When Ryan Roslansky was 18, he learned Web graphic design by reading a book by Lynda Weinman. Soon after, he applied that skill to building an online real estate business. The book paid for itself handsomely when he sold his company a few years later.
Last year, as LinkedIn’s vice president of global content, Roslansky essentially repaid Weinman for the lessons he learned from her when he led the $1.5-billion purchase Lynda.com, the company Weinman created with her husband. It was the largest acquisition in LinkedIn’s history.
Two decades after first discovering Weinman, Roslansky says he hasn’t forgotten the biggest takeaway from her book -- that having a way to readily learn a new skill is extremely valuable, whether to advance a career or go in a new direction.
“I'm really passionate about how we get people the skills they need to be more productive and successful,” Roslanksy told FORBES in an interview. “That's how it all started.”
On Monday, Roslansky, 38, was promoted to VP of global consumer products. Reporting to LinkedIn’s CEO Jeff Weiner, Roslansky will oversee LinkedIn’s core consumer-facing products, including its content and editorial teams and its flagship team, for example, messaging, search and groups. He is also responsible for overseeing access to these products globally. LinkedIn said it hopes that placing this large collection of products under him will ensure that they integrate seamlessly and feel consistent.
One of the biggest priorities on Roslansky’s agenda is leveraging Lynda.com to turn LinkedIn into a mammoth education business. LinkedIn wants to become a tool that predicts what promotions or jobs users will want next and to automatically suggest Lynda courses to help workers get there. LinkedIn likely won’t just sway individuals’ education choices. Governments and companies updating their workforces could also tap Lynda's courses. As LinkedIn builds its “economic graph,” a digital map of jobs and people in the global economy, it hopes to get better at predicting which skills and roles will be needed in specific areas and industries in months or years to come.
Roslanksly helped LinkedIn make its first push into education in 2012 with the $119 million acquisition of SlideShare, a library of millions of professionally-related decks and videos. But Weiner and Roslansky both wanted to grow the education business further. Lynda, which charges for Hollywood-style tutorial videos classes, took LinkedIn’s content creation to new level.
“We looked at a lot of people in this space, and there was a strong alignment in mission and emphasis on quality with Lynda.com,” Roslansky said. “We left every meeting saying, ‘Wow, that really couldn't have gone better.’”
Users can expect to see a number of new features further integrating Lynda with LinkedIn this year, Rosklanksy said. When users view a SlideShare presentation, they are already encouraged to take related Lynda courses. LinkedIn has also been offering access to Lynda in small marketing campaigns. The most popular categories of Lynda classes so far tend to be technical skills like programming, Web and mobile design. Classes on leadership skills, for example, how to hold more productive meetings or have tough management conversations, are also popular.
“The necessity to continue acquiring skills is really important for professionals,” Roslansky said, noting that many skills have a shelf-life of about five years. “There are a lot of challenges with education that we're uniquely positioned to solve because we have access to so much data. We know if you’re searching for a job and can say, ‘If you acquire these skills, that will help.’”
LinkedIn, which now has more than 400 million users, also uses its own data to inform what courses it should create, something that gives it a edge over some of Lynda's competitors, such as Pluralsight, which has raised about $160 million in venture funding. In the first full quarter since it was acquired, ending Sept. 30, Lynda.com had revenue of $41 million. That quarter, Lynda also scored the largest deal in its history, a $4-million contract with an existing customer.
Since Weiner persuaded Roslansky to join in 2009, his work acquiring Lynda, SlideShare, Pulse and Newlse have earned him an internal reputation as an M&A guru. Early on, he worked as director of product for monetization and launched LinkedIn’s first advertising products and features like “Company Pages.”
Despite his success, Roslansky is known for making a point of giving his team leaders opportunities to be in the spotlight, rarely taking interviews.
"He is someone everyone knows at the company, and yet he doesn’t seem to have any ego associated with that," said LinkedIn's executive editor Daniel Roth. "He is very happy being in the background and making sure the people working for him and with him are the ones getting celebrated. He is the first person to send a note saying, 'I love what you did.'"
