In this episode, we have Andrew Ryan, the visionary founder and CEO of New Chip Technology.
Andrew discusses his journey from a background of financial struggle to becoming a successful entrepreneur and seasoned engineer with a focus on utilizing AI and technology for global betterment.
He shares insights from his early business ventures, the importance of AI in creating time for family and improving lives, and his commitment to educating consumers to leverage technology effectively.
Andrew emphasizes building genuine value for people over profit and provides advice for entrepreneurs on branding, seeking knowledgeable guidance, and maintaining a comprehensive skill set.
The conversation highlights Andrew's dedication to innovation, accessibility of technology, and the transformative potential of AI in various aspects of life and business.
Website: www.andrewryan.io
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Full Interview:
Transcription:
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Andrew Ryan Teaser 00:00
Just utilizing technology to educate consumers, connect them and build more time for them. Hopefully it gives them more time with their families, all the things that we've missed in these last few years.
I hope AI. Instead of making it just more productive that we work more, that it actually gives us more time for our families or anything else but I really think that it'll make our lives better.
Intro 00:20
Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?
If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I Am CEO podcast.
Gresham Harkless 00:49
Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast. And I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Andrew Ryan. Andrew, excited to have you on the show.
Andrew Ryan 00:56
Oh, I'm really excited to be here. Thanks Gresh.
Gresham Harkless 00:59
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm super excited to jump into all the awesome things that you're doing. But of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Andrew, so you can hear about some of those awesome things.
. Andrew is the visionary founder and CEO of New Chip Technology. Andrew's journey is nothing short of remarkable. A seasoned engineer, army veteran, and the force behind three successful startups.
Graduating at the age of 15, he founded his first startup at 17 and boasts over 10 years of experience building international teams. His expertise spans seven-plus years in public and private sector fundraising, corporate boards, working with regulators, and lobbying.
As the founder and CEO of New Chip, Andrew is reshaping the global investment tech landscape with a fintech marketplace that leverages over a decade of experience in building global teams and fundraising across private and public sectors.
His focus on utilizing machine learning to cut through noise and connecting users with tailored investment opportunities underscores his commitment to innovation and the technology space.
And I truly appreciate your service, Ryan, Andrew and all the awesome things that you're doing. First and foremost, things that you did there, of course, things that you've done.
After you've gotten out of the surface as well too. But one of the things when I was preparing for this, I really loved about hearing about your background was the fact that I think you started something when you were eight years old, you started mining gemstones. I was reading to get your sister's business.
If I was reading, but you went from that to selling energy drinks outside of middle school and all these awesome things that you're doing. So super excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I Am CEO community?
Andrew Ryan 02:26
Yeah, of course. I'd love to.
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Gresham Harkless 02:27
Awesome. Let's rewind the clock a little bit here, a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.
Andrew Ryan 02:32
So, I come from a background immigrant type family poor my dad had run his own business. My mom was a waitress, right? And so, I saw the struggles they were always going through and they couldn't always afford to give us everything we wanted. They gave us what we needed, but not everything we wanted.
And so we were always trying to find ways to one build a business on the side. Two, my father, he would just keep us up at night talking about business ideas and all the things he had in dream you wanted to do when he was young, but he couldn't, and he imparted that upon us of what we could be, what we could do.
It was so frustrating for awhile and then Shark Tank came out and it was something we all watched together as a family. So, it just built up to where, I always wanted to be my own boss run my own business. And I know that sounds cliche, but being in the military and being told what to do 24 hours a day it will really tell you where you want to be and how you want to work too.
And so, started a company back then. We were early. It's very popular now for everyone to have an Amazon store back then. You couldn't just get an Amazon store. We had to. Partner with Amazon. There was a whole program for it. It wasn't, you just go click and do it. And we did very well.
We're one of the earliest stores on Amazon. And we did six figures in our first, I don't know, 45, 60 days. And so it was crazy. And so I saw that opportunity there. And as soon as I got out of the military, I was, I was so focused to build something. And then, so I started one company.
And then it sold out within six months. It wasn't my dream to build it. It's just something I had to do. There was a girl who was tragically murdered at UT and I just, I'd been on the business advisory board. I've been all these positions of power where I'd fought for them for years, where I could actually do something to help the students.
