The Underdog: From Life Changing Accident to $100M/Year | Starter Story

Ryan Chen was 19 when he overrotated on a jump, landed on his back, and shattered his spine. He spent six months in the hospital and years in depression, cycling through thoughts of being a burden. What pulled him out was a friend who insisted he join a road trip from LA to Austin. That trip broke something open. "I felt like I was closed off before," Chen says. "I only wanted to talk to people who knew me versus like now I'm like, this is who I am. This is like what I represent." Another friend told him: "You're still the same guy, but now you're just in the chair chilling." That reframe — "I just get from point A to point B in a wheelchair. And sometimes I'm faster because wheels are pretty fast" — became the operating mindset he would later bring to building a $100 million company.

The product came from a problem they lived

Chen met his co-founder and best friend, Kent, on the first day of college. They bonded over Super Smash Bros, fitness, and a shared willingness to experiment. While Chen trained for the Paralympic team and Kent trained with the Olympic Judo team in Japan, both were taking homemade pills for energy and focus — pills Kent mixed in his dorm room from racetams, paracetam, and different types of creatine. They kept changing the formula, hoping to find a secret recipe.