Most stories of the American Dream end when the unlikely entrepreneur bootstrapping a business from scratch has earned his billions and is at the top of his power.
For Hari Ravichandran, that is merely where he started writing the second chapter of his story.
After growing a web hosting startup into an international multi-billion behemoth, he circled back around. Going back to his roots, he launched a cybersecurity startup, Aura, in 2018.
Remarkably, he once again succeeded in supercharging his business’ growth. Today, Aura has far surpassed a valuation of $1 billion, giving it unicorn status.
Here’s Ravichandran’s unique story and the lessons he learned along the way.
Never Come Back: Chasing Opportunity in the US
Ravichandran was born in the South of India, where he lived until he was 14.
His father, though, was also a professor and had the opportunity to come to the US as a Fulbright scholar in the 1980s. He was struck by the wealth of opportunities the American education system and economy offered young people, and was determined to make it accessible to his own children.
To achieve this, he sent his son to the US as part of a Rotary exchange program in 1990. “I remember very clearly,” Ravichandran recalls. “When I left, my father told me to figure out a way to never come back.”
Determined to succeed, he decided to pursue a career in tech, a subject that had fascinated him for years: “I have loved technology since I laid my hands on an 8085 microprocessor when I was 10. I am fascinated by the evolution of technology to help make human life better.”
Succeeding academically, Ravichandran earned a BS in computer engineering from Mississippi State University. He was then accepted into a graduate program in electrical engineering at Stanford.
However, it was at Stanford that Ravichandran discovered his true calling – entrepreneurship.
From College Drop-Out to Startup Founder in 90s Silicon Valley
When Ravichandran started at Stanford in the late 90s, Silicon Valley was firmly in the grip of the dot-com boom. The general atmosphere of tech euphoria encouraged many young entrepreneurs, Ravichandran among them.
“Yahoo and Hotmail had just started out of Stanford. It was like a dynamic, exciting, wonderful time to be part of the Silicon Valley culture,” Ravichandran remembers. “I really got the bug, and at that point, I thought, ‘If they’re able to do it, I ought to be able to do it too.’”
Taking the leap, Ravichndran dropped out of college and delved into entrepreneurship. He founded BizLand, a web hosting company with the goal to help small businesses get online and grow.
The company’s start was rocky. At first, Ravichandran spent two tense weeks waiting for someone to answer the advertisements into which he’d invested most of his savings.
Eventually, the first client – a bookstore – called. His business quickly grew from there, driven by great service, affordable pricing, and good word of mouth. Soon, BizLand even raised $30 million in funding.
Awed by the success of his business, Ravichandran – then only in his early 20s – began to entertain dreams of retiring early.
That was when the dot-com bubble burst.
Surviving the Dot-Com Crash and Emerging Stronger than Ever
When the crash hit, BizLand had to adapt to survive, while countless companies went under.
“It was a very challenging time,” Ravichandran explains. “We had a six-week window where we were going to run out of money, and we basically had to convert our entire business model from advertising focus – just what it was in the early days – to a subscription business.”
To make it through, BizLand slashed its team from 250 to a meager 14 who worked around the clock for months. Together, they worked hard to convert as many of its free customers as possible to paid subscriptions.
In the end, Ravichandran managed to weather the storm. BizLand was renamed, appropriately, to Endurance International Group.
In the aftermath of the crash, Ravichandran’s company benefited from its structural adaptation and began to thrive, attract investors, and expand, slow at first and then rapidly.
During his time at Endurance, Ravichandran was involved in over 40 mergers and acquisitions, some of them for as much as $1B. By the mid-2010s, Endurance International was a $3.5 billion dollar giant, with Ravichandran at the helm.
From Billion-Dollar CEO Back to Startup Founder
It was at this point that Ravichandran’s story started to deviate from those of most successful tech CEOs. Instead of resting on his laurels and enjoying his success, he decided to leave Endurance and start all over by founding a cybersecurity startup, Aura.
As at so many turning points in Ravichandran’s life, his passion for technology and business lay at the heart of his decision to start all over.
“I’m an entrepreneur at heart. I liked being the CEO of a billion-dollar company, in the corner office, but it was not what I loved most,” he explains. “So when the chance arose to start all over, I took it. I launched Aura back in 2018 and have been putting all the lessons I learned with Endurance to good use.”
Supercharging Aura With Decades of Business Experience
The idea for Aura had come to Ravichandran in 2014, when he became the victim of identity theft. To his shock, he discovered that his personal credit rating had tanked after cyber criminals had hijacked his identity. It took him weeks to assess the damage, even longer to repair it.
Determined to prevent future breaches, Ravichandran set out to find the right tool to protect himself and his family. To his surprise, he discovered that there was no unified solution on the market: “I ended up with seven or eight different products, and I still had vulnerabilities.”
This was the origin of Aura’s business model: providing a comprehensive solution to protect your identity online. Today, the company’s broad offer includes antivirus, a VPN, a password manager, financial fraud and identity theft protection, as well as parental controls. All in return for an affordable monthly subscription.
Reaching Unicorn Status and Beyond
Using the decades of business experience he’d acquired at Endurance, Ravichandran turned Aura from a startup in the crowded cybersecurity niche into a key industry player.
With a steadily growing client base and stellar reputation, Aura soon attracted high-profile investors. Recently, it has received funding from Warburg Pincus and General Catalyst, among others. Now, Aura is valued at over $2.5 billion, giving it coveted unicorn status.
So what comes next?
With cybercrime more common than ever before in the aftermath of the pandemic, there’s plenty to do for Aura. Especially considering that more and more cybercriminals now use AI in malicious online attacks. To respond, companies like Aura have to stay agile, constantly upgrading and extending their systems, keeping one step ahead of hackers.
At its heart, though, Aura’s core principle hasn’t changed since its foundation.
“Our mission is to create a safer internet,” Ravichandran explains. “I’m a dad. I’ve got three kids who are growing up as digital natives. I want to make sure that they have some security.”
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