Cover Interview
is gone and most of the staff have left.
“Autonomy created people that are now starting their own businesses and are working with other start-ups – and the exciting thing about that is that those ex-employees will be behind igniting the next big tech success stories straight out of the UK.”
As a result of managing a world-class team, as well as dealing with difficult colleagues in his role at HP, Mike is also keen to address the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people. “I know it’s a cliché but it’s about the people around you - suck up those good people and if you are running your own business hire them based on that, not just on experience. Wherever you see these types of people grab them, especially if you know them and see them work.
“The worst thing you can have in an employee is mediocrity so my advice would be to ‘turn up the contrast’ - when you see people doing great things make the whites really white, make them stand out.
“Lastly I think it’s so important just to treat people in your business amazingly well - look after them, nurture them, celebrate their talents and give them equity.”
So what does the future hold for Lynch? It seems Mike’s newest project involves him reinvesting his own money into the launch of a $1billion fund called Invoke Capital, which intends to invest in small European technology companies. As it stands, his team is comprised of business and financial leaders as well as world-class technologists [with Mike confirming that a few members of the team are ex-Autonomy
employees, who of course already have a phenomenal track record through acquiring companies such as Verity, Inc, Neurodynamics, Blinkx, Zantaz and Interwoven to name a few, all bought between $250-$775 million]. Lynch hinted at the prospect of starting a fund in an interview with Wired last year, telling the publication that the UK venture capital scene doesn’t include enough technology veterans and instead felt like a financial services industry. Mike also reiterated this same frustration at the Entrepreneur Country Forum, stating; “The problem with VCs is that they expect the businesses they invest in to always do exactly what they started off saying they would do, but people adapt and so does the business plan you have invested in.”
However, in the same breath Mike admits how wrong he had been in the past on his predictions of the technology industry, and why now, with experience and insight, he felt the time was right to support a whole host of digital start-ups that are now changing the world at a rapid pace. “The beauty of technology is nothing is set in stone - I remember when Yahoo was the No.1 search engine and I never thought Google would take over. This period of hyper change means that there are now so many amazing opportunities and we must celebrate the innovation in technology that is coming out of the UK.”
With such big plans to leave his mark on the tech world and to give back to the next generation of digital entrepreneurs, what did Mike hope to achieve in the next few years?
“As Pinky and the Brain would often discuss - total world domination is the only thing worth going for!”
11 entrepreneurcountry
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