Ryan loves building amazing products. Ryan has a strong entrepreneurial mindset having created a number of successful startups. Ryan is passionate about innovating and discovering creative and pure solutions to problems. Ryan has deep hands-on experience creating companies from conception to acquisition. Ryan is never afraid of mastering new areas and has built up a strong skill set in many areas including product management, social design, software development, business strategy, monetization, growth tactics, conversion optimization, and marketing. This allows him to make coherent product decisions by understanding priorities across different company departments. Ryan is data driven and always looks to maximize efficiency and produce the highest value from fixed resources.Ryan began his career building several notable web startups, then he was part of the core executive team working hard to save MySpace, Ryan was a founding partner at Science a new technology studio/incubator. Ryan has a MS and BS in Computer Science from UCSD.Specialties: Deep understanding of consumer internet and social design. Published research in Computer-Human Interaction, Computer Mediated Communication. Specialize in product management and business strategy. Produced highly profitable results with monetization and growth tactics. Can make code do beautiful things, code both front and back-end including PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery, Python, C++, JAVA. Strong background in affiliate programs, APIs, aggregation, and screen scraping.
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OwnerFreestyle LabsSan Diego, Ca, Us -
Ceo & FounderPicclick Inc. Aug 2008 - PresentSan Diego, California, United StatesPicClick is a visual search tool for eBay and Amazon products launched in 2008. Bootstrapped business to a peak of 50 million unique visits per month and $1 billion in gross merchandise volume per year in 2022. Became #1 eBay affiliate out of over 26,000 affiliates, driving 2% of the total traffic to eBay properties. Conceived of initial product design + code innovation that allowed a new highly scalable visual browsing UX, working on all web browsers. Led development of all layers of business including code, product, marketing, monetization, infrastructure, analytics, and customer service. Optimized user metrics, conversion, SEO, and performance through numerous rounds of data analysis and A/B testing. Managed the design of product pages, search results, and homepage feed at the scale of containing all 1.7 billion eBay listings across 8 internationalized PicClick sites. Drove continual innovations in product design and marketing to keep PicClick growing through 16 years of a rapidly changing internet landscape. -
Board Member - Pacific Southwest FcaFellowship Of Christian Athletes Jun 2023 - PresentSan Diego, California, United StatesFellowship of Christian Athletes is a community working to see the world transformed by Jesus Christ through the influence of coaches and athletes. Volunteer as an advisor to Colin Sinclair, the Regional Vice President of the Pacific Southwest. Participate in and support ministry in the region. -
Board Member - Ebay Partner NetworkEbay Jun 2014 - Jun 2018San Jose, California, United StateseBay Partner Network Board Members preview tools prior to launch, review new initiatives, and provide feedback that help guide future enhancements. The eBay Partner Network is one of the largest internet affiliate programs with over 26,000 affiliates, and the 2nd largest paid traffic source for eBay. -
Board Member & Investor → Acquired By Fam BrandsEllie.Com Aug 2012 - Apr 2013Santa Monica, California, United StatesEllie provides quality women's activewear at an accessible price, through a subscription ecommerce model. Conceived of initial product strategy, recruited team, mentored founder, and helped secure first round of outside funding.
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Partner & Co-FounderScience Aug 2011 - Apr 2013Santa Monica, California, United StatesPartner at $40 million fund, leading up product strategy and technology. Responsible for deal sourcing, recruiting talent, and mentoring portfolio startups. Identified the investment opportunity for 3 of our most successful startups: DogVacay which merged with Rover and sold to Blackstone for $2.3 Billion in 2024, Dollar Shave Club which sold to Unilever for $1 Billion in 2016, and HelloSociety which sold to New York Times in 2016. Science creates, scales and acquires successful digital businesses by bringing together the best ideas, talent, resources and financing through a centralized platform. We focus on three things: developing new businesses, providing emerging startups with operational strategy and capital, and transforming later-stage Internet ventures with new talent and innovations. -
Vice President Of Social → Acquired By Specific MediaMyspace Jul 2010 - Jun 2011Beverly Hills, California, United StatesAlong with CEO, led MySpace product strategy. Took over as lead product manager for critical social product teams covering: news stream, user profile, homepage, sign up, friending, global navigation, mail, notifications, IM, search. Re-prioritized product plans, increased product release speed, worked with team to release the most valuable product improvements. Led team to become the most efficient execution team at MySpace. Projects included experimental conversation system, in-stream ads, homepage redesign, navigation redesign, and news stream redesign. Started role with traffic at a sharp decline after redesign launch, ended with traffic growing and desired outcome of MySpace sale to Specific Media. Additionally part of 5 member product council responsible for company-wide product and strategy during challenging turnaround period.Previously Vice President, Strategic Initiatives. Worked with CEO to research and refine company strategy. Identified and established social optimization principles for MySpace products. Engaged on strategic projects as determined by CEO to ensure good product thinking, fast technical execution. Looked for opportunities throughout product and technical projects for user and revenue growth. In CEO's absence, represented strategic initiatives and timelines. -
MentorThe Founder Institute Sep 2010 - Jan 2011San Diego, California, United StatesThe Founder Institute is a business incubator, entrepreneur training, and startup launch program that was founded in Palo Alto, California in 2009. The Founder Institute offers a four-month part-time program for new and early-stage entrepreneurs that helps them develop their business ideas and form a company.Taught lecture on social optimization principles and online marketing. Mentored Founder Institute startups in San Diego. -
Vice President Of Special Projects → Acquired By Cyberplex Inc.Tsavo Media Inc. Oct 2008 - Jun 2010Santa Monica, California, United StatesDeveloped top products at Tsavo, mostly involving aggregation and search. First product become the #1 most profitable website out of hundreds of Tsavo owned websites in a matter of months. Deeply involved with product development, engineering, and optimization. Worked closely with CEO, Michael Jones, on experimental projects.Acquired by Cyberplex Inc. and was recruited to MySpace by original Tsavo CEO.
