Ryan Caldbeck

Ryan Caldbeck is the co-founder and Chairman of CircleUp, an investment platform powered by technology. Ryan served as CEO from 2011 through 2020. He co-founded CircleUp (www.circleup.com) after seven years as an investor with consumer product and retail-focused private equity firms TSG Consumer Partners and Encore Consumer Capital. He was exposed to the inefficiency of private investing for emerging consumer companies and saw an opportunity to use technology to solve that problem. With machine learning technology, CircleUp is systematizing private investing with the vision of bringing transparency and efficiency to the market and the mission to help more entrepreneurs thrive. 

Ryan received his MBA from Stanford and a dual BA from Duke. CircleUp has been honored as one of Fast Company’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Data Science, LendIt’s Small Business Lending Platform of the Year, and FinTech Breakthrough’s Best Institutional Investment Platform, and was named to the CNBC Disruptor 50, CB Insights FinTech 250, Forbes FinTech 50 (Most Innovative Financial Technology Companies), KPMG 50 Best Fintech Innovators, and Entrepreneur’s Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America. In addition, Ryan has been named a “Power Broker in Beauty”, by Women’s Wear Daily and a “Titan of Retail” by Bloomberg. He is also a winner of the 2013 40 Under 40 M&A Advisor Recognition Award and a 2014 40 Under 40 San Francisco Business Times Honoree.