From the Episode

About Harper

Harper Reed is a technologist that predicts the future for a living. 

How does one predict the future? Well, a good track record certainly doesn’t hurt the odds. And neither does looking like an oracle. And frankly, the variety of his experiences does give him one hell of a boost.

Harper was born in Greeley, CO, a Denver suburb known for its arts scene, its churches, and abundance of craft beer. His childhood home didn’t have a TV, but it did have an Apple IIC (two-c), and that little 1 MHz CPU with 128 KB of RAM would be the beginning of his love affair with technology. 

After tech stints in the publishing and creative industries, Harper became the CTO at clothing company Threadless, where he pioneered crowdsourcing and grew the company from a 12 person startup to a multi-million dollar enterprise. 

In 2011, Harper joined President Obama’s reelection campaign as CTO and assembled a team of engineers from the likes of Google and Twitter to build Project Narwhal, which powered everything from the network of campaign supporters to Obama’s poll watching software. 

Having successfully leveraged APIs to defeat the GOP, Harper founded mobile startup Modest, which was acquired by PayPal, where he spent a few years as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, guiding teams into the thrilling future of e-commerce. 

And now, Harper is the CEO of General Galactic Corporation, a web3 company building software for the new internet.

He also sits on the advisory boards for IIT Computer Science and the Royal United Service Institute, and is a Director’s Fellow at the MIT Media Lab.

Somehow, Harper has also found a way to hack the space-time continuum. At least, that’s the only explanation for his ability to find the time to create four patents and become proficient enough at juggling to open for Sir-Mix-a-Lot. 

When he is not juggling, creating patents, working on the future of web3, or traveling the world, you can find Harper hacking on personal projects and enjoying life in Chicago with his partner, Hiromi and their beautiful and bizarre poodle, Lulu.