably wouldn’t wouldn’t think of. And the same is true of I have a person on marketplaces, a person on semiconductors and material science, and a person on developer tools and enterprise software and two people on social impact. So a lot of what we do is in those areas and I’m a bigger and bigger believer now of industry focus. You know, it’s a you know, you and I are not going to think of something that applies to the chemical industry right now. But if that’s all you did for six months and interviewed 100 people, you’d probably come up with some ideas that make sense. And the industries that you care about right now are health, healthcare. Uh definitely uh then the ones I mentioned, so semiconductors and material science, developer tools, uh with some security, marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, uh social impact and robotics and automation.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:23:16]
Sam Parr: What’s an example of a B2B marketplace that you’re interested in?
Kevin Ryan: Yeah, so we invested we have done a deep dive into the maritime industry. So shipping. No one thinks about it. Multi-hundred billion dollars, very behind in technology. We invested in a company called BoxHub, that’s a marketplace for those containers that are on container ships. Based in Toronto, uh most people wouldn’t have known about it. We led that round. We also have just started a company in maritime that’s going to be a a procurement marketplace. So you’re a ship, let’s say you’re arriving in Cartagena, your boiler breaks. What are you going to do? You know, you weren’t you weren’t planning on that. And so having a site you can go to that becomes sort of the Amazon of that and has delivery and can get you those parts, uh everyone in the industry told us that that’s needed. So we’re literally just built the team two months ago. They’re probably at four people right now and so we’re off and running.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:24:09]
Sam Parr: What’s that company called?
Kevin Ryan: It it doesn’t have its official name yet.
The “One Chart” Business Model [3:24:13]
Sam Parr: So, all right, let’s use that as an example. So you basically did uh did you just go and somehow network your way into talking to 50 Oh yeah, so a woman on my team uh absolutely did that and went to two uh maritime conferences. So, which she said were fascinating. It’s basically like people from Venezuela, you know, the Middle East, Russia, you know, from all over the world, Greek. And so trying to understand the industry Just about the pirates. Just about the pirates hobbling hobbling around and a bunch of parrots and birds shit all over the place. She said it did not look like her Princeton reunion at all. So, yeah, and so and she met with the couple investors who invested in the space, you know, ship owners, uh data providers, everyone. You’re just trying to understand how does the industry work. And I think there’s an advantage sometimes coming from outside. Because some people just say, “Oh, that’s just how it works here.” And the person on the outside will be like, “Wait a second, it doesn’t have to work that way.” You know, we