Vantage Discovery Co-Founder & CEO Lance Riedel

Lance Riedel is the CEO and Co-Founder of Vantage Discovery. Leveraging over 30 years of experience in the space, he is a seasoned technology strategist and builder, having founded three companies and led technical strategy at multi-billion-dollar enterprises. With a unique ability to bridge technology and business innovation, Lance has consistently built and led teams that drive new business opportunities across both consumer and enterprise sectors. His contributions extend to the startup ecosystem, where he co-founded The Hive, a leading Silicon Valley tech incubator.

As a company founder and CEO, Lance co-founded Kosei with Stanford Professor Jure Leskovec and Vanja Josifovski, leading the company from its inception to its acquisition by Pinterest. He also co-founded Proximal Labs, which was acquired by Jive Software. At Pinterest, Lance assembled the content team, where he invented and built Pinterest's search engine, Manas, which powers search, recommendations, and ad selection on the platform. His technical expertise is further demonstrated by the 14 patents he has filed in the matching and social search space, with 8 granted to date.

Lance has also served as the Industry Day Chair for WSDM 2016 and as a founding member of the Computational Advertising group at Yahoo! Research, where he contributed to the development of key platforms and numerous publications. He is also a passionate aviation enthusiast and holds both commercial helicopter and private fixed-wing pilot licenses. His lifelong dedication to mechanical projects includes rebuilding cars and motorcycles, welding, and working with drones and model airplanes.