How To Build a $390M Company at Age 57: Lessons from LucidLink
Introduction: The Dark Night of Entrepreneurship
How to build a $390M company at age 57 begins with understanding that entrepreneurship isn’t always a straightforward journey filled with immediate success and validation.
There were days when I regretted taking the step to create our own company, mainly nights when the demons come out and things are really tough.
No funding, dried-up capital markets, and a short runway can create overwhelming pressure that tests your resolve and commitment to your vision.
During these challenging times, seeking advice from mentors seems like the logical step, but sometimes conventional wisdom doesn’t align with your core values.
Many advisors suggested laying off everybody except just the core people, protecting the intellectual property, and living to fight another day.
However, these recommendations didn’t align with the core values we had established as the foundation of our company.
If we couldn’t use our core values to make the hardest decisions of our lives, then they weren’t really our values at all.
Instead of following this conventional advice, we gathered our entire team of about 25 people, transparently explained the situation, and asked everyone to take deep cuts while maintaining belief in the company’s vision.
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Table of Contents
Finding Product-Market Fit During Crisis
How to build a $390M company at age 57 requires recognizing that sometimes the most significant breakthroughs happen during periods of extreme pressure and uncertainty.
During that challenging time when we chose to keep our entire team despite financial constraints, we finally found our product-market fit.
We received our first call from A&D Networks, who had heard about us through a recommendation from Adobe.
They had sent home 80 engineers with just laptops, hard drives, and VPN connections, which would only sustain their production for about two weeks.
They were uncertain about their future operations and reached out to see if we could help address their challenges.
Our solution was perfectly positioned to solve their problem, and we set them up on a proof of concept that went directly into production.
This opportunity resulted in a nearly $100,000 ARR contract, which was significant considering our total ARR at that time with 50 customers was around the same amount.
Following this breakthrough, we received similar calls from Viacom CBS and Vice News, all facing identical problems that our solution could effectively address.
The LucidLink Revolution: Transforming Cloud Storage
How to build a $390M company at age 57 involves identifying and solving a significant problem in your industry that others haven’t addressed effectively.
LucidLink transforms cloud storage into an unlimited high-performance drive that can be accessed from anywhere and collaborated on with your team without having to synchronize, download, or ship files around.
This innovation has attracted over 100,000 active users, growing the business over the last few years from effectively zero to over $40 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).
Our next milestone focuses on reaching the $50 to $100 million ARR threshold, representing significant scaling of our operations and market penetration.
The fundamental problem we aimed to solve was enabling access to large data sets for multiple users, especially when some files within these data sets are extremely large.
Traditional approaches required either moving the compute and applications to where the data is stored or moving the data and files to where the compute is running.
Most technologies focused on either moving data faster or creating replicas of files to position them adjacent to the applications.
Our approach was completely different – we kept the data stored in its original location and maintained compute operations where they were running, presenting everything as if it were local.
The Journey to Entrepreneurship: Embracing Ambiguity
How to build a $390M company at age 57 starts with embracing ambiguity and being open to unexpected opportunities that may alter your life’s trajectory.
Embracing ambiguity was one of the key lessons learned early in life, even when following what seemed like a predetermined path in a premed program with intentions of becoming a doctor.
A chance opportunity to study in Japan for a year changed everything, creating a desire to incorporate Japanese language skills into a future career.
This led to joining DataCore as employee number 20, with responsibilities for establishing business operations in the Asia Pacific region.
This role required extensive travel and representing the company as a storage expert, despite not having expertise in storage at the time.
This created uncomfortable moments of being on the edge of knowledge boundaries, requiring honesty about limitations while still building trust with clients.
Through these uncomfortable experiences and by consistently pushing beyond comfort zones, expertise gradually developed over time until one day, it was possible to genuinely claim expert status.
Eventually, the job became easy and repetitive, no longer providing growth or challenge, signaling it was time to move on to something new.
The Stanford Turning Point: From Corporate to Founder
How to build a $390M company at age 57 often requires formal education and structured environments that challenge your thinking and expand your network.
The next chapter began with a fishing trip conversation with a friend who had completed the Sloan Fellowship program at Stanford.
