How York IE Is Reshaping the Way Startups Are Built, Scaled, and Monetized
I had the pleasure of interviewing Kyle York. The co-founder, CEO and managing partner at York IE, a strategic growth and investment firm for technology companies. As CRO of Dyn, Kyle led the company to $100 million ARR and a $600 million acquisition by Oracle, where he was a general manager and vice president of product strategy for the cloud infrastructure business inside the $300B Big Red empire.
Today, with an operational team of over 135 talented employees, Kyle works closely with entrepreneurs, operators and investors to help them realize their shared ambition to build good companies, create new jobs, grow generational wealth and impact the world.
Advising and investing in hundreds of startups, primarily in B2B SaaS, Kyle is a board member for several portfolio companies. Current York IE investment highlights include Cyberhaven, Flywheel, Canvs, HourWork, Metadata and Vetro. York IE touts advisory clients IPInfo, Linksquares, Internet Society, Network to Code, Stavvy and dozens more. Kyle is also co-founder of York Real Estate and of his 3rd-generation family business, YORK Athletics MFG.
What motivated you to launch your startup?
Prior to founding York IE, I was the chief revenue officer for Dyn, an internet performance management company. Working with a great team, we grew Dyn to $100 million in annual recurring revenue and 500 global employees. In 2016, we were acquired by Oracle. While at Oracle, I reflected on our growth journey at Dyn. I felt that a lot of the legacy institutions we turned to for growth help — VCs, advisors, vendors, etc. — were operating out of antiquated models that were beneficial to them but not necessarily to us, the operators.
We wanted to disrupt that industry that prioritizes many vanity metrics that aren’t actually helpful to an entrepreneur’s success. That is why we launched York IE.
What is it that excites you about what you’re building?
York IE is reshaping the way technology companies are built, scaled, operated, and monetized. We are doing this by building a unique, hybrid operating company.
We help technology companies grow in two major ways:
- Investment — we invest in early-stage B2B, recurring revenue companies. You can learn more here.
- Advisory as a Service — we help any company, through both self-service and full-service engagements, in four key areas:
- Corporate Strategy and FP&A
- Product Strategy and Development
- Brand Strategy and Marketing Communications
- Go-to-Market Strategy and Revenue Operations
You can learn more here.
What is it that excites you about investing?
Working with entrepreneurs and reminding them that there are multiple ways to build a successful company.
Since starting in 2019, we have had the pleasure of working with great founders. We always want to be an entrepreneur-first company. These are exceptional people who are passionate about solving a problem, take risks and work their ass off. They have families and responsibilities.
At York IE, we’re committed to helping our portfolio of companies achieve sustainable and scalable growth. Some may choose to bootstrap, others may pursue substantial capital injections, and some may sell for $25 million and others for $500 million and some may reach the fabled $1 billion-plus territory. We intend to celebrate every one of these journeys and potential outcomes.
Success is a relative concept, and it’s often the startups toiling in the shadows, away from the artificial limelight, that ultimately prevail. As entrepreneurs and investors ourselves, we fully understand the monumental effort required to build a successful company. But we believe it is worth it. And we love helping founders on that journey.
What has been your biggest challenge when growing your startup?
We founded our company in September of 2019. Shortly after that we endured a global pandemic, a tech cooling-off period, banking woes and so many other changes that have impacted the startup ecosystem.
During this time, we never lost sight of our vision: to reshape the way technology companies are built, scaled, operated, and monetized.
Along the way, however, we continued to evolve and fine tune how we executed on that vision. We have come a long way but know we still have so much more to achieve.
So it is hard to pick one challenge. There have been so many. But each challenge is an opportunity, and the hard times and hard conversations are where you learn the most. As the saying goes, if it is not challenging you, it is not changing you.
Over the years, we’ve worked with a lot of seed-stage and later companies to solve some major problems. One cool thing we learned is that companies earlier in their startup journey have all these same problems but even fewer resources to solve them. We have taken the best practices we have learned in research, strategy, and execution and productized them into a one-stop strategic growth platform.
You can learn more about our self-service platform here. But this would never have been possible if we didn’t constantly think about what was challenging us and what other startups had for challenges.
If you had to share, “words of wisdom,” with a Founder who’s about to start their own startup, what would they be?
Be likable! People want to work with people they like. If you’re someone who people like, they will go out of their way to help you. The best way to be likable is to be authentic and real. Never try to be someone or something you aren’t. That phoniness can be smelled a mile away and will turn people off. Instead, ask questions because you want to learn. Work hard because you want to get better. Exude passion because you’re genuinely excited. Along the way, you’ll become someone who people want to root for and help out.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
Follow York IE at:
York.ie
https://www.linkedin.com/company/york-ie/
Follow me at:
