Every year, Founded Communities releases a mini-magazine highlighting our community's impact. In the 2024-2025 year, we were thrilled to feature four of our members doing impressive work, from revolutionizing communication in the foster care system to hand-painting murals across Raleigh. Read our story about Ryan O’Donnell, co-founder and CEO of Sunlight.

--

Ryan O’Donnell’s dive into entrepreneurship began over a decade ago when he caught the “startup bug,” in NC State University’s Entrepreneurship Garage, then held in the basement of a building on campus. He began with his first endeavor, Pennies for Progress, a round up charity app designed to help stores facilitate donation campaigns for local schools and nonprofits. He ventured downtown to meet local tech entrepreneurs offering “Startup Office Hours” at then HUB Raleigh, (soon to be Raleigh Founded!)

“We were students working on our first startup with this round up app,” Ryan joked, “I guess we stood out because they mentioned the last few founders who came in were trying to turn their family crepe recipe into a business or something.”

Ryan describes the supportive community, “Even back then, folks like Scot Wingo, Brian Dally, Anthony Pompliano, and Derrick Minor were trying to find ways to help us first-timers.”

“I even met my cofounder/CTO, Matt Cotter, at one of those office hours.”

With his second venture, EmployUs, blossoming post-graduation, Ryan immersed himself in Raleigh’s growing startup community. He started the venture with an NC IDEA Grant and participated in the Citrix-RedHat Startup Accelerator. Ryan was also a member of Think House, a live-in learning community for entrepreneurs launched by Founded Communities co-founder Jason Widen.

EmployUs, originally built to help him in his “first real job” as a recruiter, went on to raise venture funding from groups like Cofounders Capital, Sovereign's Capital, the Wolfpack Investors Network, and other local angels like Jeff Stocks, John Replogle and Joe Colopy, while helping over 30,000 people find jobs. With EmployUs acquired in 2021 and two startups under his belt, Ryan and his wife were in the middle of another journey that led to Ryan’s latest startup: becoming foster parents.

Ryan teamed up with his former cofounder/CTO, Matt Cotter, to launch Sunlight, which was the result of his family’s firsthand experience as foster parents trying to support his foster son and his family.

“A lot of kids get stuck in foster care for years unnecessarily because all of the parties involved aren’t on the same page.”

“Our foster son’s case should’ve taken a few months — it lasted seven years.”

Sunlight’s first product, Your Case Plan, removes the communication barriers present in foster care by bringing everyone - from the judges and attorneys to the caseworkers, biological parents, and foster parents, together in one mobile app to communicate and stay on top of their case plans.

Ryan and his collaborators have thought of everything. Among other features, the app breaks case plans into actionable steps, sends text reminders for important events to ensure everyone is engaged, and utilizes in-app voice and video calling to circumvent the problems presented by out-of-date contact information.

The main goal, Ryan says, is to reduce the time a child spends in foster care. While permanency may look different for every child, whatever the result, Your Case Plan keeps everyone connected and promotes transparency and accountability.

“We want to make things easier for everyone. Parents and children should have access to high-quality legal representation and we need to clear the backlog of court cases resulting from disorganization.”

According to Ryan’s customers, such as Sunlight’s first major client, the State of Oklahoma, these goals are being met. Ryan’s advice on creating something like Sunlight that has growth potential?

“You can’t be afraid to put yourself out there, but you have to be obsessed with finding product market fit and building a great product that solves a really important problem for your customers and users. Some products I’ve built were nice to haves, so I’m excited to see the impact Sunlight is making for our customers and to bring our products to more states throughout the country.

You can find Ryan primarily around our Cary Founded location. Learn more about our offices, events, and coworking memberships in Downtown Cary at caryfounded.com.