The hard part isn't building the company. It's knowing why you're building it.
I’m Ryan Everton. I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was 16. My last company I founded with Madonna’s manager and Ashton Kutcher. Today I invest in AI, advise founders, and write about the inner and outer work of building something real.
I work where strategy gets personal.
The plan is rarely the whole problem. I help founders find the story, decisions, systems, and sometimes the uncomfortable truth that lets the business move again.
Advise
Positioning, go-to-market, pricing architecture, fundraising narrative, and the founder decisions underneath all of it. I hold the commercial lens so technical founders don't have to.
Work with me →Expand
Practical help entering the U.S. — market story, partnerships, distribution, warehousing, and the operating realities that make expansion stick. I've done it for my own company and for other people's.
Explore U.S. expansion →Invest
Selective angel investment in AI, fintech, hardware, robotics, and real-world products. Hands-on with eight-plus AI-native teams building on the OpenAI and Anthropic APIs.
See the portfolio →What I'm backing right now.
Hands-on commercial partner, not a passive cheque. I sit in product decisions, structure pilots, and open doors into enterprise accounts.
Building something in AI, fintech, hardware, robotics or real-world commerce? Pitch me →
From a reusable cup to global infrastructure.
TURN made reuse work at the scale of the live-events industry: connected cups, collection hardware, wash logistics and the software tying it together, running across six countries.
Live Nation made TURN only the second venture investment in its history, then rolled the system across its festival and venue portfolio. Sound Ventures — Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary — and T. Rowe Price came in alongside them. We raised over $25M.
I personally closed more than $100M in multi-year agreements with Fortune 100 buyers: Starbucks, PepsiCo, Delta, Disney, Chick-fil-A, Nestlé. Starbucks’ largest reuse launch ever ran on it. So did a production integration into Ticketmaster, wiring TURN directly into customers’ ticketing, payments and operations.
I built the commercial function from zero and led a team of 100 across the US, Europe, China, Mexico and Australasia. The business was acquired in 2024.
Scale is never just a product problem. It is a story, systems, timing, psychology, and thousands of unglamorous details working at once.
The company is never separate from the founder.
I have been starting things since I was sixteen. Some began because I saw an opportunity. Some began because I was afraid of the alternative.
Fear can build something impressive. So can ego. I know because I've used both. The more useful question is whether the company you are building belongs to the life you actually want.
My work is about the outer mechanics of momentum and the inner clarity to use it well.
What the room looked like from the inside.
Field notes on investors, ambition, AI, reinvention, and the things founders usually understand only after paying for the lesson.
How I got Live Nation to invest in my company
Live Nation invested in my startup. This is how it happened. Read →What I Learned While Looking to Buy a SailGP Team
Two decision-making lessons from elite owners on backing second attempts and structuring bets where the downside disappears. Read →The $15M Cheque Live Nation Refused to Cash
Years inside the world's biggest entertainment company, and how the smartest companies really compound. Read →No theory from the sidelines.
I speak about entrepreneurship, AI, climate tech, reinvention, and the psychology behind ambitious work. The stories come from building, raising, failing, selling, and starting again.
The Intuitive Founder
How to separate intuition from fear, ego, and borrowed ambition — and build a company that is actually yours.
Building With AI — for Real Humans
Practical ways teams use AI today: actual workflows, products, and pricing. Not Silicon Valley theory.
Reinvention After the Win
What happens when the identity that built the company no longer fits the person who sold it.
Who I’ve stood in front of, and what I said.
What are you really here to build?
I built my first company partly to avoid becoming a lawyer. I built another partly to feel special. The Intuitive Founder is where I work out what it looks like to build the next one from something truer.
Or start a conversation if you'd rather talk about working together.