Rob Reid
Rob Reid is a venture capitalist, author, science writer and podcaster — and was also a long-time tech entrepreneur.
He is the Managing Director at Resilience Reserve, a multi-phase venture capital fund. He co-founded Resilience with Chris Anderson, who runs the TED Conference and has a long track record as both an entrepreneur and an investor. Resilience backs companies which are making the world more resilient in some important way. Areas of focus include cleaner & more sustainable foods, next-generation energy technology, pandemic resilience, climate resilience, energy-efficient AI semiconductors, and more.
Rob’s After On podcast features conversations with world-class thinkers, founders, and scientist on subjects including synthetic biology, generative and super AI, Fermi’s paradox, robotics, astrophysics, and lone-wolf terrorism. His science fiction novels include the New York Times bestseller Year Zero, and the AI + synthetic biology thriller After On. His short-form science and tech- related writing has included a cover story for Wired, as well as significant pieces for publications including the Wall Street Journal. A frequent public speaker, Rob has appeared twice on the main stage at the annual TED conference.
As an entrepreneur, Rob founded and ran Listen.com, which created the Rhapsody music service. Rhapsody was the first digital platform to sign full-catalog licensing deals with all the major music labels — then went on to pioneer the unlimited, on-demand streaming model that was later adopted by Spotify, Apple Music, and many others.
Before all that, Rob studied Arabic and geopolitics, and was a Fulbright Scholar in Cairo – where his long-running interest in issues connected to terrorism began.