Kevin Ryan is one of the leading entrepreneurs and investors in New York. Often called the “Godfather of NYC tech,” he is the founder and CEO of AlleyCorp, a New York based venture capital firm that incubates and invests across healthcare, AI and software, consumer tech, deep tech, and more. Kevin is also the co-founder of several notable companies including MongoDB, Business Insider, Zola, Gilt Groupe, and Transcend Therapeutics. Earlier in his career, Kevin was the CEO of DoubleClick, which he helped grow from a 20-person startup to a publicly-traded company with more than 1,500 employees.
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How to Spot 10-Year Trends and Build Billion-Dollar Companies — Kevin Ryan of DoubleClick, MongoDB, Business Insider, and Many More
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Transcripts
Show Notes
Connect with Kevin Ryan and AlleyCorp
Related Reading, Listening, and Viewing
Books
People
Organizations, Places, and Resources
Timestamps
- [00:00:00] Start.
- [00:01:25] The chronology, prepared by the robots.
- [00:03:40] 20 trends on a whiteboard, 10 years out.
- [00:06:33] Four conferences, a China trip, and how to seat 30 people.
- [00:11:42] The YouTube Kevin didn’t start.
- [00:17:47] Gilt: $500 million in year four, then a falling knife.
- [00:22:06] “We’re going to wait for the next internet.”
- [00:25:58] DoubleClick: 25 countries before one was profitable.
- [00:27:52] The AlleyCorp model: $500K each, a year to build, then raise.
- [00:32:26] Recruiting Henry Blodget in 30 minutes.
- [00:38:28] The two-week business crush.
- [00:41:44] Valar Atomics: $20 million to $6 billion in three years.
- [00:45:25] Why the fund stays small: 2% vs. 20%.
- [00:47:15] Ping pong, red wine, and Ibiza dance floors.
- [00:49:05] Three things only; everything else cut 80%.
- [00:51:52] The book that changed Kevin’s mind at 54.
- [00:54:20] Methylone: MDMA’s gentler, shorter cousin.
- [00:56:54] The second mouse gets the cheese.
- [00:59:57] A public benefit corp that actually pays out.
- [01:05:46] Is early-stage venture dead?
- [01:08:04] Robot massage and the AI agent that switched to Spanish.
- [01:11:35] The healthcare Shopify that failed; MongoDB’s revenue-free years.
- [01:15:06] Kevin’s billboard.
- [01:16:19] Pulling levers: taxes, training, and immigrants.
- [01:20:04] New York is booming.
- [01:21:41] Parting thoughts.
Quotes from Kevin Ryan
“There is no next internet.”
— Kevin Ryan
“It’s important to start narrow.”
— Kevin Ryan
“It’s better to do one thing really well than a bad job on everything.”
— Kevin Ryan
“I never think about exits. We need to focus on the product. Do we have a product that everyone wants to use? If you solve that, everything else follows.”
— Kevin Ryan
“There’s a saying that the early worm gets the bird, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”
— Kevin Ryan
“There are 164 soft drinks. The odds of you coming up with one that stands out is pretty slim.”
— Kevin Ryan
Want to hear another episode with someone who builds category-defining companies and bets on where technology is headed? Listen to my conversation with Netscape co-creator and Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen, in which we discussed his rules for investing, how he decides whether a company should stay the course or pivot, why his firm bets for change when others bet against it, the factors behind a big investment, the future of AI and drones, bitcoin, “strong opinions loosely held,” his debate with Peter Thiel, and much more.
