Harvard in Tech Spotlight: Ryan Sandler, co-founder and CEO of Truework
I spoke with Ryan Sandler, co-founder and CEO of Truework, a company automating income and employment verification for lenders, property managers, HR teams, and others.
Ryan graduated Harvard College in 2014, where he studied computer science with a secondary in mathematics. He had always been passionate about tech, especially data science and data privacy. In senior year of college, he founded a startup called DareDvl. Although it did not work out, he realized he loved the experience of building products. So after graduation, he aimed to learn more about building and launching products from the very best. He joined LinkedIn as a product manager in their associate product manager program (a small group with just 6 new hires each year). At LinkedIn, he worked on talent solutions for job seekers, building LinkedIn Salary that empowered users with anonymous salary insights about their roles and industries.
After several years at LinkedIn, he felt he had learned enough about product leadership to start a company. At first, Ryan was not sure where to start. He knew he wanted to be a founder but was not yet sure what problem he wanted to solve. He had a list of ideas that he continued to add to after leaving LinkedIn to focus full time on entrepreneurship. Ryan gave himself 4 months to explore these different ideas and to find a co-founder. If in 4 months he still had no idea or team, he planned to join another startup.
Soon after leaving LinkedIn, Ryan connected with his former Harvard roommate, Ethan Winchell, and Victor Kabdebon, who was then an engineering manager at LinkedIn. Together, they founded what later became Truework.
Ryan shared his advice for founding companies, building products, and growing teams.
Harness the power of cold outreach. You don’t need a network to get started. When Ryan and his co-founders were first validating their list of different ideas, they cold emailed tons of people to validate their ideas through learning about different challenges people and companies faced. Through some of these conversations, they learned about income verification as a massive pain point for banks, HR teams, and others, which led them to found Truework.
Work for strong leaders. LinkedIn was an incredible learning experience for Ryan which laid the foundation for his founder journey. At LinkedIn, Ryan worked for Dan Shapero, who later became the COO of LinkedIn. Through Dan and his other team members, Ryan learned so much about building and launching products, including the core process of prioritizing, iterating, and scaling products from end to end. He has carried these lessons to building Truework in the same way.
Understand the market size. From his time at LinkedIn, Ryan learned the importance of being honest about market sizing and its role in scaling the revenue potential of a product or company. Ryan incorporated this key lesson when narrowing down problem spaces to focus on in his own entrepreneurial journey.
Build something people want. When building a product or a company, truly aim to understand the value you are creating for users. How much are they actually willing to pay for it? How much can you monetize? Focus on the pain and the problem you are solving.
Focus on the problem. When doing user research to validate their initial idea, Ryan and his co-founders centered the discussions around the challenge itself, rather than the solution. Prospects understand the pain point much better than possible solutions. Moreover, through focusing on the pain, you can better elicit nonverbal cues around the strength of the problem and bring the conversation to a positive rather than normative territory, ameliorating challenges around prospects telling you solely what you want to hear.
Build strong referral programs. Recruiting is the hardest part of starting and building a company, but if done well, it is the best way to accelerate the company. For early stage startups in particular, recruiting can be very challenging: you do not yet have the brand to recruit the best talent, but you need and want only the best people.
In his team building process, Ryan has realized the power of tapping into network clusters, specifically pods of people who have worked together before. Once you have hired one person in each of these communities, they will be an advocate for you to other talented people in those same ecosystems, creating a chain effect that attracts incredible talent to your startup.
Develop a strong knowledge base. Looking back on his time at Harvard, Ryan is appreciative of many of the classes he took outside of his concentration. In particular, he has realized the role his ethics and moral philosophy course have played in shaping his leadership style. There are always ethical dilemmas in business, so having the right frameworks to evaluate them is crucial.
Challenge yourself. Instead of optimizing for the best possible grades, take the hardest possible classes. Focus on learning long term skills rather than gaming short term benchmarks. Ultimately, startup and career success is rooted in your ability to tackle hard problems and apply high level skill sets to new opportunities.
Meet as many people as you can. Your network is ultimately one of your greatest assets. At Harvard, get to know as many classmates as you can. Everyone from the Harvard community goes on to do incredible and interesting things. Build these relationships early. Who knows, many of these folks can be your future co-founders, hires, partners, investors, and customers!
