The art of the steal: Serial founder Eric Ryan on finding inspiration

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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Humans will never be more intelligent than AI.

**Jeff Berman** (0:34)
There's going to be two types of companies.

**Rohan Goswami** (0:36)
Those are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:39)
How do we build a future that is human-centered?

**Rana Elkayoubi** (0:45)
I'm Rana Elkayoubi, and on my podcast, Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future, and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives.
Find Pioneers of AI wherever you tune in.

**Eric Ryan** (1:17)
When I told my mom I was going to do this, she's like, I've never seen you make it better. Are you really the right person to start a clean products business?

**Jeff Berman** (1:26)
Well, that was a fair question from mom, but it turned out that Eric Ryan was exactly the right person to found Method, the cleaning products powerhouse. Eric scaled the company to incredible heights before selling it, but then he faced a new question.
What to do next?

**Eric Ryan** (1:45)
I felt kind of rudderless. I was not happy, and I realized I had lost my identity as an entrepreneur, which I viewed myself since the third grade as somebody I aspired to be.
In the second I decided to start my next company, I like snapped out of it. And I was like, okay, I've got purpose again. I've got a dream.

**Jeff Berman** (2:09)
This is Masters of Scale. I'm Jeff Berman, your host. This week on the show, Eric Ryan. He's the brilliant serial founder behind companies like Method and Olly, whose bright, bold branding has probably caught your eye many times as you've strolled down the cleaning and vitamin aisles at your local store. Eric has successfully sold both Method and Olly, but he still has an insatiable entrepreneurial itch. In this episode, he shares his winning formula for blending artists and operators into companies capable of disrupting entire categories.
Eric, welcome to Masters of Scale.

**Eric Ryan** (2:45)
Thank you for having me. I've been such a fan of this podcast since it launched. So this is a thrill to be here.

**Jeff Berman** (2:51)
Well, long-time customer, happy to be first-time conversation with you. I'd like to go back to your ad agency days. How did you end up in the world of advertising?

**Eric Ryan** (3:01)
When I was in high school, I read every book I could on entrepreneurship, and I knew the odds of launching something, particularly the first time and being successful, were so incredibly low.
At heart, I'm a fairly risk-averse person. So the idea of actually having a career first and creating a safety net as well as hopefully useful skills that I could do as an entrepreneur was really important to me, even though I was constantly dabbling with ideas, even in college. And I went to do an internship in London, and just got lucky that I knew I wanted marketing, and I was given an internship at an agency. And I absolutely just fell in love with that agency culture, working across every element of a brand from packaging design, and that agency world.

**Jeff Berman** (3:46)
What did you love about it?

**Eric Ryan** (3:48)
I loved the problem-solving. When you start to work on a brand, whether it's a piece of business that that agency already won, or for the Don Draper fans out there, like the thrill of the pitch, I just loved. But it's all about problem-solving, reframing, finding ways to tell stories differently. And so that challenge I truly love, but then being around artists. I was always hanging out in the creative studio and with the design teams, and I have zero gifts in that area.
But to be around the people who did have those gifts, I just got such a high from. And then walking grocery stores in London, it was just like, to me, it was like the Super Bowl of capitalism. And I realized in that moment, I just, I love the way brands get expressed through physical product.

**Jeff Berman** (4:36)
What did you see walking through the supermarkets in London?