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Anthony Wood (businessman)
Anthony J. Wood (born December 4, 1965) is an English-born American billionaire businessman who is the founder, Chairman and CEO of Roku, Inc.[1][2][3] In April 2021, he owned 15% stake in Roku, and had a net worth of US$7.2 billion.[4] Personal lifeWood was born and grew up in Manchester, England, followed by the State of Georgia in the U.S.[1] At the age of 13, he moved to the Netherlands with family, and then lived in Texas in the U.S.[5] In 1984, when Wood was a teenager, he published "Lunar Lander" in the Ahoy! magazine.[6] He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University.[7] It was there that Wood met his wife, Susan, who was studying environmental design.[5] The couple has three children,[8] and reside in Palo Alto, California.[9] CareerWhile in college, Wood founded his first company, "AW Software", to sell computer programs. He also founded "SunRize Industries" while studying engineering, developing software and hardware for the Amiga.[5][10][11] After graduating, he founded "SunRize version 2". Later, in 1995, Wood launched another company, "iBand", which was bought by Macromedia for $36 million. Wood became the vice president of Internet Authoring at Macromedia.[12] Wood left Macromedia in September 1997 to launch ReplayTV, a digital video recorder (DVR) maker.[13] Wood began working on the DVR development reportedly after being "frustrated" at missing episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.[12] Features introduced by ReplayTV included ad-skipping, rewinding and pausing live television.[14][15] Wood sold ReplayTV in 2001 to SONICblue Incorporated for US$42 million.[15] In 2002, Wood founded Roku, Inc., his sixth startup, to market home digital devices. "Roku" means “six” in Japanese.[13] In 2007 Netflix, Inc. employed Wood as the vice president of Netflix's "Internet TV", directly under Reed Hastings.[15] Wood continued to be the CEO of Roku in this period.[2] At Netflix, he built a team which developed a Netflix-streaming player as well as applications allowing PC users to stream Netflix onto their computers. Netflix later spun Wood’s engineering team back out to Roku.[13] PhilanthropyIn 2021, Wood and his wife, Susan, donated $48.2 million to create the "WoodNext Foundation", a Texas based philanthropy.[16] Its priorities include mental health, homelessness, scientific and biomedical research, disaster recovery, and economic opportunity with a focus on addressing root causes.[17] Wood made $71 million in charitable commitments in 2022, and appeared on the Chronicle of Philanthropy's list of America’s 50 biggest donors.[18] In 2023, the WoodNext Foundation granted $14.3 million to the University of Pittsburgh for the study of heart disease and dementia,[19][20] and $1.25 million to establish the BrightEdge Entrepreneurship Fellows Program through the American Cancer Society.[17] References
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