And. The administrators didn't wanna do anything even with the money. Even if we brought the money in, it was just like this weird fight that they didn't wanna add cameras, they didn't wanna add more security. It was this real big clash between the city and it was just, it was nuts. And I really saw the inadequacy of government.
So I said, okay if I can't do this with that, I need to get to a position where I have enough money to where if I come in and I can just buy this from my university. Someday I wanna have enough money if something like this ever happens again. You can't give me excuses. We're going to make this cause I'm going to pay for it.
And so I wanted to become that guy. And so I started another company. And then we ended up selling the new chip core software suite. It was an app. It was one of the top a hundred in the app store. And we kept the name though, because the other company Kings Crowd didn't need the name.
They just bought, they really liked our software and we were growing and absorbing the whole basically ecosystem in the market. And nobody was competing with us. And so we said, okay, let's sell to them. And we kept the name, Washington International Accelerator, built that through COVID, helped thousands of startups.
And then, last year, a lot of craziness happened with the world. And SVB Bank collapsed, that caused a ton of startups to collapse. We ended up, shutting down that side of the business. And now I'm working on an AI company. By the time this airs live, it'll already be live. So I'll go ahead and talk about it.
It's, we're working on it right now.
And now expanding out to help many other companies just expand, grow and utilize AI. And there's actually to be competitive because All it takes is one company doing really well and they can just kill a whole industry segment that can't keep up. And so I think that's a monopolistic behavior.
And we really want to help as many companies stay competitive because, a couple of monopolies happen.
Gresham Harkless 05:35
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. You drove exactly where we needed to be because to hear more about you and makes you tick.
And I appreciate, hearing what kind of fuels, what even happened at UT and how that kind of fueled a lot of the things that you end up doing later on.
Andrew Ryan 05:46
Yeah, if you had to just put it into a 10 second blurb, it really is. I saw my father was brilliant, but he couldn't execute. He didn't have access to resources. I saw, I've seen so many communities of people and individuals throughout my entire life that they couldn't do amazing things if they had access to resources.
And we're finally in a place now with AI, with the training and the right access. And I had a friend the other day that said, I want to build this. And I literally built it for them in an hour. I was like, okay, this is how you do it. Teach you how to fish. This is what AI, you can do this now. And it totally changed their whole perspective.
It's really changed the game and I want to get access to just many people as fast as possible so they can use it. I don't, I can't live without it.
So it's really important that we teach people and give them access. It's like high school doesn't teach you how to do your taxes. We got to start teaching people how to use AI. Otherwise, the disparity between individuals is going to grow to this maximal state where, they won't be able to keep up anymore.
Gresham Harkless 06:36
Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more into the technology you've been building and working on.
Could you take us through more on what that is, how you're impacting and affecting the clients you work with.
Andrew Ryan 06:46
Yeah. So, in the past I made it accessible for everyone to build a business, right? And, to raise venture capital and to the degree that had never been done before, thousands of people.
And so now my goal is to focus on consumers and help consumers connect the technology in their hands, right? And really utilize, because you give the average person chat GPT. It doesn't really explain what they're doing. You give them access to other tools that are built on the GPTs, right?
Or LLMs. That's just the baseline. It's not even talking to machine learning search and like that, but yeah, I think if we can empower the average person to start using it in their daily life in a way that really impacts and adds value to them. I think that the world will change a lot. How much time and how much effectivity and just productivity people will get will be different.
And so what we're doing is using tech technology. We might pivot by the time something, but this is my vision at least is that utilizing technology to help the consumer. I found how valuable it was to teach companies how to use ai. And increasing productivity overnight. And so how do I do that scale that, companies are charging hundreds of thousands of dollars that, how do I do it?
Make it affordable for everybody and not just for businesses to scale their workforce, but the average consumer. And how do we bring that education to them? I was, I got into FinTech mostly because of education. I wanted to educate all the retail investors that they could now invest into equity and startups, and, I helped bring over a hundred million dollars into that ecosystem.
