The biggest cliché in entrepreneurial success stories is the rags-to-riches tale. I’ve certainly been guilty of it; it’s a crowd pleasing favourite and sometimes you simply can’t resist.
The most popular of these stories are the ones where the entrepreneur in question, usually male, has few, if any, qualifications and comes across as something of a rakish wide boy, a sort of Del Boy done good.
It’s much rarer to hear British business success stories that were founded in academia, probably for obvious reasons: they’re not as PR-friendly. That’s why I wanted to pay a quick tribute to Cambridge-based entrepreneur Mike Lynch this week.
Lynch is a long way from the entrepreneurial A-list. It’s hard to imagine his name being mentioned in the same breath as Stelios, Richard Branson or Philip Green. That he’s nowhere near as celebrated as Alan Sugar is especially unjust – Lynch is the closest thing we’ve got to a British Bill Gates.
His company, Autonomy, is in the unglamorous business of data-sorting: as a small profile in last weekend’s Sunday Times said, “Autonomy has pioneered software that can sift e-mails in place of humans and has profited hugely as a result”.
As Britain’s biggest technology company, Autonomy has a value of £2.6bn and shares have risen 21% in a year, outperforming the wider market by 73%. Profits last year doubled to £91m and there’s plenty of potential for growth. The company recently acquired Interwoven, a California-based online content manager, for $775m.
The deal should allow the company to position itself as offering the de facto software system linking lawyers and clients, a diversification from its core focus on high-end search technology, and it already has 80% of the growing information processing market sewn up.
Lynch is a fireman’s son, and he’s also academically brilliant: the company is based on the doctoral thesis he completed while studying at Cambridge University. Maybe this explains why his story hasn’t been as celebrated as other home-grown successes but if Autonomy’s growth continues, people are bound to sit up and take notice.
While I’m in the mood for giving tributes, well done to our very own columnist, Oli Barrett, who braved yesterday’s arctic conditions to launch his laudable ‘Make Your Mark with a Tenner’ campaign, a national enterprise competition for young people, which is loaning 20,000 people £10 each, challenging them to make as much profit and social impact as they can in a month.
The scheme, which is backed by Peter Jones as well as Michael and Xochi Birch, is a fantastic example of how enthusiasm for entrepreneurship can be infectious, inspiring and even instigate positive social change.
Our Oli is the perfect man to front the campaign – ridiculously well connected and a bundle of enthusiasm, he also seems to have a latent talent for presenting, if this video is anything to go by.