Ryan Cohen

Ryan Cohen (born 1985 or 1986) is the co-founder and former CEO of e-commerce company Chewy, which was acquired by PetSmart in 2017 for $3.35 billion.[1]

Ryan Cohen
Born
Ryan Cohen
OccupationEntrepreneur
Known forCo-Founder and CEO (2011 – 2018), Chewy

Career

In 2011, at the age of 25, Cohen founded Chewy under its original name of MrChewy.[2] Cohen says his inspiration for picking the pet category came from his experience shopping for his poodle Tylee.[3] He cites his father Ted, who ran a glassware importing business, as a mentor.[4][5] In need of capital, Cohen says he originally approached over 100 venture capital firms and was rejected by all of them.[6][7] In 2013, Cohen secured the company's first outside investment from Volition Capital for $15 million.[8] By 2016, he had raised capital from investors including BlackRock and T. Rowe Price New Horizons Fund.[9] That year the company had $900 million in sales and had become the number 1 online pet retailer.[10] By 2017, Cohen had raised $350 million and was preparing for an IPO.[11]

In April 2017, PetSmart purchased Chewy for $3.35 billion in the largest e-commerce acquisition of all time.[11] That year Fortune named Cohen one of its “40 under 40"[12] and Vox named him to its Recode 100 list.[13] Cohen remained CEO following the acquisition and operated the business largely as an independent unit of PetSmart.[10] In March 2018, he stepped down as CEO to pursue personal goals and spend time with his family.[1] In June 2019, Chewy went public at a valuation of $8.7 billion.[14]

Investments

Following the sale of Chewy, Cohen made significant investments into two companies, Apple and Wells Fargo. His Apple investment has made him the largest individual shareholder of the tech company with 1.55 million shares.[15][16]

gollark: I don't know spiders at all, unfortunately.
gollark: "yes, I will deliberately pay a moderate amount in expectation to constrain the actions of my friends" - definitely nice people.
gollark: I mean, gift cards. It's just money but more constrained. Why would you *buy* those?
gollark: Gifts are *often* random stuff which isn't actually worth it, though.
gollark: Because software is awful.

References
  1. Nancy Dahlberg, "Co-founder Ryan Cohen stepping down as CEO of Chewy, a homegrown success story," Miami Herald, March 15, 20018.
  2. Debora Lima, "Chewy goes toe-to-toe with mainstay brands," South Florida Business Journal, March 3, 2017.
  3. Verdon (14 June 2019). "Don't Bet Against Pets: Retail Lessons From The Chewy IPO". Forbes. Retrieved 10 July 2019.
  4. Joan Verdon, "Ryan Cohen Started A Company That Took On Amazon, And Sold It For $3 Billion. Now He’s Thinking About What’s Next," Forbes, January 26, 2020.
  5. Ryan Cohen, "The Secret Weapon Behind Chewy Founder Ryan Cohen's Success," Entrepreneur, May 4, 2020.
  6. Susan Adams, "The Man Who Found Gold In Dog Food," Forbes, January 24, 2017.
  7. Nancy Dahlberg, "What it’s like to grow and sell a multibillion-dollar company, at age 32," Miami Herald, March 26, 2018.
  8. Ryan Cohen, "The Founder of Chewy.com on Finding the Financing to Achieve Scale," Harvard Business Review, January-February 2020
  9. Olivia Zaleski, "Your Dog Deserves an Oil Portrait With Her Gluten-Free Kibble," Bloomberg News, November 22, 2016.
  10. Maria Armental, "PetSmart’s Latest Bite at E-Commerce: Chewy.com," The Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2017.
  11. Miriam Gottfried, "How PetSmart Swallowed Chewy—and Proved the Doubters Wrong," The Wall Street Journal, October 1, 2019.
  12. "35 - Ryan Cohen," Fortune, retrieved July 23, 2019
  13. Del Rey, Jason (6 December 2017). "Ryan Cohen kept Chewy under the radar until it sold for more than $3 billion". Vox. Retrieved 23 July 2019.
  14. Gonzalez, Guadalupe (14 June 2019). "Chewy's Co-Founder and Former CEO Explains How the Startup Went From Zero to a $8.7 Billion Public Company". Inc. Retrieved 10 July 2019.
  15. Devon Pendleton, "A Tech Founder Cashed Out and Bet It All on Apple and Wells Fargo," Bloomberg News, June 5, 2020.
  16. Chris Matthews, "How the coronavirus stock-market rout dealt Chewy’s founder a $150 million blow to his Apple holdings, for now," MarketWatch, March 23, 2020.
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