http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/sourcefire-founder-martin-roesch-shares-lessons-from-building-a-27-billion-business/2014/06/26/bc6e005a-fcb1-11e3-932c-0a55b81f48ce_story.html
By Steven Overly
The Washington Post
June 26, 2014
Martin Roesch founded cybersecurity software firm Sourcefire in 2001 with
the goal of making money on a widely used and freely distributed security
program he had built years earlier called Snort. Twelve-and-a-half years
later, Cisco bought the company for $2.7 billion. Now that’s what you call
making money. In an interview last week at start-up hub 1776, Roesch
shared lessons learned along the way with a gathering of tech and security
enthusiasts:
Admit what you don’t know.
In 2002, Roesch was flying back and forth between Sourcefire’s Columbia
headquarters and the offices of West Coast investors. Every time he
returned, there was a new face in the office.
The company went from four employees to 30 in less than six months.
“I was very, very scared. We were growing so quickly and things felt out
of control and I didn’t have any experience with what we were doing. I was
terrified I was going to screw up and kill us all,” he said.
So Roesch made a decision that more egotistical founders might find
difficult: He hired someone to take over as chief executive who had the
business acumen to complement his technical know-how.
[...]
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