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Key Takeaways Ian Rogers has spent his career at the intersection of tech and culture.
He previously led Apple Music and is now driving security and AI strategy at $1.5 billion security startup Ledger.
Ledger protects digital private property, like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, using secure hardware chips similar to those in credit cards.
He helped build the soundtrack of the internet age, turned a scrappy MP3 player into a Yahoo acquisition, sold Beats to Apple and helped launch Apple Music.
Now, Ian Rogers is betting that the next great consumer platform is not music, but security for your money and identity. He’s building the future from rural Italy as chief human agency officer at the $1.5 billion security startup Ledger.
From Indiana to Apple Music
Rogers grew up in Indiana and discovered computer science in the early 1990s, right as the web took off. “It was a great time to study computer science because when I started, it was sort of like rocket science to people, and then by the end, people were trying AOL,” he tells Entrepreneur. “I was there at the very beginning of the web and made some of the first websites.”
That curiosity quickly collided with music. He dropped out of grad school to go on tour with a band, which took him to California. There, he helped build a popular MP3 player that he sold to AOL in 1999, then another music application that Yahoo acquired. Rogers went on to run Yahoo Music from 2003 to 2008.
He then built Beats Music and sold it to Apple in 2014. He joined Apple as senior director of Apple Music, overseeing the launch of the music streaming service in 2015.
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