This is the first in a new series of Founder interviews, with Midwest entrepreneurs who are early in their journey, building something from scratch. They aim to capture a business — and the people behind it — in its genesis. If you are - or know - someone who would make a great subject, get in touch with us here.
I was glad to sit down with Ryan Stevens to learn about his journey from Ypsilanti, Michigan to the growth of a startup in D.C. as its COO, to being a PE-backed CEO, and back to Michigan.
One thing especially stuck with me: when does it most benefit founders to be a tiny fish in a huge pond? And at what stage could they most benefit from the opposite? It got me thinking about the trade-offs of planting roots in one place versus becoming an active, contributing member in more than one if it can benefit their business. Most especially when it comes to density, good advice and access to talent. What do you think? Get in touch with me and let me know! - Aria.
What's the basic pitch for your company, and what problem does it aim to solve?
Digital Reference is a platform to help individuals build credibility and visibility through verified accomplishments and video professional references.
I realized that in a lot of the testimonial reviews people give businesses that I had seen previously, if not almost all, individual people's names were always highlighted. For example, at a smaller agency, it would be the founder or CEO, but as agencies started to grow, it was the really great project managers, or really great product managers that were mentioned. But while they work for the agency, they would never be able to take direct credit for the work with the brands of the agency they had worked for. Digital Reference creates a way for those individuals to verify the work they did for these brands.
What's your background — where are you from, what have you done, how'd you end up in Michigan?
I was born and raised in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and ended up going to school at the University of Virginia. I landed in a finance role before I quickly realized that I don’t really have a passion or joy for financial accounting. Well, corporate finance, at least. No hard feelings for accountants, but it wasn't for me.
At that point in 2012, I was looking for a startup. I’m thinking of startups that don't exist anymore… I applied to a lot of those places, and didn't end up getting a job. But I did get a job at a small five-person startup in Washington, D.C., an online marketplace for professional service agencies called Clutch.
I was there for ten years, and we grew from a five-person company to a 200-person company and a company that was doing almost $50 million in annual revenue. During that time, I became the COO. But eventually, I got re-leveled into another member of the leadership team. That was a really hard pill to swallow as a person who had been there a long time and was really invested. Not long after that, I left and became the CEO of another company, but soon realized the end goal was to launch my own startup, which is Digital Reference.
What told you this was the right idea at the right time?
It stuck with me for a long time. It was one of the things that I had actually pushed really, really hard for a while at Clutch. I thought that we were missing an opportunity to highlight the people behind these agencies.
I also felt it while interviewing for roles myself. One of the things I found is that it felt like I was not being called back for jobs that I actually was a really great fit for, and I was being called in for jobs that I was not. This was two and a half, three-ish years ago, just as the tools in AI resume creation were really ginning up.
So the signal for me is the idea that AI is not going away. We're going to continue to see people being displaced. I think we've pushed the hard work of sussing out of candidates into a more expensive stage. You used to review a resume and — based on formatting — kind of get a sense of whether or not the candidate was going to be the right fit for your organization. Now, we’ve made resume screening not as helpful as it once was.
When was the moment you decided to go all in?
I had taken the CEO job and I thought that it was going to be the next two to four years of my life. But being the CEO of somebody else's business means you're just the top-dog employee.
There was one time in particular where it was the end of the business day on the West Coast, but much later for me on the East Coast. I had already had a long day, and the board and I weren’t seeing eye-to-eye on a particular topic. I realized then that the only way out of this moment was to be my own boss.
And practically, I don't have children, and I didn't have a whole lot of financial obligations that would put me under. I figured it was the right moment.
Why build where you have, and what trade-offs have come with it?
I moved from DC back to Michigan in 2024. I said to myself, “I'm gonna make this work, I'm gonna build this business here." One thing I’ve realized is that it can be hard to operate in a world where the founder and tech focus is really distributed.
I’m staying in Brooklyn, NY for a few weeks to gauge the difference in experience. But at the same time, I'm also not quite sure I'm ready to budget the way that I need to budget while I'm trying to get the business going to keep living here in New York.
Here in Brooklyn, every week I've had a professional networking event that I felt like the others there were well ahead of me. They've raised money, they've had well established careers at this point. In Michigan, I was often more experienced than most of my peers in these rooms. I don't know that Brooklyn's the answer, but … being the tinier fish in a larger pond gives more access to those who've been there, done that. [But] I’m not sure where I’ll end up.
How would you describe ‘a day in the life’ today versus a year ago?
A year ago, we didn't have a product, so there was no sense of anxiety around the question of whether people are going to use it, because it just didn't exist. Today, I wake up much more anxious about whether or not somebody is going to use the platform or how many users we're going to get on the platform today.
The biggest thing is now rebuilding the muscle to communicate frequently with outside stakeholders, because the last year has primarily been with internal stakeholders in the product management phase.
What's coming up next?
What's coming up next is a real shift from product management design into marketing, sales, and user acquisition. Labor Day was our marker for when we wanted to get people in and share the product. We're proud of it. We started in March last year with zero, and last month had close to 25,000 people visit the site. We’ve definitely captured a market with our traffic via content and that’s something I learned how to do at Clutch. So even though we just launched the actual live product, that traffic means we already have 250 users and are adding dozens every day. My hope is to have closer to a thousand by the end of the year.
I’m hoping to help users leverage the video tools more. There are no other platforms out there where you can collect video reference testimonials for free. We've done the validation [to see] that solopreneurs or folks in these independent consulting or freelancers do actually want these things. But now that the product is built, the question is: how do we help that land with them?
You can connect with Ryan on LinkedIn and check out Digital Reference here.
Aria Spears leads cross-functional projects in Michigan’s startup ecosystem at Michigan Founders Fund. She’s worked in community-building organizations for ten years, is a Duke grad student studying community innovation, and previously lived in Fayetteville, NC.