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OwnerFreestyle Labs Sep 2006 - Jun 2010San Diego, California, United StatesLab for business research and experimentation. Developed several successful and profitable products. Products have been featured on Techcrunch, Lifehacker, CNET, Digg front page, Ars Technica, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, Wired Magazine, Business 2.0, PC World, PC Magazine, ZDNet, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, USA Today, G4 TV and Revision3 TV. Products include:Listpic.com, the first visual Craigslist browser that allowed you to browse Craigslist listings through an iPhoto like web interface. Grew Listpic from 0 visitors to 50,000 visitors a day in 9 months. Improved SEO from 4% to 89% organic referrals. Optimized Google AdSense revenue from $4 eCPM to $24 eCPM. Added affiliate and contextual in-text advertising that increased revenue 12x. Became one of the top 25 eBay affiliates. Craigslist subsequently banned Listpic in an effort to keep control of their user base after Listpic grew to drive 2% of Craigslist traffic. As a direct response to Listpic's success, Craigslist added thumbnail previews to listings in the for sale section. Favtape.com, the easiest way to play music online. Developed innovative design for music playing and discovery. Became really popular and was sued by EMI for billions of dollars in a unprecedented lawsuit. Was sued for using a 3rd party API and linking to offsite content. Topicfire.com, real-time ranked news using a novel news ranking algorithm based on comment velocity and frequency data. Can accurately detect breaking news across long tail news sources within 15 minutes. Grew collection of topical breaking news Twitter and Facebook accounts to thousands of daily users.SEND6.com, a profitable private label file transfer service, was acquired by TouchStone Capital Group, Inc. in November 2007. -
Cto & Founder → Acquired By Webminds Inc.Dropshots Inc. Sep 2005 - Aug 2008San Diego, California, United StatesDeveloped DropShots photo and video sharing web application from idea to profitable business. Pioneered innovative features such as video transcoding to Flash (before YouTube), conversation system, and automatic organization. Created working business model of premium subscriptions that brought company to profitability. Implemented marketing plan that drove growth from 10% per month to 40% per week. Secured private equity investment after meeting with major VCs in Silicon Valley. After funding, further grew the customer base 60x. Increased conversion rate from 0.5% to 3%. Developed new revenue streams including advertising, print product sales, and platform licensing. Led development of full redesign. Company continues to grow and maintain profitability. DropShots has been featured in major news sources including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fox News TV, The Globe and Mail, and InformationWeek.
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Product Manager & Senior Software EngineerNovatel Wireless Mar 2001 - Sep 2005San Diego, California, United StatesProduct manager for core software product, Mobilink. Led software team to re-architect and develop the Mobilink 2.0 product. Responsible for product management for software host applications. Worked directly with customers and sales team on requirements and qualification. Hired and grew the software team. Participated in product research and new product development. Prior to the Mobilink product, led development of the NDIS connectionless driver product from concept to release. Mobilink 2.0 and NDIS driver products were crucial in securing business with major partners including Verizon Wireless, AT&T Wireless, Dell and more. The Mobilink and NDIS products continue to be developed and shipped today, and have been rolled out to millions of customers through almost all major wireless carriers and laptop manufacturers. -
Research AssistantUc San Diego Apr 1999 - Sep 2001La Jolla, California, United States -
Web DeveloperUc San Diego Oct 1997 - Mar 1999La Jolla, California, United States -
Pre-Professional ProgrammerIbm Almaden Research Center Jun 1997 - Sep 1997San Jose, California, United States
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Production Artist & Graphic DesignerNasa Ames Research Center Jun 1996 - Sep 1996Moffett Field, California, United States
Ryan S. Education Details
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Computer Science -
Computer Science
Frequently Asked Questions about Ryan S.
What company does Ryan S. work for?
Ryan S. works for Freestyle Labs
What is Ryan S.'s role at the current company?
Ryan S.'s current role is Owner.
What schools did Ryan S. attend?
Ryan S. attended University Of California, San Diego, Uc San Diego.
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Ryan Lewis
Washington Dc-Baltimore Area
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