Centrify

Tom Camp had already tasted success as part of NetIQ, which went public in July 1999 before the dot-com crash. After eight years with that company, he needed a new challenge and spotted a massive opportunity in enterprise security. Around 2003-2004, the market didn't yet understand single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, or the identity and access management space—but Tom could see it coming. "12 years ago people were like, what are you doing? What's this multi-factor?" he recalled. He founded Centrify in 2004 with a clear mission: help enterprises drowning in passwords and plagued by excessive user privileges gain control of their identity and access.

Camp took a lean approach initially. He funded the company himself and brought in early capital from debt and angel investors, putting in over $1-2 million of his own money. The team bootstrapped for about 4-6 months, building a proof of concept that was demonstrable enough to convince venture capitalists. By the time they had built a 10-person team with working technology, Mayfield and Excel (the A-round investors) felt confident enough to invest. Rather than chase rapid growth, Camp maintained discipline—the company became profitable in 2010 during the financial crisis when raising money was nearly impossible, forcing a focus on unit economics and cash flow.

Centralify went after large enterprises from day one. Initial contract values for Fortune 500 companies ranged from $100k+, while mid-market deals were $30-50k annually. The company targeted the Global 2000, and this focus paid off handsomely—by 2017, nearly two-thirds of Fortune 50 companies were customers. The sales model was traditional enterprise direct sales with a strong land-and-expand strategy: about two-thirds of new business came from existing customers upgrading, upselling, or adding users.

Profitability and cash flow discipline proved to be Tom's superpower. While competitors burned venture capital aggressively, Centrify maintained a 95% net dollar retention rate (on a dollar-amount basis), meaning they kept nearly all revenue and expanded it. The gross margins were exceptional, and the company modeled customer acquisition cost by cohort: renewals cost less than $0.10 per dollar of ARR, expansion revenue cost about $0.50-0.60 per dollar, and new customer acquisition cost roughly $2.00 per dollar—but with the understanding that those customers would renew and expand year after year. This meant Tom could rationally invest in growth while staying profitable.

By the time of this interview (conducted in 2017), Centrify had grown to 500 employees and just crossed $100M in ARR (achieved in early 2017, six to twelve months before the interview). The company had raised about $90 million across five rounds from top-tier VCs (Excel, Mayfield, Index) and strategic investors (Samsung, Docomo, Fortinet). For the fiscal year ending June 2018, Tom projected growth of roughly 30% and ARR exceeding $130 million. Critically, the company had achieved cash flow positivity, meaning it no longer needed to raise capital to fund growth—it was truly customer-funded. This positioned Centrify as a rare profitable, high-growth SaaS company in the competitive identity and access management space, competing against legacy vendors like CA, IBM, and Oracle, as well as newer public companies like Okta and CyberArk.