Head of Swan Advisor

Ryan Flynn

I love the idea that the future is here, just not evenly distributed. Being present is a superpower. We are all trying to predict the future but its an impossible task. Most people are backward looking, either stuck on regrets from the past or resting on their laurels. If you’re simply present, aware of what’s happening now, you’re effectively living in the future relative to most.

My Backstory

I grew up in Indianapolis, part of an Irish Catholic family, and obsessed with sports. I went to college at Washington and Lee University where I played basketball and majored in Psychology, as I’ve always been intrigued by how people think and what drives decision making at the individual level. I love the team dynamic, being part of a group of disparate individuals working towards a shared vision, solving problems together.

I started my career at Periculum Capital, a boutique investment bank, helping Midwestern businesses with various corporate finance engagements including sell-side M&A advisory, institutional debt and equity raises, and merchant banking. In 2012, I co-founded a web-based broker-dealer with the aim of helping small businesses use technology to more easily connect with individuals to raise investment capital on a peer-to-peer basis. I obtained the Series 7, 24, 28, 63 and 79 securities licenses and dealt directly with the SEC and FINRA.

It was from this experience that I realized just how archaic the legacy financial system is, mired in excessive regulatory overhead and rent-seeking intermediary bloat. It became clear that truly efficient peer-to-peer value exchange could never be achieved within the existing system.

At Swan, I help our private clients and financial advisors understand, buy, and secure Bitcoin. I have a particular focus on bringing our Advisor Services solution to market and helping financial advisors navigate the compliance and operational challenges of incorporating Bitcoin into their practice. I live in the Midwest with my wife and two daughters.

My Bitcoin Journey

Like most people, I dismissed Bitcoin out of hand at first — I thought it was just an illegal workaround to laws preventing sports gambling in the US.

It was in 2016, when I was working on the broker-dealer, trying to figure out how to more efficiently raise capital for small businesses when Bitcoin clicked for me. Coming out of the GFC, banks stopped lending entirely. Main street businesses were looking for new, creative sources of capital. Regulatory restrictions and the high costs of issuing private placements made it nearly impossible for them to raise capital from individuals in their communities. Through the lens of trying to foster more efficient small business capital formation, I saw Bitcoin as a true technological shift that could enable frictionless peer-to-peer value exchange, outside of the current system.

That set off a multi-year journey consuming all Bitcoin content I could find (including The Nakamoto Institute and Gwern’s "Bitcoin is Worse is Better" — some lesser known hits of the Bitcoin Canon).

Early Q2 2020, after the launch of the PPP loan program as the the latest distortion of the small business capital market, I decided to spend the rest of my career working on Bitcoin. I joined Swan in September 2021 and feel lucky to go to work everyday with a team contributing to the movement of building a better monetary system.