RICK KELLEY - Tech Exec, Investor & Advisor - From Meta Executive to Angel Investor

We recently sat down with Rick Kelley, former Head of Meta Ireland and current angel investor, to discuss his remarkable journey from corporate leadership to startup investing. Over the course of our conversation, Rick shared insights from his 14-year tenure at Meta, his transition into the investment world, and his thoughts on how AI is reshaping digital advertising and gaming.

Reflecting on your 14-year journey at Meta, culminating as Head of Meta Ireland, whatwere the pivotal moments that shaped your leadership style and approach to globalbusiness development?

Having been part of starting a few teams from scratch, culture has always been at the forefront of my mind when building teams. An environment where people enjoy coming to work every day and feel they're alongside a smart group of peers ensures people feel the team is engaged and doing good work. Hitting numbers is of course important, but I find it's easier to motivate people to do just that when the team feels part of something greater. Hustle and grit are words I want associated withmy teams.

I also had the understanding that people often leave because of a poor relationship with their manager. I found in my own journey that you learn as much from those you don't want to emulate versus the ones you do. You have to recognise and avoid their unbecoming characteristics.

Right before I left my role at Meta, I gave an internal talk about the 25 things I learnt over my 25-year career. One of my 25 was a point about managers within your team and how it's imperative to over-invest your time with your leaders. Make sure they reflect the culture and environment you're trying to instil. Good leaders make you a superstar, so it's a good investment.

A couple others that might be relevant here: Be nice. Say hello, smile at folks, have positive energy. Be approachable and authentic. Don't be afraid to tell it like you see it. The authenticity will help give you the benefit of the doubt when doubt creeps in.

Have fun, be fun, make people laugh. Don't take yourself too seriously. Self-deprecation, in moderation, can help connect you with our audience.

If you're a leader, recognise the influence you have on someone's life. Invest, give people a shot, stretch them with new assignments and roles. Give hungry folks a shot—90% of the ime it pays off.

You've made quite a transition from corporate executive to active investor and adviser. How do you identify startups that align with your vision, particularly in the gaming and appmonetisation sectors?

This is a tricky one and not something that I think I got right from the beginning, or even now. When you're in an operating role, you can make decisions as you see fit based on the information that you have. When you're investing, you can mentor and guide, but those decisions are that of the founders or leaders of the organisation. Unless you have a board seat, you write a cheque in hopes that the best decisions possible are made with it.

Now I've tried to get much more focused on who and what I invest in after about eight to twelve months of trying to find my way. Anyone who is thinking about getting involved with angel investing needs to sit down and write a thesis on the types of companies and founders they want to get involved with. Whether it's sectors or industries, stages of companies, geographic areas, and countless other variables such as market size, scalability, cap table construction, and so on—putting your thoughts down on paper, explicitly dictating what you wish to and wish not to invest in, can be an incredibly helpful tool when telling founders that you're going to pass or sanity-checking your own enthusiasm when a new opportunity is presented to you.

My thesis is about three or four pages long and is a working document because as I gain additional experience, I go back and amend thoughts that I originally thought were true. I also outline how I will no longer commit to a deal in the pitch meeting. It's easy to get caught up in the "great idea" or the enthusiastic, persuasive founder, but take seven days to go complete due diligence, do your homework on the founder, the space the company will compete within, and so on. See if the euphoria subsides before agreeing to write that cheque.

Given your extensive experience in digital advertising and gaming, how do you foresee AI transforming user engagement and monetisation strategies in these industries?

To me, one of the biggest revolutions within the digital advertising space will be how ad creative is generated. Even now, ad copy is created and refined hundreds of times over utilising generative AI. Static imagery, videos, voices—they're all able to be completed with little to no hands touching the copy, particularly for small and medium businesses or smaller companies that have more limited marketing budgets.

Think about how easy this makes A/B testing ad copy. Now it's A versus B versus C versus D and so on that's easily tested and optimised. I think one watch-out in this regard is if everybody in a particular sector is using generative AI, then all the ads could start to look very similar. It's why I don't believe humans will ever be fully removed from the process.

I also see delivery tools used by folks like Meta, Google, AppLovin, and many others are all optimising delivery with the use of AI. The vast amount of information that can be processed on who to deliver ads to, when, and the ad copy that will be most effective to influence the recipient of the ad is leading to a level of sophistication in advertising that we've never seen before. This is good for the advertiser and should be good for the person receiving the ad because it's highly relevant and well-targeted.

As for gaming, content coding in AI is like any other industry, so whether it's the use of a chatbot within a game or the development of new levels or worlds, AI is front and centre of game development today. When promoting those games, I refer back to my previous statement that AI is already developing insightful creative and delivering that creative to the right folks. Finally, in-game offers are individually tailored to a player's behaviour within a game, all being processed through AI.

As a member of Tech Operators, you've supported various startups. What common challenges do you observe in early-stage companies regarding data utilisation andAI integration?

Startups don't typically have a great deal of data yet, and when they do start to accumulate it, it's often "unstructured." First, a startup may pivot their idea and are always iterating on their product or service, so older data may not accurately depict the current situation. Second, the data is on spreadsheets, within various CRM tools, and so on, so collating it all is something that many startups have yet to embark on.

This is one area experienced business leaders can help influence and guide on. Don't leave this data in an unstructured format, as you won't be able to accurately model or upsell, cross-sell, or create bespoke experiences if you don't have the data to inform you. There are various SaaS tools that help do this for you, all offering different features versus costs. Hands down, this is an investment worth making.

As for AI, I'm working with a company now that is trying to raise their seed round and are thinking hard about how they can interject an AI narrative around their service, which is yet to use AI in a meaningful way. They feel they need the AI component to be attractive to investors. Their advisers and I encouraged them to not force it and let AI help guide their business and streamline their operations, but that it's not necessary to be part of their core productjust yet.