Hari Ravichandran spent 21 years growing a startup into a global web-hosting giant worth $3.5 billion. Then he left the company to start all over.

Rather than retire, Ravichandran embarked on a new venture, founding cybersecurity company Aura in 2018. Harnessing decades of business experience, he grew his new business rapidly. With high-profile funding from Warburg Pincus, General Catalyst, and others, it has become a unicorn valued at over $2.5 billion.

Here's the story of how Ravichandran chased the American dream - and succeeded twice.

Pursuing a Passion for Technology and Entrepreneurship

Born in India, Ravichandran found his calling early. "I have loved technology since I laid my hands on an 8085 microprocessor when I was 10," he explains. "I am fascinated by the evolution of technology to help make human life better."

When his father went to the US as a Fulbright scholar in the late 1980s, he was determined to give his children access to all the opportunities available here. This is how Ravichandran came to study computer engineering at Mississippi State, and then to pursue a graduate degree in electrical engineering at Stanford.

It was here, amid the late-90s Silicon Valley euphoria, that he launched his career as an entrepreneur. "The dot-com boom was just starting up and going," he recalls. "It was like a dynamic, exciting, wonderful time to be part of the Silicon Valley culture. I really got the bug, and at that point, I thought, I'm going to take a leap. I dropped out of graduate school and started my first company."

That company, BizLand, embarked on a mission to help small businesses go online. The gamble put Ravichandran's entire savings on the line. It took two weeks for the first clients to respond to his ads. Once they did, though, BizLand quickly took off.

Navigating the Dot-Com Crash With Endurance

"I was 20 when I started this company, and the dot-com boom was so good, and the company was starting to go up and up. We thought we were in it for two years, and we were all going to make a lot of money, and then we were going to retire," Ravichandran recalls.

Then, the bubble burst and the Silicon Valley enthusiasm evaporated overnight. To weather the storm, BizLand had to adapt. Ravichandran cut staff from 250 to a core team of 14, and began converting customers to a new payment model.

It worked. BizLand, renamed Endurance International, emerged from the crash more agile and robust than before.

Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, Ravichandran expanded the company systematically and globally. During this period, he focused on fostering customer loyalty by building products that bring lasting value, in addition to strategic acquisitions.

When Ravichandran left Endurance in 2018, it was worth $3.5 billion. However, instead of retiring, as he had planned at 20, he launched himself into a new business venture. This one was inspired by painful personal experience.

Finding Business Inspiration In Experiencing Identity Theft

"In 2014, I was denied a mortgage," Ravichandran explains. "I couldn't understand what went wrong. It turns out I was hacked, and it caused my credit to plummet. I spent two weeks trying to figure out what happened, and I was left with more questions than answers."

Crucially, Ravichandran discovered that there was no comprehensive solution for protecting himself and his family from cyber crime. "I ended up with seven or eight different products, and I still had vulnerabilities," he says.

The experience inspired him to found Aura, an internet security company that provides a one-stop solution to keep your data and identity safe online. Apart from antivirus protection, a VPN, and a password manager, it also comes with identity theft and financial fraud protection, parental controls and spam call protection.

Setting Out on a Mission to Make the Internet a Safer Place

Looking to the future, Ravichandran is now relying on his decades of experience as a web entrepreneur to help Aura take off.

Aura's offer is uniquely comprehensive. The core idea, Ravichandran explains, is for its products to bring value to its customers. And that means making it as easy as possible for people to protect themselves in an online environment rife with cyber crime. More so than ever since the pandemic.

"Our mission is to create a safer internet," he explains. "I'm a dad. I've got three kids who are growing up as digital natives. I want to make sure that they have some security."