He is also known as a sought-after mentor, especially among young employees and entrepreneurs.
“I’ve learned a lot from Ryan as a manager,” said Akshay Kothari, cofounder of Pulse and LinkedIn’s new country manager for India. “He’s always pushing your thinking while trusting his teams. If you were stuck in an elevator or a bar, you’d love having a conversation with him.”
Roslansky did after all start his own career as an entrepreneur. As a freshman at UC-Davis, the pain of needing to move out of his dorm and find a new place to live inspired him and two friends to start Housing Media, a Web site that helped students find roommates and rentals.
“We were doing it for fun,” Roslansky said. “Then real estate brokerages, and real estate agents and apartments wanted on.”
As a 20-year-old sophomore, Roslansky dropped out of college to work on the site full-time. Roslansky’s parents were supportive. They were also real estate entrepreneurs and had already considered a scenario in which Roslansky might not go to college. Roslansky was a skilled tennis player, and when he was in high school, it was a possibility that he might play professionally. (Instead of attending high school where he grew up near Lake Tahoe, he attended a tennis academy in Florida.)
He set up company offices around Northern California and in Las Vegas before selling the startup to USHousing.com in 1999. Yahoo, which had been eyeing his site, hired him to start Yahoo Classifieds. Roslansky spent about five years at Yahoo, where he also worked on monetizing search and on the acquisition of Overture, an online-ad company, in 2003.
Roslansky left Yahoo to help his parents run their business, and in 2007 joined Glam Media, which took print publications online, as an executive. In 2009, Weiner persuaded Roslansky to join LinkedIn and become one of his first hires. The pair have now worked together for about 13 years, after first meeting at Yahoo in 2001.
“I’ve learned a ton from him [Weiner] throughout my career, so continuing that and aligning with what LinkedIn was trying to accomplish made it a very attractive place to work,” Roslansky said.
One of the first highlights of Roslansky’s career at LinkedIn was launching its content arm in 2012, starting with the Influencer program, which publishes thought pieces from well-known business people. He also created article sharing tools, expanded publishing to users, and built an in-house writing team with Roth, a former Fortune editor.
At the time, it wasn’t obvious whether publishing could work on LinkedIn, which at the time was viewed mainly as a place to keep an online resume. But Roslansky championed the project, believing that users would want news and analysis about their industries and jobs in one spot.
"Internally there was a lot on the line in launching the Influencer program," said LinkedIn's executive editor Roth. "LinkedIn put its name behind something it hadn’t typically done, and that was all on Ryan’s shoulders. Ryan had to convince people who were thinking about scale that this was the right move for LinkedIn."
"He’s great at building consensus," Roth added.
The project launched with 150 posts from business stars like Bill Gates and Richard Branson. Roslansky’s push to acquire the news-curation app Pulse and notification tool Newsle, helped boost LinkedIn’s readership. Today, more than 100 million people consume content, including SlideShare, on LinkedIn each month, the company said.
“I'm very interested in pushing the boundaries and innovating into new areas for LinkedIn where I think that we have competitive strengths,” Roslansky said. “If you go back, we weren't really in advertising. We weren't in content and started a content business, and we're extremely successful in that, too. I see us doing the same thing now around online education with Lynda.”
Roslansky has risen quickly at LinkedIn at a young age, but work isn’t his entire life. He regularly flies down to Santa Barbara, Calif. to work at Lynda’s studio during the day, but makes a habit of being home for family dinner. Roslanksy and his wife, a high school teacher, have 9-, 7- and 4-year old daughters. He spends nearly every weekend coaching their sports teams. He is also training to get a pilot license and occasionally does angel investing.
When LinkedIn pushes into new consumer-facing businesses, Roslansky will likely be behind it.
“I could rattle off 50 to 60 new business lines or products that we could go after,” Roslansky said. “We’re not driving in to work every day to build another photo-sharing or game app. We build products to help people become better professionals and get better opportunities.”
“You can’t really have a better mission,” he added.
