He Sold His First Business For $190 Million And Just Sold His Second One For $780 Million Christopher Ahlberg has raised millions of dollars for his data intelligence, AI and cybersecurity startups, and just sold his most recent venture for $780 million. This founder has gone from working on the earliest PCs to forging the future of cybersecurity. With two great exits under his belt, he certainly knows a thing or two about startups and entrepreneurship. Yet, he remains humble and open-minded about learning new things. Christopher Ahlberg was a recent guest on the DealMakers show, just days before announcing his most recent exit. In our exclusive interview, he shared the truth about the tough days of entrepreneurship, exit tips, the differences in crossing continents with your startup, and what he built to help 30,000 people stay on top of high-level cybersecurity threats every day. From Early Programming to Startup Entrepreneur Christopher grew up in Gothenburg, Sweden. After getting his hands on a Sinclair Spectrum he and a friend wrote a CAD software program for one of those very early PCs. They sold that through newspaper ads. He’s never really had a boss in his life. He did his Master's in computer science and then went on to get his Ph.D. as well. His real work came from taking a very early AI class in Sweden. He continued his research at the University of Maryland, where he wrote a paper on visualization for large databases. Work that is still referred to today, 30 something years later. While working on his Ph.D. Christopher and one of his professors began turning that research into a company. Not a combination of efforts he recommends today, recalling zero to maybe “negative sleep,” during those months. Still, this gave birth to their very successful startup, Spotfire. A tool that Christopher still uses himself today. From Zero to $100 Million By the time Spotfire was sold it was booking close to $100 million in business. Some of Christopher’s key takeaways and learning from the process were:
The benefits of thinking really big and broad learned from a Ph.D. · How different software startups are in the need to focus on a small market segment to start with · How much your passion, tenacity and a couple of proof points can help in fundraising · How to replicate your business in multiple industries after creating a good model · When selling your business it really pays to have a lot of buyers lined up · Timing your exit is critical (Spotfire sold in 2007, just before the global financial crisis)
Spotfire raised money from a local VC in Sweden, Huns Capital, as well as Boston based Atlas Venture (now called Accomplice). Although they raised only $40 million, they sold the company for almost $200M, and everyone did pretty well from the deal. Startup Ideas, Learning & The Tough Days Once you have a track record of raising money and exiting a company, a lot of people are going to be interested in funding your next venture. You could say the world is definitely skewed in your favor. Christopher definitely found this to be true. His next startup, Recorded Future raised $56 million from investors including Google Ventures, Insight Partners, and Balderton Capital. Still, as many other serial entrepreneurs have found out, Christopher says “What actually matters, is that you as an entrepreneur still need to go learn all the lessons again for the business you're trying to do the next time around.” You might have some experience and better understandings of some of the business aspects, but he warns there are a lot of things to unlearn and start over. His top piece of advice - “Just try to listen.” Find those smart people who you can learn from, and just never forget that. It can be easy to remember on your first startup when you're just 25. The big trap can be later on future ventures when you are 50, and you think you already know those answers. From his perspective, there's going to be a bunch of smart 25-year-olds you need to learn from too. This means something coming from a founder who has recruited highly intelligent people from the FBI, CIA, and NSA. Managing to survive through the tough days is the key. To really put it in perspective, Christopher says almost all the days before you find the product-market fit are going to be tough. At least 29 out of every 30. It’s that one day when a customer says that he loves what you're doing, or an employee is thrilled, that the high of that one day makes up for those other 29 days. Those odds may find more balance later in your startup. Yet, as a CEO obviously you basically have to put on a brave face, and maybe even a happy face, all the time. You just have to keep doing it. That grit is what single-handedly separates the successes from everyone else. Recorded Future The idea for Recorded Future struck Ahlberg one day on the treadmill. He ran to the kitchen, wrote it down, called up his patent guy, and the rest is history. Recorded Future is now like ‘the Bloomberg of cybersecurity’, using machine learning to identify and prevent cyber attacks on a very high international level. Think spies, cities being held for ransom with malware, nuclear plant hacks and influencing elections.
In essence, Recorded Future arms security teams with threat intelligence powered by patented machine learning to lower risk. Their technology automatically collects and analyzes information from an unrivaled breadth of sources and provides invaluable context that’s delivered in real time and packaged for human analysis or instant integration with existing security technology. Recorded Future was bought for $780 million a few days ago. Listen in to the full podcast episode or read the transcript for Christophers take on:
Using patents as weapons · Crossing the Atlantic with your startup · His business models and cash flow strategy · The book he wants to be buried with · How to time well transactions
