Career Stops with Ryan Freitas
By: Next at Chase Editorial Team
The Career Stops series chronicles the twists and turns that members of the Chase team take on the journey to their current roles with the firm. This week, we’re following Head of Design for Connected Commerce Ryan Freitas’ journey from co-founder to finance.
Stop 1: Software Developer, San Jose
I started my career as a software developer. At UC San Diego I studied Cognitive Science, which was a mix of neuroscience, human factors, and enough computer science to be dangerous. My first job out of college was for a robotics startup in the semiconductor space in San Jose, Ca. I enjoyed that job a lot, but at the time I was obsessed with what people were building online.
Presence and identity were topics I dove into early, but I also got really into experimental interfaces. I spent a lot of months gathering up examples I was inspired by, getting programs and figuring out how things worked. I loved it, and it led to a pretty significant decision to step away from software and start looking for work that let me build on the web.
I found an opportunity to start my design career as an information architect, leveraging my cognitive psych background alongside my experience building interfaces. As the industry matured, I tried to find roles where I could learn from people I admired to hone my craft and increase my responsibility for the experiences I got to build. I’ve never looked back.
Stop 2: Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, about.me, San Francisco
Being a co-founder of about.me was simultaneously terrifying and the most fun I’ve ever had building something. I really didn’t know how intimidating it would be to learn how to fundraise, recruit, build, test, ship and iterate. I’d worked alongside startup teams for years as a consultant, but there’s a safety in that role that insulates you from the reality and responsibility of being a co-founder.
Getting things absolutely right was important for me because the product was mine. Users needed great tools, and I needed to build them the right way, no short cuts. That sense of ownership fueled some epic creativity on the part of the team, and I took a tremendous amount of joy when we shipped something that I felt had hit the mark.
Building a product is a series of highs and lows, and running the startup as a business developed capabilities in me that I didn’t know I had. The best part of the story is that we got to create something that people were excited about, and we were able to reward the faith of our backers with a very quick and successful exit while we were still in beta.
My co-founder, Tony Conrad, and I sold about.me to AOL, ran it there for two years, and then worked with partners and investors to buy it back and run it independently. After a couple years running it on our own again, I realized that I was creatively spent on the idea of “identity.” But co-founders don’t just walk away from the companies they’ve built and fundraised for — there are commitments to be considered. The experience was an eye-opening moment for me, but also one where I received great support from everyone I was working with when I left.
Stop 3: Director of Product Design, Uber, San Francisco
I was recruited to lead design and research for the Rider and Driver programs, which were rapidly growing at the time. I learned a ton.
Uber was my first opportunity to work as part of a true quad, where Design, Data, Engineering and Product all had complementary leadership that arrived at decisions together. We were all guided by the principle to be “owners not renters,” and we sought every opportunity to take longitudinal views of the experiences we were building with a desire to make them the best they could possibly be.
As a quad, ownership meant we held ourselves accountable for things that broke down, and when we didn’t know something, we got out in the field so we could gain understanding that would shape a better solution. When we got it right, the impacts were incredible.
Stop 4: Director of Product Design, Meta, Menlo Park
When building products for mass audiences, there is no substitute for data and rigorous decision making. This became the foundation of my belief that good product designers know their metrics inside and out, and build guided by data. Otherwise, you’re just shipping UIs based on someone’s opinion.
That belief makes me a big fan of proper instrumentation, strong analysis, and even stronger testing hygiene. What do we test? Experiences that are high enough quality to ship the moment we get positive signal, and things that tell us something we don’t know about the world. In both circumstances, we expect appropriate confidence intervals to be set and the craft and quality bar to be cleared along with accurate market sizing. There are no half-steps towards gaining signal. If it’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well.
Stop 5: Head of Design for Connected Commerce, Chase, New York
I’ve tried to be open to new possibilities that may not immediately look similar to things I’ve done in the past. I’ve looked for opportunities to apply myself in areas where I’m not entirely sure at the outset if everything will just click — I’ve learned to get comfortable being uncomfortable.
I was immediately interested in the design culture at Chase. The first thing that I really felt comfortable with was the people. Their backgrounds and views resonate with my own, and we are all on the same page in terms of what is important in building an environment that enables younger designers to do work they can be proud of.
Besides the exceptionally kind and talented people I get to work with at Chase, the best part of my job these days is the scale of the opportunity that we’re working on. Connected Commerce represents one of the most ambitious projects at Chase, a foray into consumer businesses that can redefine what it means to be a bank. It’s also unabashedly fun — who doesn’t want to be part of bringing Chase Travel, Dining, or Shopping to an audience of millions?
Building world-class experiences in these areas, in addition to running and refining our Payments and Lending Innovation products, appeals to my builder’s heart. Add on the complexity of connecting those businesses to create a unified consumer product suite that looks and feels like it all fits together, and I’m reminded of why I went quickly to “yes” when asked to join Chase. My persistent ambition is to build products that empower and delight their audiences, and Connected Commerce is a fantastic place to work alongside people I like doing work I love.
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