Mark Shuttleworth founded the security firm Thawte in 1995, then funded Ubuntu and flew to space.
A University of Cape Town graduate, Mark Shuttleworth founded the internet-security firm Thawte, sold it, and went on to create Canonical and the Ubuntu operating system.
Mark Shuttleworth was born in Welkom, in the Free State, in 1973, to a surgeon and a nursery-school teacher. He studied finance and information systems at the University of Cape Town, where, as a student, he helped install the university’s first residential internet connections.
Thawte
In 1995 he founded Thawte Consulting, a company specialising in digital certificates and internet security. It became the second-largest certificate authority after VeriSign. He sold it to VeriSign in December 1999.
From investor to open-source patron
In 2000 he formed HBD Venture Capital, a business incubator now managed by Knife Capital. In 2002 he became the first African to travel to space, and started the Shuttleworth Foundation to fund educational and open-source projects in South Africa, including the Freedom Toaster. In 2004 he formed Canonical Ltd. to commercially support free software, especially the Ubuntu operating system, and in 2005 he founded the Ubuntu Foundation with an initial investment of 10 million dollars.
A University of Cape Town graduate who started with an internet-security idea ended up shaping open-source software worldwide, which shows how far a local graduate with a global idea can go.
