About
KeyChange is a venture design practice that helps early-stage startup founders find traction and uncover mission-critical insights that create momentum toward Product-Market Fit.
Ada Ryland
Ada is a strategist and venture design practitioner. She studied Mechanical Engineering and spent the early part of her career in corporate engineering and manufacturing, where she applied Lean Manufacturing principles. It was on the manufacturing floor that the difference between efficiency and effectiveness became clear and she decided to move into the training space, where people are the focus, not the machinery.
From there, she went on to work at IBM in business consulting, professional training design and delivery. In 2013 she discovered Lean Startup thinking through Ash Maurya, which she immediately recognized as one of the missing pieces in her work launching businesses at IBM Innovation.
She began advising and training startup founders with these strategic tools, eventually creating her own Venture Design framework, which she is building on at KeyChange.
Charles Martin
Charles is a validated learning expert. He studied Human Biology at UT but pursued entrepreneurship instead of science. After getting involved in the Austin startup community, he started Flux Bucket, a software development agency to help early-stage entrepreneurs launch and iterate products.
For over 7 years running Flux Bucket, he helped dozens of founders launch companies in industries ranging from music to politics to finance and everything in between. This work gave him first-hand experience in the importance of lean startup thinking in creating a viable product strategy and the difference that key learnings can have on the fate of a startup.
