Ryan Williams is a technology entrepreneur best known as the CEO and co-founder of Cadre, a New York-based technology company. He was named to Fortune's "40 under 40" list for 2019, Forbes' "30 under 30" list for 2018, “Crain’s 40 under 40” list for 2017,, is one of Commercial Observer’s “30 under 30” and has been profiled in Forbes, Ivy, technology and real estatetrade publications. In February 2019 he was on the cover of Forbes' "FinTech 50" issue. In 2018 Williams announced a deal through which his company, Cadre, will receive at least $250 million in real estate investments from clients of Goldman Sachs, his former employer.
Early life
Williams was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and founded a sports apparel company at 13. Williams matriculated to Harvard University, where he founded the Veritas Financial Group, the school’s largest undergraduate financial literacy group.
Career
Williams began his career in real estate technology during his undergraduate term at Harvard. He was inspired to create a system to track foreclosed homes after seeing the impact of foreclosures during a trip to Atlanta. By using data about properties and neighborhoods, he was able to start a business purchasing deeply undervalued homes and restoring them to occupancy. This business "flipping" homes with classmates and others as investors was his first entrepreneurial venture. After graduation from Harvard, he worked at Goldman Sachs and Blackstone before founding Cadre in 2014. He worked at Blackstone in their real estate private equity division. At 26 years old, he left Blackstone to found Cadre, a financial technology platform that seeks to make the real estate market more like a stock market. Williams currently serves as CEO of Cadre and has led it through a $65 million Series C fundraising round led by Andreessen Horowitz. He has been quoted as saying “Cadre’s mission is to create a more efficient economy, where we can connect the world’s buyers and sellers in opaque assets that have been inaccessible to many.” He believes that increasing the ability of investors to participate in alternative asset classes will expand the opportunity to build multi-generational wealth to many more members of the world by "giving people direct, deal-by-deal access to commercial real estate, like you would buy and sell something on Amazon." To him, that mission includes a secondary market and the ability of investors to select the deals they are most interested in, at lower cost. He is a regular speaker at conferences and in news programs regarding real estate technology. In 2020, he published a plan to help increase economic opportunity for diverse communities through "formal mentorship programs to provide hands-on guidance, and... comprehensive skills-training programs that help people of all ages get a start in careers that will allow them to succeed in a fast-changing economy." He was interviewed by CNBC's SquawkBox, Forbes, and others in response to his call for proactive steps to increase economic equality.
Personal life
Williams is a fan of LSU football. He lives in Greenwich Village. He has discussed his mission as an entrepreneur of color in a field that suffers "an outsized lack of diversity" and says "I've never let anyone outwork me." In a 2019 CNN interview, he stated his goal to be judged on his performance alone: "at the end of the day, it's about results and what you're able to deliver, not about the color of your skin." In 2020, he revealed that his great-great-grandmother, Addie Lynch, was born on a plantation in the late 1800s to a mother who had been a slave. He described it as part of his personal heritage that informed his decision to mark Juneteenth as a holiday within Cadre to help the company and country grow from past inequities, and build a more perfect society and union.
