Rob Reis graduated from Stanford University with degrees in Electrical Engineering - and then immediately did something that would define the next four decades: he started building things that didn't exist yet.
In 1983, Reis co-founded Finial Technology alongside Stanford EE colleague Robert E. Stoddard. The company's product, the LT-1, was a laser-based turntable that played vinyl records without physical contact. They showcased it at CES in 1986, raising $7 million in venture capital along the way. The technology was extraordinary. The market timing was brutal. The compact disc was winning. Finial Technology was liquidated in 1989 - but the work itself was ahead of its era, which would become a recurring theme.
That same year, Reis founded Savi Technology, an early RFID-based asset tracking company. The idea was simple in retrospect but genuinely novel in 1989: tag things, track them, know where they are. Texas Instruments saw the potential and acquired Savi. Then Lockheed Martin acquired it from TI. Today, the principles Reis helped pioneer are embedded in virtually every supply chain on Earth.
Reis spent time at Texas Instruments as Director of the Innovation Center (1996-1998), then shifted into the role of CEO coach and innovation advisor - running Breakthroughs Innovation Center and working with companies like Silicon Gaming. The pattern was consistent: enter early, build something real, exit before the inevitable consolidation, and move on to the next hard problem.
In February 2011, Reis launched Higher Ground LLC from Palo Alto. The premise was deceptively simple: existing satellite communication was either too expensive (Iridium, SPOT), too limited (one-way devices), or too complex for civilian use. He wanted to build a two-way satellite messenger that a hiker, a farmer, a disaster responder, or a soldier could use without a manual - and priced it so that the cost per message was under 40 cents.
Getting there required years of FCC regulatory navigation. Higher Ground's approach - using dynamic frequency sharing in the 5925-6425 MHz band alongside existing satellite earth stations - raised alarm bells in the telecom industry. Incumbents argued it could interfere with emergency services. IEEE Spectrum covered the controversy in 2016. In January 2017, the FCC issued Order DA-17-80, authorizing Higher Ground to deploy up to 50,000 mobile satellite earth stations. Clearance granted.
The company's pivot toward defense applications wasn't opportunistic - it was logical. GeoFix, the GPS-backup system developed with U.S. Air Force SBIR funding, addresses one of the most pressing concerns in modern military operations: the vulnerability of GPS to electronic warfare. Using geostationary satellites as position references rather than GPS birds, GeoFix provides navigation that's architecturally immune to conventional jamming and spoofing methods. The Air Force noticed. The Navy tested it and called the results "superb."
Reis serves on the Consumer Technology Association's Board of Industry Leaders (since December 2019) and the Judges Advisory Council for the Society for Science and the Public - roles that put him at the intersection of emerging tech policy and the next generation of STEM talent. For someone who has been building communications infrastructure since the Reagan administration, these positions feel less like credentials and more like continuity.
