Anthony Wood

A series of technology companies led to Roku

Wood was already a repeat software entrepreneur before Roku. Roku's securities filing says he led iband before its acquisition by Macromedia and then founded ReplayTV, an early digital-video-recorder company that was acquired in 2001. ^[2]

He founded Roku in 2002 and later spent part of 2007 and 2008 as Netflix's vice president of Internet TV. That period placed him close to the shift from packaged media and scheduled television toward internet streaming while he continued building Roku. ^[2][3]

Roku first became widely known for inexpensive streaming players, but Wood pushed the business toward a broader television operating system and platform. That change expanded the economics beyond hardware sales into advertising and content distribution as connected television adoption grew. ^[3]

Founder control survived the transition to the public market

Roku went public in 2017. Its registration statement showed Wood beneficially owned about 28.4% of the Class B shares immediately around the offering, making retained founder equity a direct bridge between the company's public-market value and his personal wealth. ^[2]

Forbes continues to identify Roku as the source of Wood's billionaire fortune. His earlier company sales helped build experience and capital, but the much larger outcome came from holding a substantial interest while Roku moved from a device maker into a scaled streaming platform. ^[1][3]