And just from our app. That because I think it's just shy of a billion dollars now since then, and so to have that impact to educate people because nobody was doing it at the time. There's a disparate network of things, and I don't want to say no one's doing it right now, but you're not seeing it everywhere, right?
You're not. I really, I honestly don't even know CEOs are utilizing AI well enough effective enough because it's moving so fast. The chat GPT store just opened up and nobody's even knowing what it is, right? It's just, it's You know, in six months from now and everyone's adopted it, it'll be something new.
And so, just utilizing technology to educate consumers, connect them and build more time for them. Hopefully they, it gives them more time with their families, all the things that we've missed in these last few years. I hope AI. Instead of making it just more productive that we work more, that it actually gives us more time for our families or anything else.
And then we don't become so reliant on it that we're just putting out, junk. But I really think that it'll make our lives better. And at least for 80 percent of us, 20 percent of people, the hyper hustlers they'll just keep selling more and they'll spend less time with their families, you can't solve it for everybody.
Gresham Harkless 09:09
Yeah. That makes so much sense. So what would you consider to be what I like to call your secret sauce? This can be for yourself, the business or a combination of both, but what do you feel sets you apart and makes you unique?
Andrew Ryan 09:18
I don't know. It's probably my greatest weakness. But it's also my secret sauce. I really don't like making money. My last company lost millions of dollars. Consequently, my investors kept because I really, and, that's a symptom of some of the VC side, but I didn't, anytime you were consumers, it really is about bringing value to them and doing as much as you can first.
And so, my secret sauce really is that, I'm not going into anything I build or do. To try to get rich. I really think that if you help people and you add value to people, you will become wealthy at some point. And the same thing as Elon, he's become so wealthy by trying to bring value to the world.
He hasn't changed his vision or his goals. He said, I'm going to make he started at the very beginning. I'm gonna make a cheap electric car that get down the cost of cars at 30, 000 to where anyone can buy one. And everything he's done has been, if you trace it back, it goes to that single point, right?
It's something that I tend to do. I can't remember the name of the method. It's like a waterfall method, but it's not it's a type of graphing and task alignment where you basically start with your goal and then you write up everything that you need to get to that goal.
And you have deadlines and timelines based on that. And then you push everything back. And, I'm very strict down to the task, the manager, the owner and that way you ensure the delivery. And it's probably the most waterfall, anti-Silicon Valley kind of way to use tech. But, if you look at some of the big tech companies, they often say they're doing stuff in a in, different fashions and saying they're agile or scrum, but they often just come down to waterfall.
CEO said, do something, they just do water. So I don't want to dance around it. I like to say. This is where it is. If it's worked for the rest of the world, it works. And I think agile methods, I'm getting off track here, but agile methodology is great in some respects, but it's led to a lot of useless features and a lot of things that don't really focus on product.
And at the end of the day, I'm focused on one goal in mind, which has always been how can I bring the most value to my customers now? And so that's my secret sauce is that I just like to help people.
It's my greatest strength and my weakness because I've, I've done well enough that I don't have to be like, I'm not the guy that likes to, have a big mansion or any of these crazy things. I'm a simple guy. Peanut butter and jelly. The most like I like to do is get a massage or something, right?
Eat some nice sushi outside of that, I'm really basic and so I don't really go beyond that. I'm autistic in that sense, I think is that I just, I'd wake up and I want to help people and do good work and I've done that for as many years as I can remember and that's my sauce is I think people, when they meet me and work with me directly, they see that I'm just genuine in that and from there comes opportunities.
Gresham Harkless 11:43
Yeah, that makes so much sense.
So, I wanted to switch gears a little bit. I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So, this could be like an app,a book or even a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?
Andrew Ryan 11:54
So this is a real hack, which is I only listen to people and accept advice from people who have done what I've done or been where I want to be and know what they're talking about.
Anyone else, they can screw off. I don't care, I'm not going to ask my seven 11 guy for stock advice. So I'm not going to ask someone that's never done something or never been through a scenario I do and that's that sounds like common sense I've been coaching CEOs for almost a decade now.
