An incubator has emerged from stealth mode with two companies already launched. RYZ Labs, founded by Amazon alum Jordan Metzner and Lyft alum Sam Nadler, is housed in Los Angeles.
But it draws on top-tier technical talent from Latin America. The duo’s shared expertise of the LatAm market, combined with their early-stage expertise, enables them to identify and recruit engineers in the region.
They've already hired 20 engineers in Latin America who are working on creating and scaling the various companies within the incubator and also offering the same scale-up services to external companies.
Foundation
Metzner and Nadler previously founded California Burrito Co. and Washio. The former was was a popular chain of burrito restaurants that started in Argentina and expanded to six countries across Latin America. The endeavor — modeled in a similar style as Chipotle, where customers could customize their own burritos — ran for five years.
The duo sold their majority share in 2010 to a group of restaurant operators that continue to run the chain today.
Later, they built Washio, which they refer to as “Uber for Laundry,” an on-demand laundry service. Washio shut its doors in 2016, after having raised more than $16 million, according to Crunchbase. Its assets were acquired by Rinse.
Most recently, Metzner and Nalder spent five years at Amazon and Lyft, respectively, before deciding to return to their entrepreneurial roots. Metzner’s time at Amazon was spent working on initiatives like the Ring Drone and the NFL on Twitch. Nadler, who has an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, oversaw operations, partnerships and growth for Lyft across six states. He's currently based out of Nashville.
Working Backwards in a Disciplined Way
Their experiences at those two companies inspired them to incorporate Amazon’s “Working Backwards” and MIT’s “Disciplined Entrepreneurship” methods into the RYZ startup development process.
The working backwards process starts with writing a press release and then literally working backwards to build the product that matches the information in the press release. Disciplined entrepreneurship refers to a systematic and rigorous 24-step process to build new innovation-based ventures.
The pair ultimately decided that they wanted to take the principles they had learned while working at the Big Tech companies and apply them to building their own companies.
“The incubator idea came about because our passion to create new businesses is feverish and we didn't feel satisfied building just one,” Metzner told L.A. Inno. “We wanted to build many, specifically focusing on early-stage startups, which is where our passion and expertise truly lies.”
New Companies Hatched
The incubator is creating new companies and scaling existing startups. One of the new companies is New York-based HipTrain, a marketplace for 1:1 personal training.
HipTrain was born out of Metzner and Nadler’s own personal needs. They started it during the pandemic and lockdowns, when there was a pent-up need to work out as gyms were closed.
The startup has received early-stage seed funding from a variety of investors.
Another newly created company is Offsiteio, a one-stop shop for booking corporate offsite events, based in Los Angeles.
Offsiteio was created with the underlying thesis that hybrid and remote work styles will continue in the future. But the desire to have large-scale corporate events remains. With HipTrain, for example, Metzner and Nadler experienced firsthand the “significant” time and effort required when planning an offsite for the team, Metzner said.
“Other companies were bound to have the same problem, so we started building the Offsiteio platform to help make it a one-stop shop to improve the booking experience and reduce the time and energy needed by companies to organize and execute corporate offsites,” he said.
Offsiteio has seen “great market traction” and, to the founders’ surprise, has booked 50% of its trips internationally, he added.
The company has not yet sought outside investment. Metzner projects it will exceed $1 million in revenue this year, based on its current run-rate, he said.
Perks of Latin America
With the rise of remote work and inflation, Latin America has become a premier place for U.S. startups to recruit engineering talent, according to the RYZ Labs founders.
Its geographic and time zone proximity, highly-educated population and competitive salaries give Latin America a strong advantage over other emerging market regions, they said.
In Argentina, specifically, the cost of a tech engineer salary is approximately one-third to one-half less than in the U.S., Metzner said.
