COHEN
Ryan

• 1. Career

Ryan Cohen is the co-founder and former CEO of e-commerce company Chewy. He is also an activist investor and the current Chairman of GameStop.

Career

In 2011, at the age of 25, Cohen founded Chewy under its original name of MrChewy. Cohen says his inspiration for picking the pet category came from his experience shopping for his poodle Tylee. He cites his father Ted, who ran a glassware importing business, as a mentor. In need of capital, Cohen says he originally approached over 100 venture capital firms and was rejected by all of them. In 2013, Cohen secured the company's first outside investment from Volition Capital for $15 million. By 2016, he had raised capital from investors including BlackRock and T. Rowe Price New Horizons Fund. That year the company had $900 million in sales and had become the number 1 online pet retailer. By 2017, he raised $350 million and was preparing for an IPO.

In April 2017, PetSmart purchased Chewy for $3.35 billion in the largest e-commerce acquisition of all time. That year Fortune named Cohen one of its "40 under 40" and Vox named him to its Recode 100 list. Cohen remained CEO following the acquisition and operated the business largely as an independent unit of PetSmart. He grew the business to 3.5 billion in revenue in 2018 prior to stepping down as CEO to pursue personal goals and spend time with his family. In June 2019, Chewy went public at a valuation of $8.7 billion.

In January 2021, Cohen joined the GameStop board along with two Chewy executives. Cohen was also appointed Chairman to lead a new committee in charge of a company-wide transformation. Cohen's appointment triggered a stock rally resulting in a short squeeze. Within two weeks the stock had increased by 1,500%. Since then, Cohen has been instrumental in a number of changes at GameStop, including the departure of multiple executives and ten members of the board of directors, and the hiring of multiple Amazon and Chewy executives in leadership positions. He became Chairman following the annual shareholder meeting.

Following the sale of Chewy, Cohen made a significant investment in Apple, making him the largest individual shareholder of the tech company with 1.55 million shares (6.2 million split-adjusted shares as of August 31, 2020).

In September 2020, Cohen disclosed a near 10% stake in GameStop, making him the company's biggest individual investor. This was later increased to 12.9% on December 17, 2020 through an amended 13D filing with SEC. According to these filings, Cohen’s firm, RC Ventures, has expressed willingness to get more involved with the company in order “to produce the best results for all shareholders."