“One of the best assets our team brings to startups is that we know financial services so well. We have a broad network of relevant decision makers across the industry, and that can be a helpful sounding board for strategy and ideas. 

I know how important it can be to have a sounding board you trust. When I started my own company many years ago, I learned that I don’t like working alone. I need people around me to help me reach my own potential. It taught me that I would rather have a small role in something massive than the leading role in something really small. It’s horrifying to be the only person that cares. And it’s not that fun to be successful alone, not that it’s even really possible.  

The thing I’m most proud of is building this business—Restive—and assembling a team of amazing talent organized to help founders be successful. It’s a work in progress, but it certainly is a lot of fun!

I love the feeling of spotting amazing talent early and then seeing that person or team blow past even their own goals. Even having a marginal role in that kind of success is hard to beat.

The most successful early stage entrepreneurs I’ve known are fast and have the ability to keep people focused on singular goals. The really great founders are able to still observe new data points in that environment and make adjustments—often extreme ones—while keeping their teams focused. The first thing can be done lots of ways. The second thing requires a lot of humility."

—Ryan is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Restive. He has spent the last 15 years identifying, supporting and leading market-changing innovations at the nexus of technology and financial services. Since 2015, he has invested in over 100 seed stage companies, which have grown to represent well over $10 billion in aggregate equity value. Prior to founding Restive, Ryan led the development of the Financial Solutions Lab, a partnership between JPMorgan Chase and the Financial Health Network. Before launching that initiative, Ryan helped develop payment strategy solutions at Silicon Valley Bank, working closely with some of the leading fintech firms of the 2010s, including Stripe, Coinbase and Uber. He started his career at Enclude Solutions, a boutique consulting firm that provided strategic advice to entrepreneurs, governments and corporates around the world. In that role, he worked in over 50 countries, as varied as Mongolia, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and South Sudan, among many others.

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