Robert J. Ryan
Robert J. Ryan is the founder, past chairman and CEO of Ascend Communications, and currently serves as chairman and CEO of Entrepreneur America. Ryan earned national attention when he grew his 1989 start-up company, Ascend Communications, Inc., to more than $2 billion in sales. Lucent Technologies acquired Ascend in 1999 for approximately $24 billion in what was termed at the time, “the largest technology merger ever.”
Under Rob’s leadership, Ascend became the leading manufacturer of hardware called Point of Presence boxes (POPS) for Internet providers. Effectively, Ascend helped create the modern Internet by building all of the infrastructure equipment that powered the Internet worldwide. Ascend grew from zero sales in 1989 to over $500 million sales in 1995. In 1995, the last year Rob served as CEO of Ascend, the stock was acknowledged as the best performer of the year on all of Wall Street returning a whopping 721 percent (Business Week, December 25, 1995; pp. 126-127). From the point of its IPO, Ascend returned 3,223 percent to investors within two years (Investors Business Daily August 30, 1996; p. A3). At the end of 1995, Rob won the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for Northern California (including Silicon Valley). Rob also was selected as the Cornell University Entrepreneur of the Year for 2002.
Rob Ryan’s current focus is his Entrepreneur America facility in Montana. In the Rocky Mountain’s on a beautiful ranch Rob, and his Hyde Norton partners mentor entrepreneurs through Hero Partners. They assist entrepreneurs and their companies with ideation, business strategies, sharpening presentations, raising venture capital and scaling dynamic opportunities. The foundation for this mentorship are the Sunflower PrinciplesTM, which concepts are discussed in his books, Entrepreneur America, published by Harper Business in 2001, its republishing as Smartups through Cornell Press in 2002, and The Hero Company, in production. Recent company successes employing the Sunflower Principles and Rob’s mentorship include, Right Now Technologies, Silicon Spice, NetCracker and LookSmart among many others.
Rob earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1969 from Cornell University and post-graduate studies at University of Madison, Wisconsin in mathematics and physics. He has been married for 44 years to his Cornell classmate and attorney wife, Terry Ryan, who co-founded Ascend and currently serves as President of Entrepreneur America.
Rob and Terry both serve on the Advisory Board of Keck Observatory, the World’s two largest telescopes in Hawaii. Rob founded Keck Nation and sponsors “Evenings with Astronomer” lectures, which have raised over $10 million for the Keck Observatory. He also established CEN, the Cornell Entrepreneur Network.