This friend suggested applying to the program with the explicit goal of either developing a business idea or meeting potential co-founders during the one-year experience.
At 48 years old and as the oldest person in the program, returning to graduate school after a lengthy career felt extremely uncomfortable yet simultaneously exhilarating.
Concerns about the limited time frame created pressure to maximize every opportunity, accompanied by anxiety about what would come next after completion.
Despite a firm belief that future endeavors would have nothing to do with storage technology, an unexpected call from George, a brilliant engineer and former DataCore colleague, changed everything.
George had left DataCore to pursue an idea that had captivated him, translating his concept into code to test its viability and was looking for partners to help secure investors and grow the business.
The timing couldn’t have been more perfect – studying how to start a business and attract investors at Stanford while actively searching for an innovative idea with market potential.
The Revolutionary Technology: Breaking Traditional Dependencies
How to build a $390M company at age 57 requires developing truly innovative solutions that challenge fundamental assumptions in your industry.
The technology demonstration that George presented was mind-blowing, seemingly accomplishing something previously considered impossible in the storage industry.
The remaining time at Stanford became an opportunity to pressure-test this idea, attempting to disprove the theory that there was a viable company within this technology.
Traditional approaches to managing large data sets with multiple users required either moving compute and applications to the data’s location or moving data to where compute operations were running.
Existing technologies primarily focused on moving data faster or creating replicas of files to position them adjacent to applications for processing.
LucidLink’s approach was fundamentally different, maintaining data in its original storage location and keeping compute running in its current location while presenting everything as if it were local.
This breakthrough technology effectively solved performance and collaboration challenges without requiring physical proximity between applications and data.
Breaking this fundamental dependency unlocked new productivity potential by allowing separate decision-making about where to store data and where to run applications based on independent criteria.
The Funding Challenge: Perseverance Through Rejection
How to build a $390M company at age 57 means developing resilience to repeated rejection while maintaining unwavering belief in your vision.
Building a complex and highly technical product required substantial funding and development time, necessitating pitches to venture capitalists after graduating from Stanford.
These pitches were consistently met with rejection – VCs claimed the technology wouldn’t work, represented a bad idea, lacked market demand, or wouldn’t justify customer investment.
Facing repeated rejection from intelligent investors with successful track records created significant doubt and psychological pressure.
The challenge required developing conviction that there was something these investors weren’t seeing – specialized knowledge of storage problems that generalist investors lacked.
This realization prompted continuous iteration of the pitch approach, refining the story to better communicate the value proposition.
After 33 rejections, Steve Anderson at Baseline Ventures finally recognized the potential and invested in the company, providing validation from a well-known investor with a reputation for identifying successful ventures.
With funding secured, the team spent approximately two years building the product, from 2017 to 2019, before launching and beginning the search for initial product-market fit.
The COVID Crisis: Values-Based Leadership
How to build a $390M company at age 57 requires making difficult decisions guided by core values rather than conventional wisdom, especially during crises.
By early 2020, as funding was running out, the team prepared for another round of fundraising based on vision rather than established metrics.
A full schedule of venture capital meetings was arranged on Sand Hill Road, but as the meetings approached, they began receiving cancellation calls due to emerging COVID-19 concerns.
Within a single day, an entire week of critical VC meetings disappeared, along with hopes for immediate funding, as capital markets froze and runway shortened.
Seeking advice from mentors produced consistent recommendations to lay off most employees, retain only core staff, protect intellectual property, and preserve resources until conditions improved.
After careful consideration, the founders determined this advice contradicted their core values and questioned the meaning of these values if they weren’t applied during the hardest decisions.
Instead of layoffs, they gathered their 25-person team, transparently communicated the situation, and asked everyone to accept significant compensation reductions while maintaining belief in the company’s future.
This difficult period was marked by sleep deprivation and immense pressure, intensified by responsibility for the livelihoods of 25 employees and their families who had placed their trust in the company’s vision.
The Breakthrough: Product-Market Fit During Pandemic
How to build a $390M company at age 57 sometimes means finding unexpected opportunities during what appears to be your darkest hour.
During this challenging period when the company maintained its team despite financial constraints, they finally discovered their product-market fit through an unexpected opportunity.
