Meet the team: Ryan Fox-Tyler

Ryan Fox-Tyler, product and engineering leader of AI development platform Hypermode, recently joined the Uncharted podcast to share his journey from financial services to tech entrepreneurship, offering valuable insights on career transitions, product development, and adapting to rapid technological change.

Listen to their interview via Spotify, Apple Podcast, or your favorite podcast platform – or read on for lightly edited transcript of their discussion.

Early foundations in technology

Growing up near Space Center Houston, Ryan was immersed in a tech-forward environment from an early age. His natural curiosity led him to experiment with technology, from reassembling home theater systems to building apps for theatre tech in high school. This foundation would later shape his approach to solving real-world problems through technology.

Before Hypermode, Ryan spent ten years at Manulife/John Hancock, where he held various roles including establishing innovation labs in Singapore and launching the company's first internal development platform. This experience provided valuable insight into how large organizations operate.

“After 7 years, your value to an organization is more about what you know about that organization than what you know outside.”

Ryan took these learnings — from launching products with a built-in distribution network and working backwards from customers — to his next roles at organizations much earlier in their maturity.

The transition to startups

Ryan's transition to the startup world, first with Astronomer and then Hypermode, brought new perspectives. While startups lack the leverage and distribution of large companies, they offer greater speed and flexibility. His experience in both worlds has proven invaluable, particularly in understanding enterprise customers' challenges and needs.

Hypermode began with a focused approach on specific AI tasks like search and classification but has evolved into a broader platform. Ryan draws parallels between AI's current trajectory and cloud computing's evolution, envisioning Hypermode as a platform that democratizes AI development for app developers, similar to how cloud platforms became accessible to all developers over the past decade.

For today's fast-moving world of AI, Ryan emphasizes the importance of focusing on fundamentals that will remain relevant in 5-10 years. For Hypermode, this means concentrating on how organizations can effectively combine proprietary data with AI, regardless of which specific models are currently popular.

Reflecting on his path to Hypermode

Ryan underscores the importance of finding consistency in one's path while remaining open to new opportunities. He advocates for being passionate about selected areas rather than trying to do everything, noting that returns compound over time when you maintain focus.

“You think about yourself a lot more than anyone else does. Don't let that get in your way.”

In his own experience, this realization — that self-consciousness could hold someone back — helped Ryan take significant leaps in his career. For instance, he initially said no to opportunities like moving to Singapore and applying to grad school. It wasn't until someone asked him "why not?" and "what's the worst that could happen?" that he realized his own self-focused anxieties were the main thing holding him back.

Ryan's journey demonstrates the importance of maintaining focus while remaining adaptable, and how experience in both large and small organizations creates unique advantages in building new technologies and reimagining the future of AI development.