In April, serial entrepreneur Richard J.B. Campbell embarked on a new venture when he sold his Atlanta-based network security company, Securiant. The company was acquired by Vigilar for a seven-figure sum in cash and stock. Securiant posted revenues of $1.5 million in 2007.
Campbell, a native of Liberia, launched the company five years ago as an IT security consulting services firm and as a platform for Securiant’s flagship product, Spider Integrated Security Appliance (see “Intruder Alert,” Techwatch, March 2004). Securiant had 20 employees and 600 SpiderISA units in the field at the time of sale.
Campbell developed SpiderISA using a combination of open source and proprietary software. Because 40% of the product was based on open source software components, Securiant was able to accelerate development and drastically reduce the cost of building the product (in exchange for turning over Securiant’s enhancements to the open source community). This approach allowed Campbell to focus on developing the product’s core methodology and proprietary software, which was based around change management and risk analysis.
Campbell, who started Securiant with just three employees, is already laying the groundwork for his fifth venture, SteelPivot Inc., which he launched in March. SteelPivot provides turnkey, on-demand IT engineering solutions delivery services for networking, security, and converged IP solutions providers and manufacturers. SteelPivot will enable customers to greatly expand their ability to deliver product
implementation, network engineering, and security consulting services domestically and internationally.
“As a serial entrepreneur, I don’t want to own a company for 20 or 30 years; what [I’m] trying to do is to build a company around a technology or a particular type of service,” Cambell says. “Once you get the product and company up and mature, then typically it’s going to be acquired by somebody larger or somebody who needs to merge because they need that type of expertise to better service their customer.”