Rod Beckstrom is a serial start-up entrepreneur and co-author of The Starfish and the Spider: the Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations.

Rod has the gift of being able to design innovative organizations to support a product or idea. When he was still a student at Stanford Business School, he published the first universal mathematical model for pricing interest rate and currency swaps. At the same time he co-founded CATS Software, Inc., a risk management software company, out of his apartment with $20,000. Rod was forced to become an astute student of organizations when as Chairman and CEO he quickly grew CATS from a product idea into a worldwide company listed on the NASDAQ.  He then sold the company for more than $100 million in cash and earn-outs.

He has continued to be on the cutting edge of organisational structures through his work with Silicon Valley companies as an angel investor and limited partner in leading venture capital funds. 

Outside the business world, Rod designed and helped launch (with Ori Brafman) a nimble decentralised network of more than 1,300 CEOs worldwide working for peace and economic development. He also co-founded a network of Indian and Pakistani CEOs which is widely credited with finally opening the borders between the two countries in 2003.

Rod then used his knowledge of new network based organizational structures to co-author The Starfish and the Spider: the Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations (with Brafman). The book analyses in an entertaining way how a new form of organisations and a new style of management, based on starfish networks, is taking the business, social and geopolitical worlds by storm.  It is the first book to explain the subtle yet incredible power of decentralised organizations.  The implications for companies, leaders and the world are both profound and urgent.

Rod has advised government officials around the world. He has also given speeches on organisational structure, technology and leadership at the State of the World Forum, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Microsoft, Starbucks, Napster, Harvard University, Stanford University, and YPO Universities. 

At the urging of Nobel Laureate Dr. William F. Sharpe, Rod co-authored the first book on the risk management theory of Value at Risk, An Introduction to VAR, which is now the fundamental framework for international banking capital reserve requirements. He was the founding investor in Mergent Systems, a unique database design company which sold for $200m seven months after founding.  Rod invested in eBay through a venture capital partnership and realised a 90,000% return on investment. 

Rod is passionate about clean technology and environmental markets and serves on the board of Environmental Defense.