This 20-year-old College Dropout Founds and Funds Startups

by Pocket Sun (@pocketysun)

Today’s spotlight is on Ryan Metzger, a fellow William & Mary undergraduate attendee (although he didn’t quite finish). He shot me a cold email a while back and reminded me of my college days when I had to reach out to people whom I had never met, in the hope of getting a job prospect. But Ryan is way cooler than that. According to him, he may be the youngest person ever to be simultaneously running a startup and a venture capital fund.

This past summer, he was in the process of raising a VC fund, which was originally intended to help students in under-represented areas get their start-ups off the ground, as he felt this pain point being a young founder at college in Williamsburg, Virginia. Fast forward a few months, Ryan has dropped out of school, moved to New York City — a major tech hub, and raised money for his The Spring Fund. His investment focus has since broadened to make seed stage investments in young entrepreneurs in any location in the US. Although The Spring Fund is sector agnostic, it places special emphasis on investing in the fields of sustainability & energy, biotech, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technologies.

“These are powerful emerging sectors that will decentralize power, help level the playing field of access, and help us press forward with innovation. We think a lot about the automation of jobs through machine intelligence and how it will paint the future of the economy, education, and healthcare.”