Autonomy Founder Lynch Snags Bloomberg Profile
October 7, 2016
I read “Former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch Is Running a Hands-on Fund While He Battles HP in Court.” I have a modest file of open source information about the Hewlett Packard purchase of Autonomy, the company which sparked a shift in search and information access. Years ago, I even met some Autonomy professionals and performed a small task for which I was compensated in a modest way. Autonomy and its Integrated Data Operating Layer / Digital Reasoning Engine remain important milestones. Autonomy was one of the first firms to apply fancy math to thorny problems in making sense of unstructured information. Today, Dr. Lynch’s approach informs many of the smart software companies capturing headlines about online translation to predicting which team will win a football game.
Bloomberg Businessweek’s write up focuses on Dr. Michael Lynch’s life after his split from HP. That Sillycon Valley icon bought Autonomy and seems to have sold the property on again. American real estate television programs call this process a “flip.” The idea is to buy low and sell high. HP’s approach to a “flip” is a bit different. HP bought high and seems to have sold low. That’s why I use the term “Sillycon Valley” to describe the executive methods associated with San Francisco and environs.
The write up tells me:
His $1 billion Europe-focused firm, Invoke Capital, looks like a cross between the Carlyle Group and Y Combinator.
His business approach is described this way:
“We want an unfair advantage. The internal saying is, always take a gun to a knife fight,” Lynch says. As for Invoke’s pitch to startups: “There’s a little bit of an element of the Spice Girls. We can bring people together.”
The article focuses on Luminance, a company with smart software for legal eagles. The company I find most interesting is Dr. Lynch’s Darktrace.
HP Enterprise is suing Dr. Lynch. The legal shoot out will take place in 2017. The write up correctly points out that Dr. Lynch may show up in court to explain that he generated more revenue, more value, and more saleable software than HP did with Autonomy’s technology.
The Bloomberg report does not make these points:
- Dr. Lynch’s products tap his knowledge of numerical recipes. When applied in an informed manner, these methods are useful and have applicability to a number of business problems. HP bought Autonomy and seems to have lacked the expertise or motivation or business acumen to output big money
- HP decided to buy Autonomy and then suffered buyer’s remorse in the midst of management turmoil and efforts to prevent Hewlett Packard from becoming an also-ran in the Sillycon Valley growth race
- HP wants to prove Dr. Lynch fooled them even though HP’s professionals and consultants performed due diligence prior to buying Autonomy. Perhaps HP should look at its systems and methods?
Worth monitoring even if an observer does not understand Bayesian, Laplacian, Monte Carlo, and Markovian methods. My hunch is that HP’s lawyers may find these mathematical methods helpful in determining the odds for certain events. When one feeds data about Dr. Lynch’s current hot start ups into the model, the predictive output suggests more revenue and innovation for Dr. Lynch. HP, on the other hand, may receive a different set of probabilities.
If you are not familiar with the Autonomy information access system, I have made available, a free report about Autonomy. You may access it at my Xenky.com archive.
Stephen E Arnold, October 7, 2017
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