Alumnus Invests in the Next Generation of Entrepreneurs
Timothy D. Ryan (BS '78) co-founded his first company as a Caltech undergraduate. More than 45 years and three companies later, he is helping to empower student entrepreneurs at the Institute.
Imagine watching a film translated in a different language where dubbed voices are customized by tone and accent. Undergraduates Nika Chuzhoy, Brian Hu, and Lynn Feng are on their way to turn that vision into a reality through their start-up Audiomatic, which provides AI-enabled dubbed translations for video.
Last summer the team participated in the Timothy D. Ryan Summer Entrepreneurship Program to kick-start their entrepreneurial efforts. The 10-week summer internship is part of a growing entrepreneurial resource for Caltech undergraduates supported by alumni like Ryan. Designed to help students develop their innovative ideas into novel commercial products, Ryan Summer Entrepreneurship interns are provided mentoring, stipends, supplies, and office and lab space.
"I'd like to see Caltech have a diversified portfolio," says Ryan, who was a co-creator behind the Con Brio Advanced Digital Synthesizer that helped to usher in digitized music in the early 1980s. "When I was on campus, it was one percent entrepreneurial thinking. Ten years from now, I'd like to see that more as 10 or 20 percent of how undergraduates view their work."
Moving from an Analog to a Digital World
As a young boy, Ryan was introduced to music by his mother who would play Chopin, Brahms, and Schubert on the piano while he sat at her feet. "I would relish hearing the music, with the Steinway grand piano above my head," he says. And while he states he wasn't gifted in the way of musical performance, Ryan found another way to express his love of music. "Through my time at Caltech, my interest in science, and my talent as an engineer, I found a way to contribute to music—I could facilitate others in making music by inventing and creating new, innovative electronic instruments."
Ryan, who started out as a physics major at Caltech, found himself intrigued by the microprocessor chip which had recently been commercially released. Donald Cohen, one of the first faculty members recruited for the Institute's applied mathematics program, became his informal mentor. Ryan would be drawn further into the world of sound synthesis possibilities through one of his professors, George Zweig, who had founded the Caltech Hearing Lab in the late 70s. At the time one of Ryan's roommates, Don Lieberman (BS '77) was working with Zweig on a stand-alone synthesis system to generate specifically designed sounds for mapping hearing in the cat brain. Another roommate, Alan Danziger (BS '77), joined Ryan and Lieberman on a visit to the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL), where sounds from acoustic instruments were being analyzed, studied, and resynthesized.
The roommates were inspired. "Let's abandon this old analog approach," Ryan recalls of their discussion. "We've got microprocessors. We've got digital electronics. Maybe we can digitally synthesize all of it. And that's what we did."
In 1978, the trio founded a company they called Con Brio. Working on their own over the summer and into the school year, the roommates proceeded to build a prototype in one of the Institute's machine shops. They also received funding for the prototype by real estate developer and philanthropist Samuel Oschin, a connection made through Caltech staff. While his interest was more aligned in medicine, according to Ryan, Oschin was taken by the Caltech students. "He said, 'You seem like three earnest undergrad kids, and this seems like a fun thing. I'll give you 3,000 bucks. I hope you won't spend it drinking beer.'"
The result of their efforts was the Con Brio Advanced Digital Synthesizer, a device that could accurately resynthesize analyzed acoustic instrument sounds using the SAIL algorithms and allow them to be musically played on one of the instrument's dual keyboards. The roommates priced the unit at $28,000 (the equivalent of $105,000 today). Despite its robust capacity, or perhaps because of it, the Con Brio failed to find its market among cash-strapped artists.
Building on lessons learned from his Con Brio experience, a decade later and after cofounding two other music companies, Ryan launched a new company with a mission to democratize music. Midiman, which would become more widely known as M-Audio, provided interfaces to record and stream audio on a computer. In essence, it removed the need to have a stand-alone synthesizer like the Con Brio. In 2004, Avid Technology acquired M-Audio, and Ryan retired in 2006.
Accelerating an Entrepreneurial Mindset
Ryan cites a handful of business practices he wished he had known as an undergraduate, and he is now eager to share with the next generation of innovators and founders. The first tip? Do less, not more.
"Caltech students, we're idealists and we're theoretical," says Ryan. He recommends emerging entrepreneurs focus more on the initial steps that will lead to a commercially successful final product, including market research and developing a sound business model.
Inevitably, according to Ryan, what you think is the outcome might iterate into something entirely different driven by customer feedback and real market conditions. "In my case, Con Brio first turned into software for the Commodore 64 and Apple," says Ryan. "Then it turned into inexpensive studio hardware products."
Students applying to the Timothy Ryan Summer Entrepreneurship Program will have the opportunity to learn from Ryan's extensive experience in addition to tapping into resources from the Institute's Entrepreneur in Residence program and the expertise of the Office of Technology Transfer and Corporate Partnerships.
Applications for summer 2025 internships are accepted through February 25. Winning team projects will be announced in March. Previous undergraduate projects, in addition to the translation service, have included leveraging blockchain to navigate market commodities in Africa and machine learning for organization and analysis of medical data.
The Sound of Innovation
Following his own business practices, Ryan is now asking how undergraduate entrepreneurs at Caltech can be supported: "I look back at my time at Caltech and I think, what did we have? What did we need?" He looks at possibilities such as expanding maker spaces on campus where budding inventors can develop their prototypes or collaborating with the Caltech Alumni Association to connect alumni entrepreneurs with current students.
"I'm grateful to Caltech," adds Ryan. "I wouldn't be who I am without having had the Caltech experience. I think it's one of the most extraordinary institutions on the planet."
And what of the Con Brio Advanced Digital Synthesizer that was one of the very first all-digital musical instruments? One of the three original units is now part of a vintage music equipment and instruments collection, curated by the Electronic Music Education and Preservation Project, that also includes a Hammond B-3 organ used by The Who, an amp system used by Led Zeppelin, and a mixing board used by Neil Young. It is a fitting location for a Techer whose love of music resulted in innovating how musicians express their talents to the world.
Learn more about the Timothy D. Ryan Summer Entrepreneurship Program. Students may submit applications through CALE.