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Chris Horn

Iona Technologies

Chris Horn knows a lot about rapid growth and globalisation, having founded one of Ireland’s most successful technology companies: Iona Technologies.

It was from a tiny corner of the computer science department at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) that Chris Horn would politely offer to make tea for his colleagues Annrai O’Toole, Colin Newman and Sean Baker. They didn’t realise that six years later their company Iona Technologies would become the fifth-biggest initial public offering (IPO) in Nasdaq history, achieving a valuation of US$329m.

Slow, steady growth

The company had a slow, steady growth fuelled by bootstrapping, winning EU research grants and dealing with being turned down by local venture capitalists before an investment by Sun Microsystems, as well as a landmark technology deal with Boeing, propelled the founders into the business stratosphere.

At its peak in 2000, Iona, which was leading the world in the development of middleware for large enterprises, was worth US$1.75bn and had an annual turnover in excess of US$100m. It was a good time for Horn to step down and pursue other interests. However, he was to return three years later to temporarily take the reins while a search for a new CEO was under way.

Although Iona was sold in 2008 for US$162m to US firm Progress Software, valuing the company at US$4.05 a share – a long way from the peak price of US$98 a share – it showed Irish businesspeople, especially those in the technology business, exactly what’s possible.

Involvement with new start-ups

Today, Horn makes it his business to attend events and offer his insights into growing global companies. As well as being a prolific blogger, he is also chairman of the Science Gallery

in Dublin, as well as Unicef Ireland and is soon to be made chairman of Engineers Ireland. He is also involved in two start-up enterprises: a cloud-computing company called CloudSmith and a data-storage company called GridStore.

He admits to being fascinated by the business and technology worlds and believes the recession offers a good opportunity to do things differently.

“Take CloudSmith, for example. I’m the chairman and investor. The CEO is in New York, the chief technology officer is in Stockholm and we have 16 staff – we run the entire company over Skype!”

Horn finds the ability to see who’s online, who’s on a call and being able to share documents via Skype an ingenious technology for lean businesses.

Thinking back to the days of starting a global software company in Dublin in the Nineties, when such endeavours seemed unthinkable, Horn finds the predicament the Irish economy finds itself in is ironically similar.

Building global companies

“I fervently believe it is possible to build global companies out of Ireland. In fact it is a lot easier today than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Think of all the global innovation and the use of the internet as a global channel to reach an audience.”

In Iona’s case, Horn says it is possible the company might never have achieved its success if the internet hadn’t arrived when it had. “We were very lucky in the late Nineties to be able to use the internet as a connection point.”

Looking back to another Irish company that is little heard of today but is fondly remembered in technology circles – Glokenspiel led by John Carolan – Horn says this company was an inspiration because it was innovative. “The problem for them was the internet hadn’t arrived. They had a great product if only they had the internet as a vehicle.”

Funding in the Irish market for new ventures is quite tough, something Horn is well aware of.

“In the early days of Iona we tried to get venture capital but no one would give us the money, so we had to give up. There was money for investing in Ireland at the time, just no one was willing to invest in our proposition.”

Finding seed capital

He says there’s a tremendous gap in the market for seed funding businesses, but warns there is a tendency to use this as an excuse for inaction.

“I believe anybody who wants to run a business will run their business – you can’t rely on seed capital or Enterprise Ireland – you’ve got to be able to do it even if you can’t get the money.

“When we started Iona our seed capital was IR£3,000 – IR£1,000 each – that was it. The rest was built from trading services and eventually, down the road, we got some money from Enterprise Ireland.”

Asked if he expected Iona to take off the way it did, he deadpans: “Well, it took us from 1991 to 1997 to get to Nasdaq, so it wasn’t that fast.”

Apart from his two start-ups, chairmanships and involvement in the Centre for Telecommunications Value-chain Research (CTVR), based in TCD, Horn has no plans to take on permanent roles, apart from the odd bit of guest lecturing.

“I’m rolling it down. Everything I’m doing today is part time. Sometimes I’m exceedingly busy and sometimes it’s quiet, but really I have time to think,” he concludes with a smile.

This is an abridged version of an article that first appeared in Owner Manager magazine