The startup economy continues to grow, creating nearly $3 trillion in value in 2020, despite the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the world economy. According to Startup Genome, seven of the world’s top-ten largest companies are in the technology sector, and venture capital investments totaled nearly $300 billion globally in 2019.
Ryan P. Coyne, was born November 12, 1987, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, is the Founder and CEO of Olympic Media, We The People Wine, and The Working Warrior Foundation. Here he shares his opinion on what it takes to successfully develop a company in today’s ever-changing market conditions.
From starting a business at an early age — offering gardening services to his neighbors — through investment banking, to owning two successful businesses, Ryan’s experience shows that adapting to new challenges is necessary to succeed.
Ryan Coyne’s life was filled with many challenges, but he overcame them and turned them into success. As he explains, one of his favorite successes is being inducted into the Malvern Prep Athletic Hall of Fame in 2019 as a three-time national champion rower while he was still in high school.
After graduating from Cornell University and following a stint at JP Morgan’s Investment Bank in New York City (where he worked on mergers and acquisitions in the financial services sector), Ryan moved to Washington, D.C., where he was a part of a team that founded and scaled IMGE, a premier digital marketing agency.
Olympic Media was then established in 2018. It has since grown to be a successful new-age digital advertising agency that focuses on a broad array of business verticals, including politics, sports and entertainment, intelligence and defense, consumer brands, advocacy, and real estate. In 2021 INC Magazine ranked them as the fastest growing Advertising & Marketing business in the Nation.
Despite the COVID pandemic, 2020 was a big year for start-ups, with 800,000 new companies launching in the U.S. alone. Seeking opportunities among the COVID chaos, Ryan diversified his portfolio and expanded his business into publishing, consumer brands, and data brokerage businesses.
“We needed to diversify our revenue streams so we decided to buy a medium-sized publisher that will focus on modern political content,” he said. “With a new studio and in-house content production, we hope to build a premier publishing operation that compliments other elements of the business.”
As Ryan sees it, to stay competitive, it is crucial to constantly seek ways to improve. Diversification and investing in winning teams are some of the best things one can do. Facebook, for example, invests heavily in their employees. Recognizing the value of education, they promote from within and they help their employees develop skills that they can bring back to the company.
One response to the challenge of finding top talent was launching The Working Warrior Foundation to train unemployed and underemployed veterans in digital media. The Foundation prepares veterans for well-paying, high-demand jobs in the digital space, while also helping those who are having a difficult time transitioning back to civilian life.