Ryan Merket
AI Startup Development Manager at Microsoft for Startups
Ryan Merket
AI Startup Development Manager at Microsoft for Startups
Austin, Texas
Overview
Work Experience
AI Startup Development Manager
2024 - Current
Identifying and empowering top AI startups to achieve more.
Founder Mentoring and Angel Investing
2012
I enjoy collaborating with early-stage founders and contributing tangible value to their ventures, whether it's through operations, product development, investing, engineering, or by leveraging my investor network to help with fundraising. I have had the opportunity to work some great founders and made several investments, some of which are listed below: * Teachable (NYC, acquired) * Apostrophe (SF, acquired) * Able Lending (ATX, acquired) * Makeswift (ATL, acquired) * Threatcare (ATX, acquired) * Freshplum (SF, acquired) * Percy (SF, acquired) * Primeloop (SF, acquired) * Respondly (SF, acquired) * TeacherTalent (ATX, acquired) * Reverie Labs (BOS, Acquired) * Reflex (ATX) * PadSplit (ATL) * Yumi (LA) * Nuvocargo (NYC, MXC) * Flex (ATX) * Choco (Remote) * Abound (SF) * AllStacks (NC) * Netmaker (NC) * Garten (SF) * RX Redefined (SF) * LUS Brands (Toronto) * Datapeople (NYC) * Paces (NYC) * Canopy Aerospace (Chicago) * XP Health (SF) * Analog chain (SF) * Megabite (Mex City) * Orca (Texas) * Rubi Laboratories (SF) * Heimdal (HI) * Minded (NYC) * Drift Bio (US) * Wild Earth (SF,NC) * Colossal (SF) * User Interviews (US, Remote) * Brave Care (PDX) * Living Carbon (US, Remote) * PYM (SF) * Terraformation (HI) * Blossm (SD)
Founder / Head of Product
2023 - 2024
Helping realtors close more leads and deals with the power of LLMs. Bootstrapped to $1,000/MRR in 3 months.
CEO / Head of Product
2021 - 2022
Mission Labs was a platform for artists and creators to sell their work online.
Head of Product & Engineering
2019 - 2021
At Goodfair I stepped in to be their Head of Product & Engineering right before they hit a major inflection point. I joined as one of the first 4 employees and did everything from Tiktok strategy (grew to 100M views and 400k followers), performance ads, instilling proper Product & Engineering processes and hygiene, built bespoke Shopify apps for our unique needs, integrated PeopleVox inventory management into the warehouse and fulfillment operations, ran IT for warehouse and office locations in Houston TX, etc. A little bit of everything. https://marketingpartnerships.com/lastcall/2021/02/01/nordstrom-taps-into-secondhand-retail-surge-with-goodfair-partnership/ https://www.treehugger.com/goodfair-shows-how-thrift-shopping-can-go-online-5077054
Startup BD, Early Stage Team
2015 - 2019
Part of a team of ex-founders and VCs, where I flew around the US mentoring and advising startups at the top accelerators like Techstars and Y Combinator.
Product
2014 - 2015
The sole Product leader for Reddit Ads.
Director of Product
2012 - 2014
Joined through the acquisition of my company in 2012, AppGalleries (1). This became the seed for InMobi's Native Ads product, which was the first native ads product for native apps, launched in 2014 (2). 1. http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/12/inmobi-buys-appbistro-appgalleries-mmtg-labs/ 2. http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/29/inmobi-launches-native-ad-platform-to-woo-publishers-looking-beyond-facebook-google/
CEO & Co-founder
2010 - 2012
Appstores.com solved the app discoverability problem by providing white-label app stores to platforms and niche media publishers. https://techcrunch.com/2011/02/07/appbistro/ https://techcrunch.com/2012/01/19/appstores-com-launches-an-adsense-for-mobile-apps/
Platform Team
2009 - 2010
I helped Facebook's top tier partners conceptualize, build, and manage their Facebook Platform integrations. I worked with companies like 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Hulu, Spotify, Microsoft, ESPN, Disney, X-Box, Zynga, and The White House. https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/sharing-the-olympic-magic-with-fans/298571017130/