Dr. Paul Judge - ATL's Godfather of Tech and #UnsungMogul

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?? TL;DR

HBCU graduate.

Inventor.

Serial Entrepreneur.

Investor.

Unsung Mogul.

These are just a?few?terms that describe Dr. Paul Judge.

After graduating from Morehouse and Georgia Tech, Dr. Paul Judge went on to become an inventor of approximately 30 patented and patent-pending computer security technologies, co-founded and sold three companies, and has invested in over 60 startups.

He also cofounded TechSquare Labs and Panoramic Ventures.

?????THE FOUNDER

Dr. Paul Judge grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and fell in love with tech at an early age.

Growing up, his mother was an educator and taught at a technical college. One of the classes she taught was office occupation. In the class, student's would learn secretarial skills and typing, and often, Judge would have access to the typewriters. The typewriters had a small word processor with a screen on it, and being around this made him interested in typing, and later into computers.

Shortly after, his family got their first computer, a used computer, and it came with a floppy disk.

For fun growing up, Judge would play different typing games on the computer, and when he got bored, he would take the disk out and play with it. With the disk, there was a DOS thing that Judge would play with and learned how to make different things.

This became a pivotal moment that sparked his interest in programming.

In high school, Judge decided he wanted to be a chemical engineer. During this time he worked at the Exxon chemical plant and did some computer-programming work for them. He shared an office with LSU graduates who earned chemical engineering degrees, and became even more inspired to pursue chemical engineering.

After graduating from high school, Judge attended Morehouse College, and later earned his doctorate in Cybersecurity at Georgia Tech. In 1999 while getting his PhD, Judge joined the cofounding team of a email security tech company that later got acquired in 2006.

?? THE COMPANIES

• Paul served as CTO on the founding team of CipherTrust, an email security tech startup that was acquired by Secure Computing in 2006 for $273 million.?
• In 2007, Paul co-founded Purewire, a web security company, that was acquired by Barracuda Networks in 2009.
• After that, Paul cofounded Luma Home, a consumer WiFi company. Luma Home later got acquired in 2018.

?? GETTING ACQUIRED

Judge stumbled into the startup life while trying to juggle grad school. While studying, one his peers approached him and mentioned the name of a tech entrepreneur he should meet.

The tech entrepreneur was Jay Chadre.

Jay had just sold a company called SecureIT to VeriSign, and was able to create billions of dollars of?wealth for himself because VeriSign's stock was blowing up. Jay was getting ready to launch an email security tech startup, and was looking for people to join his team. Judge ended up meeting with Jay and joined as a Junior Developer. From there, Judge helped Jay's company CipherTrust grow exponentially, and eventually moved up in the ranks.

Soon after, CipherTrust got acquired by SecureComputing, and he became the CTO there.

Judge was 29.

Shortly after, Judge left SecureComputing and launched PureWire, a web security company. Judge was PureWire's CTO until its acquisition by Barracuda Networks in 2009. From there, he served as their Chief Research Officer through its IPO in 2013.

After that, Judge cofounded Luma Home, a consumer WiFi company. Judge and his team raised $22 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, the Amazon Alexa Fund, and other notable investors. Luma Home later got acquired by Newell Brands in 2018.

???THE FUTURE

Besides cofounding three startups that were acquired, Judge has also cofounded TechSquare Labs, Panoramic Ventures, and Pindrop. Pindrop protects some of the largest banks, insurers, and retailers in the world and has raised of over $100 million in venture funding.

Outside of that, Judge also serves on the board of Greenwood Bank and TheraTrue.

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