From Hard Core Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN (Part 1)

Francis has bootstrapped OpenVPN to $3M ARR with JUST $1M in financing. Wonderful story!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background?

Francis Dinha: I was born in northern Iraq in a place called Amadiya. I lived there until I was six years old. Due to the Baghdad-Iraqi war, we had to escape. There was a lot of bombing. I remember the bombing of our village. It reminds me of the current situation in Ukraine. We had to escape to Baghdad.

I didn’t speak Arabic. Our language is Assyrian Aramaic. Baghdad was also, culturally, different. My family was able to manage through all this. My dad and mom were farmers. That’s how my life started. There was a lot of political settlement in Baghdad. Eventually, Saddam took over.

Sramana Mitra: You were still living in Baghdad at that point?

Francis Dinha: Yes, I saw the brutality of execution and the killing of the people. I just couldn’t live with it. I used to play guitar. I love music. The culture didn’t blend very well with me. I had a friend who lived in Sweden. We exchanged letters. I decided to leave Baghdad and apply for political asylum in Sweden. I had six siblings. I was the youngest.

There, I went to school. I did Computer Engineering and Masters in Computer Engineering. I was working on my Ph.D. at the university there. I was teaching at the university. Then from there, I got the opportunity to work in the US for DSP Technologies. The founders were from India. I moved to Dallas. They sponsored the green card. I moved my family there.

Sramana Mitra: You were doing development work for this company?

Francis Dinha: Yes, I was doing software development. I also had a lot of experience with hardware as well. When I was at college, I built my own computer. I wrote the operating system. At that time, the PC didn’t even exist. When I came to that company, there was a project with AT&T. They want to build this card interface for the PC.

Sramana Mitra: What year are we talking?

Francis Dinha: 1986.

Sramana Mitra: Pre-internet.

Francis Dinha: Yes. AT&T had something called 56kbps. I got involved a lot in communication and hardware.

Sramana Mitra: You’re a hardcore computer engineering person.

Francis Dinha: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Tell me more about how long you stayed with this company.

Francis Dinha: Four years. Then I went to DSC Communications. I got involved with the protocol stacks there. Then DSC was acquired. That’s when I moved to Ericsson. At Ericsson, I start working with ATM. Then I moved into more of an architect role and gave direction to Ericsson. This was the early 90s when Ericsson was developing circuit switching. They were moving from circuit switching towards more cell-based.

I was tasked to go to Stockholm. I spent a couple of years there to evaluate their technology. Everything was around ATM. I came back with an evaluation. It was very complex. They actually invested over $600 million. It was a very heavy R&D.

I had to do the presentation to the CEO. I said, “My conclusion is that the direction of the market is not ATM. It’s IP.” That was viewed as a revolt. They didn’t like that. The CEO loved the idea. I said, “You have control over a hundred million lines worldwide. You need to overlay DSL, deliver internet access through that.” They were too slow. That’s what led me to jump ship.

Sramana Mitra: That was your first entrepreneurial venture.

Francis Dinha: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: What year?

Francis Dinha: That was in 1996. Guess who funded that company? Ericsson. A lot of people get mad because British Telecom was coming and saying, “Cisco was meeting with us and they’re telling us we have to move to IP.”

This segment is part 1 in the series : From Hard Core Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN
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