Like any entrepreneur, Lou Ryan has a job that’s roughly akin to kindling a blaze from a faint spark. In Ryan’s case, though, it might be more like trying to rebuild a fire that was started in 1995.
Ryan, 54, is the software industry veteran (and former venture partner at Menlo Park, CA-based Sand Hill Capital) who was named earlier this week as the CEO of San Diego’s St. Bernard Software (OTCBB: [[ticker:SBSW]]).
He has been expanding his influence at the company since joining St. Bernard’s board in 2006. He became chairman last June, and in December, he purchased 778,901 shares—acquiring a roughly 5.3 percent stake in the company, which provides network security through a line of hybrid hardware-software products. Ryan acknowledges the market is crowded with similar technologies clamoring for attention. “I wouldn’t exactly say it’s like soft drinks, but it is fully commoditized,” he told me.
So why is he moving in and taking over?
Ryan has a lot of experience in starting security software companies—and in selling them. He was a co-founder and senior executive at Delrina Corp., a public software company acquired by Symantec in 1995. He was the CEO at Entercept Security Technologies, a network intrusion-prevention technology company which sold to McAfee in 2003. And he was a founding investor at Foundstone, an internet-vulnerability assessment company, and helped arrange its sale to McAfee in 2004. He says it might be reasonable for someone who’s familiar with his career to conclude that his arrival at St. Bernard indicates he just plans to flip the company. But he says that’s not entirely right.
“I can tell you emphatically that I did not invest in this
