Ryan Spoon

Current

• Senior Associate at Polaris Venture Partners
• Co-Founder at InGameNow
• Founder and Board Member at beRecruited.com

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Past

• Vice President, Marketing & Business Development at Widgetbox
• Founder at sfEntrepreneurs
• Senior Manager, Kijiji.com Country Manager at eBay Inc

• Manager, Internet Marketing at eBay

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1 more...

Education

• Duke University

Recommended

1 person has recommended Ryan

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Internet

Ryan Spoon’s Summary

I work for Polaris Venture Partners and am based in San Francisco's Dog Patch Lab off Pier 38.

Previously, I founded beRecruited.com (acquired in 2007), spent 2003-2007 at eBay (internet marketing, social media & leading Kijiji.com) and launched InGameNow as part of sfEntrepreneurs. Most recently, I lead marketing at Widgetbox.com

Ryan Spoon’s Experience

• Senior Associate

  Polaris Venture Partners

  (Privately Held; Venture Capital & Private Equity industry)

  August 2009 — Present (4 months)

• Co-Founder

  InGameNow

  (Internet industry)

  January 2008 — Present (1 year 11 months)

  InGameNow (http://www.ingamenow.com) allows sports fan to interact around teams, leagues and games. Follow your favorite teams and connect with other sports fans over real-time scores, banter, news and gossip.
  
  InGameNow's philosophy is that user interaction can and should span across different platforms - particularly as users move between computer, chat client and mobile. So we set out to enable fans to stay connected with real-time results and interact with others fans in several forms:
  
  - Website: http://www.ingamenow.com
  - Chat clients: AIM and Gtalk alerts and discussion
  - Mobile sites: usage optimized for mobile viewing
  - iPhone Applications: real time scoring, scheduling and interaction
  
  InGameNow reaches 300,000 monthly uniques and the InGameNow iPhone Apps have been downloaded over 200,000 times.

• Founder and Board Member

  beRecruited.com

  (Internet industry)

  January 2000 — Present (9 years 11 months)

  beRecruited.com is the nation’s No. 1 online networking destination for high school student-athletes seeking recruitment from college coaches and universities. beRecruited provides a platform for student athletes to connect and interact with college coaches across the nation, giving students the tools to research and build profiles of verified athletic and academic information.
  
  beRecruited now has more than 400,000 registered users - reaching athletes, families and high school & collegiate coaches.
  
  RVS Ventures, Inc., the investment company of entrepreneur Raymond Sozzi, and Madison Parker Capital, LLC, a Boston-based private equity firm, acquired beRecruited, LLC in October, 2007 and formed beRecruited Inc. As part of the growth strategy, the Company hired former ESPN.com executive Jeff Cravens as president.
  
  beRecruited was founded in 2000 by Ryan Spoon, an NCAA swimmer for Duke.

• Vice President, Marketing & Business Development

  Widgetbox

  (Privately Held; Internet industry)

  December 2007 — August 2009 (1 year 9 months)

  Widgetbox is a platform for web publishers to create custom, viral widgets without development resources. Each month, our widgets:
  
  - reach 115 million unique viewers
  - viewed 750 million times
  - appear on 500,000+ unique web domains
  
  Widgetbox widgets can be seen on brands such as TV.com, Boston.com, The Wall Street Journal, Times Online, Bleacher Report, Kijiji.com, Huffington Post, etc.
  
  Widgetbox also enables content platforms to:
  
  1. simply integrate Widgetbox' widget platform (200,000+ widgets) - examples include: Synthasite, Webjam, Freewebs, and Piczo
  
  2. monetize their user-base via Widgetbox's consumer subscription services
  
  Widgetbox investors include Sequoia Capital and Hummer Winblad.
  
  If you or your company are looking to implement a widget strategy - Widgetbox has a variety of effective solutions. Please send me an email!

• Founder

  sfEntrepreneurs

  (Venture Capital & Private Equity industry)

  December 2007 — July 2009 (1 year 8 months)

  sfEntrepreneurs is a young entrepreneurs organization based in the San Francisco / Bay Area. Our members collectively invest in the organization, development and operation of the businesses we choose to pursue.
  
  As an organization, we self-incubate, fund and grow the team's ideas into businesses. And while the organization is a side project for all of our members, collectively we are able to achieve rapid innovation.
  
  http://www.sfentrepreneurs.com

• Senior Manager, Kijiji.com Country Manager

  eBay Inc

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; ebay; Internet industry)

  July 2007 — December 2007 (6 months)

  Kijiji is eBay's local classifieds site and community. Kijiji.com launched in the United States in July 2007 and is now available in 100s of cities.
  
  I have moved from eBay's Internet Marketing and Engagement teams to manage Kijiji.com - focusing particularly on traffic acquisition, user experience, product marketing and strategy.
  
  Try it out at http://www.kijiji.com

• Manager, Internet Marketing

  eBay

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; ebay; Internet industry)

  August 2003 — December 2007 (4 years 5 months)

  Focused on onsite engagement user acquisition through search engines. Key project leads:
  
  eBay My World: http://myworld.ebay.com/berecruited
  Reviews & Guides: http://www.reviews.ebay.com
  eBay Blogs: http://blogs.ebay.com
  eBay Match Ups: http://www.ebaymatchups.com

Ryan Spoon’s Education

• Duke University

  BA ,

  Activities and Societies:

  Duke Varsity Swim Team - two time university record holder