Former DoubleClick CEO, Kevin Ryan led the company through a period of explosive growth in the late ’90′s. He took the ad-targeting company from a handful of employees to more than 2,000 in just 4 years before selling to Google for $3 billion. However, as Ryan discusses in this episode of Founder Stories with Chris Dixon, the dot.com bust threatened to wash it all away.
Ryan says during the downturn, “we lost 70% of our clients, bankrupt, and the only thing that saved us is we probably lost 80% of our competitors.” His white collar war story features seven rounds of layoffs. Make sure to watch this episode as Ryan relates how he rebounded and went on to start AlleyCorp, a network of companies that includes Gilt Groupe, Business Insider, ShopWiki, and 10gen.
In the below clip, Ryan dives into the beginnings of one of these AlleyCorp companies, 10gen, which makes the MongoDB database.
The first Founder Stories episode with Kevin Ryan can be found here and past episodes of Founder Stories, with founders such as David Karp, Fred Wilson and Christopher Poole can be found here.
Kevin P. Ryan is the Founder and CEO of Gilt Groupe, an innovative e-commerce company offering highly coveted products and experiences at insider prices. In 2007, Kevin along with a founding team created Gilt Groupe as an invitation-only site for coveted women’s apparel and accessories. Today, Gilt Groupe has over three million members and has added business lines in home; children; men’s apparel and gear (GiltMAN); vacation travel (Jetsetter); local services and experiences (Gilt City), and has launched the leading...
DoubleClick is a provider of digital marketing technology and services. Companies come to DoubleClick for expertise in ad serving, media, video, search and affiliate marketing to help them make the most of the digital medium.
Chris Dixon is a Partner at and co-founder of Founder Collective. He is also a contributing writer for TechCrunch. He previously was the CEO and Co-founder of SiteAdvisor, which was acquired by McAfee, and Hunch, which was acquired by eBay. In addition to his work with Founder’s Collective, Chris is a personal investor in early-stage technology companies, including Skype, TrialPay, DocVerse, Invite Media, Gerson Lehrman Group, ScanScout, OMGPOP, BillShrink, Oddcast, Panjiva, Knewton, and a handful of other startups that...
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