About
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Ada Ryland
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Ada Ryland is a strategist and venture design practitioner dedicated to helping committed founders unlock their startupsā€™ potential with precision and purpose.
Originally a mechanical engineer, Ada began her career in corporate engineering and manufacturing, applying Lean Manufacturing principles to improve processes and optimize efficiency. It was on the manufacturing floor that she first realized the difference between efficiency and true effectiveness, sparking a shift toward people-centered training and strategy.
At IBM, she honed her expertise in business consulting and professional training design. In 2013, she discovered Lean Startup thinking through Ash Mauryaā€™s work, finding it to be a crucial piece of her approach to launching innovative ventures. This discovery propelled her into startup advising, where she has spent the past decade guiding founders with strategic insights, eventually creating her own venture design framework at KeyChange.
Helping Founders Succeed at Every Stage
Ada works closely with founders at the very start of their journey and when teams face complex challenges on the road to Product-Market Fit. Her unique Venture Design Foundations program equips early-stage founders with a framework that organizes the intelligence and hypotheses guiding their company. Acting as both a foundation and a scaffold, the framework brings clarity, structure, and a strategic perspective to each step of the journey.
Charles Martin
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Charles Marin is a validated learning expert with over 15 years of experience creating products and businesses across diverse industries, from fintech and politics to major league sports. A Human Biology graduate from the University of Texas, Charles launched his entrepreneurial journey early on, becoming deeply involved in the Austin startup community. Driven by a passion for helping founders bring their ideas to life, he founded Flux Bucket, a software development agency designed to support early-stage entrepreneurs in launching and iterating their products.
During his seven years at Flux Bucket, Charles partnered with dozens of founders to launch companies in sectors ranging from music to finance, where he saw firsthand the critical role of Lean Startup thinking in shaping viable product strategies. His work emphasized the importance of capturing and acting on key insightsā€”a process that often determined the direction and success of a startup.