Andy Rubin is the Founder and CEO of Playground and Venture Partner at Redpoint. Andy Rubin is best known for his leadership role at Google and his work in mobile at both Android and Danger. Andy was the founder and CEO of Danger Research, which he co-founded with fellow Playgrounder Matt Hershenson in 2000. Danger created the first always-on, Internet-connected smartphone, the T-Mobile Sidekick. Subsequently, Andy co-founded Android in 2004; it was acquired by Google a year later. As Senior Vice President of Mobile, Andy oversaw the development and release of what is now the world’s most widely used operating system. Andy says it’s incredibly satisfying “to walk down the sidewalk and see some random person that you’ve never met use a product you’ve labored over.” He started Playground to help other entrepreneurs build the next hit products so that they can have that experience, too. At Playground, Andy is also reunited with Bruce Leak and Peter Barrett, who he worked with at WebTV, the world’s first television-based Internet service. Prior to co-founding Playground, Andy led Google’s robotics and automation division where, among other things, he oversaw the team that earned the highest score in the first DARPA Robotics Challenge trial. Andy says Playground is designed to empower everyone to contribute new ideas.“Somebody who has zero years of experience might look at a problem from a completely new perspective” he says, “not how it’s been done for the past 30 years.”