College of Business

Ryan Hildebrand never set out to define himself an entrepreneur.

“Some people say they want to be entrepreneur, like it’s some kind of title, and it often ends up having a connotation based around ego, and that’s not what I believe in,” said Hildebrand, co-founder of Seed, an online and mobile banking service for startups. “Some people are not meant to start their own companies but they can be effectively innovative within their organization or doing whatever they’re doing. For me, entrepreneurship is starting something new, whatever it is -- thinking through how the status quo is and trying to change it for the better. That’s how I’ve approached my career.”

The approach earned him a 2015 Weatherford Award.

“It’s pretty awesome,” he said. “I’m very humbled.”

Ironically, though he shies away from the label itself, Hildebrand arrived at the College of Business in fall 2000 wanting to study entrepreneurship, but his arrival came four years ahead of the launch of the Austin Entrepreneurship Program.

Hildebrand majored in accounting instead, and through an internship secured a job offer from PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he spent his first four years after graduation. Following that were stints with three other companies and then 19 months as a “self-employed foreign exchange trader” that saw him wander through 20 countries, “collecting currency at the bottom of a backpack.”

“If what they say about entrepreneurs is true, that they are free thinkers, not people easily put into a box, Ryan emulates that,” said Ilene Kleinsorge, dean of the college when Hildebrand was a student.

Hildebrand’s journey included a stop in Australia, where he visited with a Bond University faculty member, Justin Craig, who had been a visiting professor at OSU. They discussed Hildebrand’s notion of pursuing a Ph.D. in entrepreneurship, but Hildebrand’s restlessness led Craig to advise against it.

“You just need to go do stuff, instead of doing research about people doing stuff,” he recalls Craig telling him, and with that Hildebrand came home to Oregon to become vice president of finance for mobile and online banking service startup Simple Finance.

At Simple, his job description was broad, his achievements sterling. Chief among them: Leading the process through which Simple was acquired by Spanish bank BBVA for $117 million, and hiring fellow College of Business alumnus and 2015 Weatherford Award winner Tim Hildebrandt to serve as Simple’s controller.

“I sort of fell into accounting, and it was super helpful in my career early on, but I’m really not a very good accountant,” Hildebrand said. “That’s why I hired Tim; he’s a great accountant.”

Hildebrandt now has Hildebrand’s old job at Simple – you might say it fits the former to the T – while the latter is pursuing his own startup dream. Seed launched in February 2015, and the company has six employees split between its dual home bases of Portland and San Francisco.

“This is the culmination of all my prior experiences, a huge opportunity to help entrepreneurs,” Hildebrand said. “We can provide a great technical experience that focuses on products and services offered to businesses to help them run in better, more efficient ways.

“My advice to people is, unless you’re having fun and learning, you should look at something else,” he said. “I’m doing both of those with Seed for sure.”