Securify appears to have ended a ten year run with a sale to Secure Computing. Sold for cheap as PE Hub puts it. Somebodies associated with Securify get $15 million (plus a $5 million earn out) versus $76 million raised the companies lifetime. The question of cheapness then turns on who gets that cash and what they invested. Anyway, when startups' exits, positive or not so much, get announced, I always like to look at the CEOs involved.
Here Buck French took the helm in December of '04. He came in off of the board of directors which he joined while at investor JP Morgan Partners. Whether they wrere doing a search and he couldn't find anyone better than him or the timing was fortuitous with JPMP shaking out in preparation for the slow motion switch to Panorama, or he was tired of the investor side of the table only the principles know. Regardeless he's been runing things at Securify for three and a half years, a longish tenure for a company in their situation. At anyrate if you look at his background he'd been a successful CEO in the past and he had every reason to have a good handle on the market, exactly what one would imagine they'd look for making a bet in the far too crowded and ripe for consolidation security market, but not every bet pans out.
