Mike Lynch: Tributes paid to ‘UK’s greatest tech entrepreneur’

Buddies and colleagues of Mike Lynch have paid tribute to him, with the dying of the tech tycoon in a luxurious yacht sinking off the coast of Sicily being described as an “irreplaceable loss”.

The British businessman, 59, was amongst those that died when the boat sank in stormy climate on Monday morning.

Mr Lynch was a outstanding determine within the UK tech business, the place his backing of profitable firms led to him being dubbed the British equal of Microsoft founder Invoice Gates.

Nevertheless, he later grew to become embroiled in a long-running authorized dispute which resulted in him being controversially extradited to the US, earlier than being acquitted earlier this summer.

Former Solar newspaper editor David Yelland mentioned Mr Lynch was “an irreplaceable loss not solely to people who cherished him but in addition to the nation”.

“He’s the UK’s biggest tech entrepreneur of latest a long time, a household man, a long-time shopper of my enterprise and a good friend,” he mentioned.

“To assume Mike Lynch misplaced his life simply as he started to rebuild it’s devastating for all people who know him.”

Mr Lynch is survived by his spouse Angela Bacares, who was rescued after the yacht sank. They lived on the Loudham Corridor property in Suffolk.

Brent Hoberman, co-founder of Lastminute.com, described his dying as “tragic”, saying Mr Lynch had way more to present to the UK tech scene.

“He was nonetheless on his journey, and he’d been sidetracked for a decade with this courtroom case,” he advised the BBC.

“I feel there was a number of unfulfilled potential.”

IT analyst Richard Holway mentioned in a post on LinkedIn that Mr Lynch – a good friend of greater than 25 years – was “a novel British tech expertise”.

“Goodness is aware of what he may have achieved subsequent,” he added.

Mr Lynch co-founded tech agency Autonomy in 1996, which expanded quickly and was bought to Hewlett Packard for $11bn (£8.6bn) in 2011, from which he’s believed to have netted £500m.

He then established tech agency Invoke Capital, which helped create outstanding UK cybersecurity agency Darktrace in 2013. Lynch had a seat on its board till earlier this yr.

However questions over the sale of Autonomy led to a long-running authorized battle.

In 2022, Mr Lynch misplaced a civil fraud case towards HP on the Excessive Court docket in London.

A day later, he was extradited to the US as a part of felony proceedings, and was going through a potential twenty years in jail.

He was acquitted in June this yr after a jury discovered him not responsible of the crimes.

He advised BBC Radio 4 that although he was satisfied of his innocence, he was solely capable of show it in a US courtroom because he was rich enough to pay the big authorized charges concerned.

Mr Lynch is reported to have gone on the yacht journey together with his household to rejoice securing his freedom.

Its identify, Bayesian, is known to derive from the idea that his PhD thesis – and the software program that underpinned Autonomy – was primarily based on.

Witnesses say its aluminium mast broke in half in a storm, inflicting the ship to lose its steadiness and sink.

Dick Smith, a neighbour of Mr Lynch, advised the BBC he was “reeling from the shock of the information”.

“He was so approachable and a very simple individual to speak to with a pleasant sense of humour,” he mentioned.

“You would possibly assume with all that cash he could be troublesome to speak to, however actually he was a very simple individual to speak to.”

Born on 16 June 1965, Mr Lynch was the son of a nurse and a fireman, and was raised close to Chelmsford in Essex.

His first pc was a BBC Micro, and he wrote fondly of the way it formed his ardour for programming in a 2011 BBC article celebrating 30 years of the device.

Whereas in school his “first foray into commercialisation of expertise” got here when designing a digital sampler that might pattern music, then promoting the designs, according to a 2017 interview.

He continued the pastime whereas learning Pure Sciences on the College of Cambridge – the place he mentioned he aggravated his school by getting “solder within the carpets” of his room.

Whereas at Cambridge he earned a PhD in mathematical computing, and later undertook a analysis fellowship.

In 1991, Mr Lynch helped set up Cambridge Neurodynamics – a agency which specialised in utilizing computer-based detection and recognition of fingerprints.

His tech agency Autonomy was created 5 years later, utilizing a statistical methodology referred to as “Bayesian inference” on the core of its software program.

The corporate’s fast-paced development and success all through the late Nineties and early 2000s noticed Mr Lynch earn a lot of awards and accolades.

In 2006 he was awarded an OBE in recognition of his service to UK enterprise.

He served on the board of the BBC as a non-executive director, and in 2011 was appointed to the federal government’s council for science and expertise – advising then-Prime Minister David Cameron on the dangers and potentialities of AI growth.

Autonomy, and later its software program Aurasma, was the front-of-shirt sponsor of Premier League crew Tottenham Hotspur from 2010-2013.

After Autonomy’s sale to HP in 2011 – from which Mr Lynch is believed to have earned £500m – he went on to ascertain tech funding agency Invoke Capital.

The enterprise capital fund invested within the creation of British cyber safety firm Darktrace in 2013.

Mr Lynch, who was a shareholder within the agency, held a seat on its board till earlier this yr.

“This was the start of a brand new life for Mike,” former cupboard minister Lord Deben advised Instances Radio.

“He is made such a contribution to Britain, his firms have put Britain within the forefront, and he was going to do it once more,” mentioned Lord Deben, who’s the previous Conservative MP John Gummer.