He Built A Company Valued at $1.3 Billion By Giving Companies Complete Control Over The Browser Mike Fey has gone from playing soccer, to writing software, to building really big businesses. On the Dealmakers Show, Mike shared his professional journey, including going through acquisitions, the ‘luck’ of other companies making layoffs, rebranding, restructuring and saving businesses, why not to (always) listen to your customers, and who to talk to instead. In addition, Mike talks about creating pitch decks, raising a $20M seed round, positioning your startup for an aggressive raise, and when stealth mode works for startups. Listen to all the details in this episode of the podcast here. From Soccer To Software Mike grew up in a small town in Ohio where he played just about every sport he could - - including soccer which took him all the way to college. In college, he got his degree in engineering physics. He thought he might become an astronaut, though found himself lured into software. He became a developer with Lockheed Martin and joined Mercury Interactive where they wanted a specialist in Java. When asked if he was great at it, he said yes - - and then spent the next four weeks getting great at it. Acquisitions & Integrations After that, he joined McAfee where he moved up the ranks and became CTO, and then GM of their enterprise business. After Intel acquired McAfee, Mike joined Blue Coat as President and COO, at the same time Intel was trying to right-size their acquisition and meet their margins, meaning restructuring their team. He ended up hiring 350 people from his old company demonstrating that when downsizing is widespread, it can be an opportunity to acquire talent and build out a great team. He says that helping Blue Coat succeed would have been a lot harder without this opportunity. With Blue Coat well into a successful turnaround, Mike then helped orchestrate an acquisition by Symantec. Surprisingly Symantec made him president and COO and the Blue Coat…
