This week has also seen the launch of The Future Fund, an endowment which aims to provide young people with financial support and expertise to get social ventures off the ground.
"The Future Fund is an endowment to back the potential of young New Zealanders," says Ryan.
"I guess, largely reflecting on my journey, we're kind of unique because I've been a young person living the stuff first-hand and figuring out how to do it and what support is available and what's missing and what would it take to better support more young people to be doing this kind of stuff?"
Ryan, who grew up in the tiny West Coast settlement of Granity, says he has always been someone who could not sit still.
From his early days mowing lawns and delivering papers on the coast, to connecting creative students with businesses that need skills, or an adventure film festival while at university, he was always cooking up new ventures. Inspiring Stories counts as his fifth start-up, he says.
The idea for Inspiring Stories spun out of a film project that Ryan, now 29, completed in his final years at Otago University while doing a Master of Science Communication.
"That was the year I started learning more about climate change, extreme poverty, a lot of the big complex global issues and found it pretty confronting and asked what I could do.
"Rather than telling a doom and gloom story, Nick [Holmes], the other student on the course, and I made a film about young people doing something." Carving the Future, the 25-minute documentary featuring four young New Zealanders, won best short film at the Colorado Film Festival and best newcomer at the Wildscreen Film Festival, both in 2010.
"My favourite part was touring it into schools and communities right around New Zealand and just seeing how powerful a film could be to start a conversation and spark ideas.
"Every week we'd have teachers email us; they'd showed the film to their students and now had these projects in their school." Seeing how people reacted to the stories of four young people, Ryan began to wonder how many other young people around New Zealand were doing amazing things and inspiring others.
It was to be the catalyst for the Inspiring Stories Trust.
Originally focused on telling the untold stories, the trust has evolved to helping people with ideas for new social ventures, including a 10-week start-up boot camp, Live the Dream.
Social ventures meld the lessons from commercial ventures with a core purpose of making a difference, either socially or environmentally.
"That's what drives you and because that's your mandate, that's where you reinvest any surplus or profits, back into delivering on that mission. From time to time it attracts a bit of critique around 'can you actually do this, can you actually run a venture that creates value for society and the environment and makes money?' And yes, you can." Social ventures lie on a spectrum: at one end are charities, doing good but dependent on donations, and at the other, commercial businesses that focus on making profit, regardless of the cost to society and the environment, he says.
Live the Dream, and now The Future Fund, focus on supporting social ventures created by young people which are in the early stages of development.
It provides the missing link through to the likes of the Akina Foundation, established in 2008 by the Todd and Tindall Foundations, which help social ventures that are already on their feet.
Despite being on the cusp of 30, Ryan is firmly focused on youth - usually defined as being between 12 and 30 years old - with the sweet spot for his organisations being those between 18 and 25.
"Certainly the 18-to-25 demographic, that's a significant time in our lives where we have time on our hands, where our ability to take a risk and have a go at something is quite unique and that's a hugely under-leveraged opportunity in New Zealand."
It is a stage where people are optimistic, energetic and resourceful, with the added benefit of being hugely tech savvy, he says.
"We have the ability to learn from the smartest people on the planet right now and we can actually learn what some of these proven models are, unpack how they work and replicate them."
Online: thefuturefund.org.nz
