About Arthur Morgan

Arthur Morgan is a former Silicon Valley technology executive and first-time author. Yes, he shares his name with the protagonist of Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar Games’ critically acclaimed open-world Western, set during America’s first Gilded Age. The coincidence is not lost on him. In fact, it’s one of the threads that runs through Travels With Paco.

In the video game, Arthur Morgan is an outlaw who begins as an enforcer for a predatory loan shark and gradually finds redemption by forgiving debts, protecting the vulnerable, and rejecting the cruelty of a system designed to extract wealth from those who can least afford it. In real life, Arthur Morgan spent thirty years in Silicon Valley doing something uncomfortably similar — building technology products that extracted attention, data, and autonomy from millions of users, while telling himself he was connecting people and making the world better.

Career

Morgan’s career in technology spans three decades: 

• General Magic (1990s) — An Apple spinoff once called “the most important company in Silicon Valley that nobody’s ever heard of.” Morgan worked on early AI and talking computer technology — the ancestor of Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant. General Magic team members went on to create the iPhone, Android, and other foundational technologies.
• Speech and AI technology — Morgan spent years developing text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and AI-driven applications for education and accessibility, working to make technology serve students and people with disabilities.
• Verbit.ai — Most recently, Morgan served as a product leader at this AI-powered transcription startup, before being let go on a brief Zoom call in 2024.

He holds an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, a certificate in non-profit management from Stanford, and a BA, summa cum laude, from the University of Colorado at Boulder. You can learn more about his background on LinkedIn.

Arthur lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and Paco, both of whom remain unimpressed by his credentials.