And 99. 9% when I asked them has this person they went to for advice done this they don't think of that They don't think to ask. Hey, have you ever dealt with this? It's like a Therapy kind of influence where the world has influenced us to talk like therapy, like everyone's a therapist and kind of go, dump our stuff first and then ask for advice instead of going in and you should interview a therapist and say, Hey, have you ever worked with like a coach?
Have you ever coached someone to be a 10 million company or have you taken them from zero to this? And can you tell me who? And if they can't tell you those things, how are they going to make you successful? So you really have to, it's an Asian mindset. You see this in Asia a lot, Latin America, it's not really so much in America.
Because it's like talking about money is weird or something, but everywhere else in the world, you interview everyone constantly. If you're going on a date, you get interviewed, you go to China and you go on a date, they're going to interview you about everything in your life, what you're passionate about, what you're doing, your work.
So I think it's important to interview people you look for advice from. And see, okay, maybe this person was successful 10 years ago, and now they're making money selling books. Okay, maybe that four-day work week isn't real, right? Because, unless you're planning to also be someone who just sells books.
Gresham Harkless 13:21
Yeah, that makes so much sense. And it's like success leaves clues, but you want to make sure that you those clues are actually there. Would you consider that to be what I would like to call a CEO nugget? It's a little bit more word of wisdom or a piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client might be one of the CEOs you're talking with, or if you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.
Andrew Ryan 13:41
It could be, but I think the number one thing I'd say to myself right now is. For a long time, I stopped in the self-promotion side and I stopped really, I was just focusing on my clients and all my business and I did. I just stopped going to the public side and never stopped promotion. Never stopped working on brand because if you do that, if anything happened in your business or being challenged, like you just haven't built that up and it's really hard to go back and build it again.
You gotta start from scratch. And so I think it's really important to always be building the brand and setting that up.
Gresham Harkless 14:09
Yeah, that makes so much sense. So I'm going to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And our goal is to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Andrew, what does being a CEO mean to you?
Andrew Ryan 14:19
Chief everything officer, you got to be able to do everything at any point in time. And not the guy that just outsources everything to me. It's you want to be the best of all world doesn't mean you have to do it all. But it's a big difference. You can't be the janitor all day, but you got to be willing to pick up and you got to know what your janitors do. You got to know where stuff is.
You got to know what the thing is. You got to be able to think in a crisis, fill a gap temporarily at any point in the company. I think a good CEO, if a CTO is sick, he can go in and manage for a couple of days. I think he can do the same thing as product. He manages sales. I think a good CEO can handle any part of it and it doesn't mean he's going to do it longterm, but it's, I think, and this is where I invest in is a good CEO.
Understands enough. He's connected to his business enough. He cares enough about he can do any of those things, but he trusts others to do it. And if anyone ever leaves, he has a good rapport, building connections there. He's never left with a big hole in his business.
Gresham Harkless 15:09
Yeah, that makes so much sense. Andrew. I truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know.
And of course, how best people get ahold of you, find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.
Andrew Ryan 15:24
Awesome. andrewryan.io is our website. Hit me on LinkedIn. You can message me for anything. I'm always down to help anyone give advice or anything. So it's one of my weakness.
And yeah, I'm working on a book, but I don't plan on releasing probably this year, probably the next year. And yeah, hit me up. I love to meet new people. I'm most active on Twitter. You'll find me on Twitter. I wasn't on for years, but now that Elon bought it, I'm super into it. And I would say this is another hack of the day.
I got four billionaires to comment between Elon to comment on one of my tweets recently, like subscribe to who you want to follow and be in your network. And as soon as they post track posts, build and really only have notifications from that on Twitter. Don't worry about. Following 10, 000 people, focus on the network you want to build.
Who are the 20 people that you want to connect and build rapport with? And you can do that.
Gresham Harkless 16:08
Absolutely. And to make it even easier, we'll have the links and information, of course, in the show notes so that you can get a hold of Andrew about all the awesome things that he's doing. But truly appreciate you, my friend, for taking some time out and I hope you have a phenomenal day.
Andrew Ryan 16:18
You too, brother.
Outro 16:19
Thank you for listening to the I Am cEO Podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I Am CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.
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Subscribe and leave us a five-star rating. This has been the I Am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.
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