The best CEO in Silicon Valley: John Thompson has transformed Symantec into a multibillion-dollar security software juggernaut

Black Enterprise, Sept, 2004 by Alan Hughes

FIVE YEARS IN THE VALLEY

Half a decade after taking Symantec's reins, Thompson remains the only African American heading a major technology company, but that's not something he likes to focus on. "There are brilliant people in the technology sector who are people of color," Thompson says, pointing out Mark Dean, vice president of systems at IBM. (Dean holds three of IBM's nine original patents for personal computers.) "There just aren't enough of us. I think the more that people like me, like Mark Dean and others, can do to suggest that you can build an absolutely fantastic career in this industry--that this is not an industry that has its doors closed--the better. This is a meritocracy."

Despite his stellar track record, Thompson is not perfect. When Symantec anted up $925 million of its own stock for firewall and intrusion detection system manufacturer AXENT Technologies in 2000, some analysts doubted whether the purchase was worth the price. "A lot of the product lines in the enterprise space weren't really that successful," says Jonathan Rudy, a software analyst at Standard & Poor's Equity Research. "The key driver to Symantec's success over the last few years has been their consumer business, primarily their consumer antivirus business."

But for the most part, Thompson,finds a way to make it work. "He combines two things that you usually find [only] one or the other [of] in people," says Richard A. Clarke, chairman of Good Harbor Consulting, a homeland and cyber security advisory firm, and former special adviser for cyber security under President George W. Bush. When Clarke was tapped by then-President Bill Clinton as the national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection, and counterterrorism in 1998, he worked with Thompson on cyber security issues. "[Thompson has] the ability to make everybody like him and want to be with him in that sort of winning salesman personality, which is what he was--he was a salesman. But he combines that with a hard-nosed, make-it-happen determination and a real understanding of the detail and technology."

When not focusing on challenges on the business front, Thompson has been spending time becoming more politically active, supporting Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry. "it's taken me a long time to reach the point where I decided that I want to be ... not an activist, but at least not passive," he says. "And in this particular case, I feel very, very strongly that we do need to take our country in a different direction--a different direction in terms of our standing as a global economic leader, a different direction in terms of the notion of a balanced budget."

Thompson says he's always looking ahead to the next challenge and keeps his eye on the prize at all times--whether at a political fundraiser, a corporate boardroom, or fly-fishing in the woodlands of Alaska.

SYMANTEC VS. SILICON VALLEY
%CHANGE IN STOCK PRICE OVER 5 YEARS

CISCO               -28.3%
DELL                  -10%
eBAY                206.4%
INTEL               -24.9%
McAFEE               -4.2%
MICROSOFT           -34.8%
SYMANTEC            505.3%

Note: Table made from bar graph.

SOURCE: YAHOO! FINANCE AS OF JULY 20, 2004

THOMPSON'S ACQUISITIONS

Company                         Date                    Purchase Price
                                                         (in millions)

Turn Tide                       July 2004                     $28
Brightmail                      June 2004                    $370
ON Technology                   February 2004                $100
PowerQuest                      November 2003                $150
SafeWeb                         October 2003                  $26
Nexland                         July 2003                     $20
GoBack                          April 2003                    $13
Security Focus                  August 2002                   $75
Recourse Technologies           August 2002                  $135
Riptech Inc.                    August 2002                  $145
Mountain Wave                   July 2002                     $20
Lindner & Pelc                  October 2001                   $2
Foster-Melliar                  July 2001                      $2
AXENT Technologies              December 2000                $925
20/20 Software Inc.             March 2000                    $17
L-3 Network Security            February 2000                 $20
URLabs                          July 1999                     $42

SOURCE: SYMANTEC CORP.

REVENUE & EMPLOYEE GROWTH

         REVENUE (in millions)     EMPLOYEES

'99      $632                      2,411
'00      $827                      2,573
'01      $944                      3,781
'02      $1,071                    3,910
'03      $1,407                    4,344

SOURCE: SYMANTEC CORP.