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Ryan O'Neil
Empowering small business owners @Curate
Ryan O'Neil is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Curate, a software platform for event professionals.12 He started the company in December 2015 after experiencing challenges in the wedding and events industry firsthand.13
Background and Education
Ryan holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Arkansas State University (2005-2006) and a Master's degree in Educational Theory and Practice from the same institution (2008-2010).1 He also earned an Associate of Arts in General Studies from Arkansas Northeastern College (2003-2005), where he was the youngest academic all-star in the college's history.1
Career
Before founding Curate, Ryan and his wife Rachael owned Twisted Willow Design, a floral company in St. Louis, Missouri.34 Recognizing the need for better event management tools, Ryan created Curate to help event professionals manage all aspects of their businesses more efficiently.3
Curate
Curate is a software platform that helps event professionals, particularly in the floral and catering industries, manage their events and streamline their operations.23 The company, based in Saint Charles, Missouri, was founded in 2018 and has grown to employ 11-50 people.24
Achievements and Expertise
Ryan is known for his entrepreneurial spirit, having bootstrapped Curate into a multi-million dollar startup.5 He is a thought leader in the floral industry and frequently shares his experiences and advice with other professionals.3 Ryan holds the PFCI (Professional Floral Communicator - International) designation, indicating his expertise in the field.3
Highlights
We're migrating over another customer from Caterease today! I had known this customer for 7 seconds when I found out how bad it was. I asked a simple question, "What made you reach out to Curate?" They immediately told me they couldn't take losing hours of time and effort to Caterease in a system that's too complicated, only to get zero customer support when asking questions. Their chef worked for 7 hours on a project and lost all of their work. All of it. They just needed something better. I'm excited to move them into modern software for caterers!
My flight to see my friends at Swadley's BBQ got canceled yesterday. But I wouldn’t miss it for the world! I reworked the ticket and took my first redeye ever to make it to our Curate kick off with them! And it was absolutely worth it! It exciting to see customers move from legacy catering systems like caterease to the next generation of software in Curate. After only 3 hours of training, they took a phone order and made and sent their first proposal in our system (while I was training someone else no less!)
They made sure I tried some of their famous barbecue and it was so good I had it for lunch and supper.
Kudos to the Curate team who was working to make the kickoff exceptional! Nicholas Ray Nick Kajok Mackenzie McCracken Andrew Dellamano
