Lance Cottrell

I founded Anonymizer in 1995 as a consumer privacy business. We pivoted to building platforms for the national security community to conduct online undercover operations. We sold to a strategic acquirer in 2008. The terms of the deal are under NDA, but our investment bankers won an industry award for our deal. We did that while only taking $2.5 million in outside funding.

Prior to my company, the government had never outsourced the creation of tools for online undercover activities. I convinced them that they could do so and sold multi-million dollar SaaS solutions to many groups and organizations within the government. I know how to appeal to the interests of customers and explain complex solutions and capabilities in ways that non-technical customers can easily understand and appreciate.

When I founded Anonymizer, I was almost done with my Ph.D. in astrophysics at UCSD. My thesis was over half done. I was working on structure formation in the early universe using both the Hubble Space Telescope and the Giant Keck Telescopes in Hawaii. My scientific background informs my approach to experimentation and validation in all aspects of business. I had thoughts of finishing my degree while launching Anonymizer. That was not realistic and did not happen. 🤣