Ryan Collison is a serial founder with a career that spans healthcare, tech, and now Web3 investing. His firm, Notebook Capital, focuses on startups working on challenges in critical areas such as healthcare, finance, social impact, or anything else blockchain-related, primarily business/enterprise use-cases.
What was your journey like to get where you are?
In my mid-20s, I had an administrative job at a healthcare company. One day, I was reconciling some information from our third-party service provider. I was blown away by how much the provider made because their work was often subpar. I went to my boss and asked if I could lead a department to bring these services in-house, confident this would be a big money-maker for the company. He declined. Well, that ate at me for a week. I’d just had my daughter, and I was looking for a way to provide more stability for my family. I ended up partnering with some friends, went to another company I knew used the same provider, and offered our services for half. The timing was perfect. The Affordable Healthcare Act had recently passed, and my competitors had outdated models. My new company took off. Four years later, we sold that company for $50m+ and things just kind of took off from there. I’ve been investing in startups ever since! My latest venture, Notebook Capital, represents my transition to the Web3 frontier.
In a simpler phrase, what is your company exactly doing?
We’re doing direct, early-stage investing in Web3/crypto projects.
What about Metaverse are you most excited for in the future?
When the internet started to become mainstream, we had no idea it would eventually lead to things like modern social media, summoning a ride from your phone, or all these other ways it crept from our computer screens to the real world. I think the Metaverse is in a similar position. The use-cases now are cool, like hanging out, doing meetings, playing video games, and the like, but I firmly believe that the real-world and the Metaverse will start merging in ways we have yet to foresee. Those possibilities, whatever they may be, really capture my imagination.
Why should we be paying attention to the Metaverse?
I think it has the possibility to become a true digital ‘town square’ in the way shopping malls and other gathering places were in previous decades. I think anybody over the age of 30 underestimates the degree to which youth culture is digitally native and places as much or more importance on their digital representation and experiences. The downstream effects of that in the Metaverse are endless.
