Ryan Little, Co-Founder & Vice President, Business Development

Ryan Little, Co-Founder & Vice President, Business Development, StormFisher Biogas

Undergraduate Degree and Major:
BA French Studies, Queen’s University

Graduate School(s) / Degree(s) / Year(s):
MBA, Richard Ivey School of Business, 2006

As a founder and a member of the executive team, my role has changed a lot since we started the company. In the three years since StormFisher was founded, I’ve had to make dozens of major decisions each week. In an entrepreneurial environment you don’t always have time to do the full analysis before making a decision. I think what the MBA really does well is teach you to make a decision and move ahead with it—it’s a boot camp in decision making.

The biogas plants we are building will offset tens of thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent each year. Knowing that success for my company means a cleaner atmosphere makes a pretty stressful job very enjoyable. Also, as an entrepreneur, I got to see the company grow from an idea on a piece of paper to one of the largest firms in the industry and got to be part of developing a culture that’s unique to the firm.

Trying to match all the timing interdependencies in a business that’s highly regulated, highly capital-intensive, and has lots of moving parts can make you crazy.

I chose this career because it’s good for the environment, it’s a new industry in North America (which means we can quickly become the market leader if we play our cards right), and because there’s lots of money to be made. Those are my reasons, and specifically in that order.

Prior to the MBA I’d started two other organizations, an e-commerce company and, later, a charity called CanadaHelps.org, which is my pride and joy. With no formal business training to that point, I thought I would be in better stead to have some finance courses and the like under my belt before moving ahead with my next venture. What I didn’t expect, and was frankly surprised by, was how much fun it was and how many good friends I made.

I started StormFisher about two days after graduation.

As an entrepreneur you have to be a jack of all trades, but surely one of the most important things is to both believe in and relentlessly promote your idea. After all, you have to win over a skeptical public, skeptical customers, skeptical investors, and, certainly not least, skeptical family and friends to be successful. Entrepreneurs need to be ready for anything because it’s always a bumpy road.

The ability to find balance. Lots of work will be thrown at you but you will do well to let some of it fall to the side and spend the time at the pub with your classmates. The grads who get the most out of their degree are good students but are also social and get to know their class and find ways to work with them for years after graduation. There is a disproportionately large number of successful grads from my school who played rugby while doing the MBA, even though it was a very time-intensive commitment that took us away from our textbooks.

Don’t just look at the MBA as a bridge to a career change or a promotion. Look at the duration of the program as a time to open your mind, challenge your assumptions about what you value, what you want to do with your life, and so forth. You are entering an academic environment and there’s no better place to explore new ideas and follow new threads. It drove me crazy to see people treat those two fantastic years as no more than a checkmark for their career advancement.

MBA programs come in different varieties—some are quantitative focused, some very theory-based, and others (like the one I did) were focused on the case method. Sit in on a few of these kinds of classes at a few schools and figure out which learning style works best for you. I think matching learning styles to programs is the best way to choose a program.