The first significant breakthrough came from A&D Networks, who contacted them based on a recommendation from Adobe, explaining they had sent 80 engineers home with basic equipment that would only sustain production for approximately two weeks.
LucidLink’s solution was perfectly positioned to address this remote work challenge, leading to implementation of a proof of concept that immediately transitioned into production use.
This opportunity resulted in a nearly $100,000 ARR contract, which was equivalent to their entire existing customer base of 50 clients at that time.
Following this success, similar calls came from Viacom CBS and Vice News, all facing identical challenges that LucidLink could effectively solve.
This series of opportunities crystallized their market positioning from a general file access platform to a specialized creative content collaboration tool.
This clarity in positioning catalyzed exponential growth, driving ARR from $100,000 to $1 million in the first year, followed by consistent progression from $1 million to $5 million, $5 million to $15 million, and continuing upward.
Lessons for Entrepreneurs: Belief and Resilience
How to build a $390M company at age 57 requires unwavering belief in your vision, especially when evidence of success isn’t yet visible to others.
For entrepreneurs still searching for product-market fit or waiting for opportunities to materialize, the most crucial advice is to maintain belief in your vision.
When you’ve conducted thorough research, understand your product and market intimately, and recognize untapped potential, you must maintain conviction despite external doubt.
Entrepreneurship demands resilience and determination to persevere daily, even when facing consistent rejection and skepticism from others.
The challenge isn’t just maintaining personal belief but ensuring your team shares that conviction and remains committed to the vision during difficult periods.
This advice emphasizes the importance of persistence – never giving up when you genuinely believe in your product’s potential to address significant market needs.
The Stanford experience that led to founding LucidLink became an invaluable part of life, creating meaningful impact not just personally but for nearly 200 employees who now work for the company.
Looking back, it’s impossible to imagine a better outcome from taking that initial risk to pursue entrepreneurship after an established career.
Nurturing Growth Through Discomfort
How to build a $390M company at age 57 means intentionally seeking discomfort and challenges that foster personal and professional growth.
Nurturing instinct and challenging yourself by deliberately entering uncomfortable situations is essential for continued development throughout life.
While people frequently discuss growth in positive terms, the reality is that growth is often painful, difficult, and uncomfortable during the process, even though the results are rewarding.
Cultivating this mindset requires establishing habits that prioritize making right decisions rather than easy ones, consistently avoiding shortcuts that might provide temporary comfort.
These decisions can range from small daily choices like committing to complete exercise routines rather than abbreviated versions, to major professional decisions with significant consequences.
Consistently choosing the right path rather than the easy one gradually builds internal capacity for embracing challenges and stepping outside comfort zones.
This approach develops the mental and emotional muscles needed to remain open to continuous growth and learning throughout life.
The philosophy can be summarized in a simple principle: how you do one thing is how you do everything – the habits formed in small decisions shape your approach to major challenges.
Conclusion: The Unconventional Path to Success
How to build a $390M company at age 57 demonstrates that entrepreneurial success doesn’t follow a predetermined timeline or conform to conventional expectations about age or career progression.
The journey from considering medical school to founding a technology company valued at $390 million after age 50 illustrates the potential for significant achievement at any life stage.
Embracing ambiguity, seeking discomfort for growth, making values-based decisions during crises, and maintaining unwavering belief in your vision despite rejection are essential elements of entrepreneurial success.
LucidLink’s growth from zero to over $40 million in ARR with more than 100,000 active users demonstrates the power of innovative technology that solves fundamental problems in new ways.
The decision to honor core values by retaining the entire team during financial uncertainty ultimately created the space for discovering perfect product-market fit during a global crisis.
This story offers powerful encouragement for aspiring entrepreneurs of all ages – particularly those who might believe they’ve missed their opportunity due to age or established career paths.
The path forward requires embracing uncomfortable growth, making difficult but principled decisions, and maintaining belief in your vision even when others don’t see its potential.
As the founder’s experience demonstrates, sometimes the most rewarding journeys begin at unexpected moments and follow unconventional paths to extraordinary success.
We strongly recommend that you check out our guide on how to take advantage of AI in today’s passive income economy.
