Mike Lynch Fund To Help Technology Startups

Autonomy founder Mike Lynch is reportedly setting up a new technology investment fund that will provide support to startups.

Lynch left HP in May, less than a year after Autonomy was acquired by the computing giant in a £6.6 billion takeover after the unit failed to live up to its new owner’s expectations.

Sources close to the plans told Bloomberg that Lynch’s fund will be based in London, but he wants to start investing globally.

Lynch is back

Lynch will apparently tap into the expertise of other former Autonomy executives for the fund in order to assist the companies in its portfolio.

His departure from HP followed a decline in licence revenue at Autonomy, which helps its corporate clients sort and analyse large amounts of structured and unstructured data. Lynch owned 8 percent of Autonomy’s shares at the time of the takeover, which were believed to be worth around £5.5 million.

He joined HP and the takeover was completed in October, however many investors felt that they had overpaid for Autonomy, while Oracle claimed that they had been offered the chance to make an offer, but balked at the asking price. Investor criticism of the acquisition contributed partly to the departure of former chief executive Leo Apotheker.

HP announced its first Autonomy-based product since the takeover last November at HP Discover, but Lynch fell victim to a massive redundancy programme in May and the parting did not appear to be amicable, given the lack of warm words from HP.

He was replaced by venture capitalist and IBM veteran George Kadifa, who assumed control of Autonomy and all of HP’s other software groups.

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