Rod Underhill
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Rod Underhill (b. 1953) was one of the original cofounders of MP3.com, serving under CEO Michael Robertson. While at MP3.com, Underhill's official title was "Founding Music Director," but behind the scenes he designed a complicated system of screening millions of songs for potential copyright violations. As one of the primary public faces of MP3.com, Underhill was sometimes involved in controversies, such as his work as the enforcer of honesty regarding MP3.com's artist royalty system. During his stay at MP3.com, Underhill coauthored two titles about the Internet for the Complete Idiot Guide series. Since leaving MP3.com, Underhill has served as a law professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and in 2004 directed filming of background material for his first independent feature film, working in conjunction with comic artist Tom Luth. An animated film, this work has not yet been completed and remains in production.
MP3.com launched, with Underhill's support, a record breaking Initial Public Offering which brought the company an immediate valuation of nearly 7 billion dollars, before the valuation leveled out to more than 2 billion dollars. Underhill and his fellow founders eventually sold MP3.com via merger to Vivendi-Universal, a huge entertainment conglomerate.
Underhill was also instrumental in bringing about tougher child abuse laws in California during the early to mid 1990's. Underhill has also sat as a part time (pro-tem) judge of the San Diego Superior Court since 1987.
In May of 2005, Underhill appeared as the keynote speaker at the Rockies Venture Club's annual venture capital conference in Denver, Colorado. Currently Underhill works with new technology companies, helping them secure venture capital.
Rod Underhill is the president of Lucid Micro, Inc., a software development company based in San Diego, California. Lucid Micro also conducts certain development activities in Thailand. A small, but growing number of Lucid Micro employees are located outside the United States.
