How to Run a Billion-Dollar Fund While Fighting a $5 Billion Lawsuit

When a hot tech company gets acquired by a Silicon Valley giant, it’s standard practice for employees to use their experience and windfall to go build startups elsewhere. When that acquisition becomes a spectacular embarrassment and ignites a years-long court battle, things get more complicated. Just ask Mike Lynch.

Lynch co-founded Autonomy, a software company that specialized in the sorting and analysis of big data sets for businesses. As chief executive officer, he sold the company to Hewlett-Packard in 2011 for $10.3 billion. A year later, HP wrote down $8.8 billion of that, alleging that Autonomy inflated years’ worth of its finances. Lynch became a symbol of dealmaking gone awry. Yet even as he continues a ferocious legal fight with what’s now called Hewlett Packard Enterprise, he’s become an important part of London’s venture capital scene.