In fact, 2021 appeared to be the worst year on record for cybersecurity, with no signs that the threat is diminishing in 2022. As the head of a cybersecurity business, the point for me is not whether we can ever solve all the risks, but whether we can develop products and services that chip away at those risks in a meaningful way.
None of us likes criminals. But if you don’t like criminals, you’ve got to dislike cybercriminals even more because they are the hardest to bring to account. Cybercriminals are cowardly and parasitic and feed off the vulnerability of people and technologies. As they say, there is no honor among thieves. Cybercriminals will create a vulnerability and then hand it over to the most horrific state or organization without thinking or caring about the downstream consequences. The truth is that because our work is preventative, we will never truly know the value we create, but knowing the disasters we could be averting is motivation enough.
Curating the destiny of Mimecast
One thing I have paid careful attention to over time is the curation of the destiny of this organization. This means carefully considering whom we partner with and when. I believe that great businesses take a long time to develop and grow and need effort over a long period from committed people. This includes shareholders.
We were fortunate enough to found Mimecast with our own money, given that both Neil and I had already both built and sold technology companies early in our careers. When we ran out of our own money we brought in angel investors, friends, and family. In doing so we built the business to a point where we had a very strong negotiating hand with venture investors that came in between 2008 and 2012. Maintaining a significant amount of control, I believe, was instrumental in ensuring that we kept the business moving in the direction we wanted.
We grew the company to the point of taking it public in 2015. If you can continue to deliver and perform as a public company, it really puts the board and the management team in a very strong position of control over the destiny of the business. Yes, you are answerable to dozens or even hundreds of shareholders, but in some ways you’re not specifically answerable to any one of them because their individual shareholding is actually very small.
This next step in our journey is a big one. We are going from a listed company into a position where Permira owns 99% of the company. While it’s been a difficult stage for me, I have had to trust the process with the board responsible for making the decisions and recommendations to shareholders. We met a few different funds that were interested in investing in Mimecast.
Thankfully, with Permira I immediately felt very comfortable that they would be a partner that would be a very good custodian of the next leg of our journey. As CEO of a listed company I couldn’t have forced that outcome, but I feel very fortunate that they did end up with a bid that our board found favorable.