Ryan Wen

Chief of Staff

Why I joined

I’ve worked at Stacked for three years now as the Chief of Staff, and I’m excited to be a part of this next chapter. I’ve seen the team grow from two people to 14 employees and contractors today. We’ve been through multiple iterations of the team, product, and vision, and this is the most exciting one yet.

Prior to Stacked, I’d spent my entire career working in finance from investing banking to private equity. I excelled in financial statement analysis and navigating M&A processes but had never built something from the ground up like this. I knew a startup like this would be entirely unstructured, finding success only through solving open-ended problems. Leaving the world of finance behind wasn’t an easy decision, but joining Stacked has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.

From the first iteration of Stacked to now, products we’ve built have touched over 500,000 users, with tens of thousands of real people using them on any given day. We’ve always sought to change how people connect and share experiences through the video medium and have accomplished that in more ways than one. This was something I’d never experienced before, doing only high level, analytical work that would never touch individual consumers. It’s a refreshing change to say the least.

Tackling social viewing today excites me as I’ve seen firsthand how strong digital communities and bonds can be. Creating a shared viewing experience, amongst individuals with similar interests, can be deeply additive to the overall viewing experience on Stacked. Sharing a live (or synchronous) viewing is not always possible, which is a challenge we lived firsthand with livestreaming. Today, Stacked seeks to solve this with an asynchronous approach, while delivering the same social viewing experience.

Having been through so many versions of Stacked, I’m confident that today’s product, vision, and team, are the best we’ve seen so far, and I couldn’t be more excited for what’s to come.