Dan Ryan is the Community Manager at Stone & Chalk in Adelaide, Australia — one of the country's leading innovation hubs. With a background spanning the United Nations, the University of Oxford, Startup Weekend, and advisory roles across six continents, Dan has spent over a decade building the communities that make startup ecosystems actually function.

What We Cover

• What social innovation is and how Dan defines it
• Why Australia has a strong social innovation culture — and the "tall poppy syndrome" paradox
• What Stone & Chalk does: the five buckets of value for startups
• How to build community with introverted founders who don't want to talk to each other
• The corporate-startup relationship challenge: why innovation departments get bypassed
• Why decision-makers deeper in the org matter more than innovation managers

Timestamps

00:00 – Introduction
01:30 – How Dan defines social innovation
03:00 – The Australian Centre for Social Innovation: "Families by Families"
05:00 – Dan's role as UN Youth Ambassador for Australia
06:00 – Stone & Chalk: what it does and who it's for
09:30 – Building community with introverted founders
13:30 – Corporate-startup relationships: the real challenge
18:00 – Community vs. culture: what's the difference?
22:00 – Why the best communities are a little bit like cults
26:00 – Australia's startup ecosystem: Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne

Key Takeaways

1. Community is not geography — it's knowing what each other does and why it matters. Dan's litmus test: ask one startup what another startup does. If they can't answer, you don't have a community yet.
2. The innovation manager is often not the right person to sell to. The people who champion startup adoption through to procurement and legal are usually deeper in the organization — building those relationships is how you avoid the deal dying at the last step.
3. In innovation hubs, the connective tissue between people has to be actively managed. Founders won't naturally talk to each other. Someone has to make the introduction — and create enough shared rituals that people keep coming back.

Resources & Links Mentioned

• Stone & Chalk: stoneandchalk.com.au
• Australian Centre for Social Innovation: tacsi.org.au
• Techstars / Startup Weekend: Give First philosophy

Where to Find Dan Ryan

Search Dan Ryan on LinkedIn
Twitter: @danmanryan

Where to Find Yaniv Corem
Link in bio: sleek.bio/yanivcorem
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/yanivcorem

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