The British Bill Gates finds a formula for bad times

13 May 2009

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David Crow meets Mike Lynch, the computer scientist whose firm, Autonomy, makes software that knows how humans think — and can spot when they’re committing fraud

More worryingly, Lynch says the best British computer scientists are leaving for San Francisco and Silicon Valley, largely because our society and tax system don’t reward entrepreneurs. ‘The saddest thing is that whenever I’m in California, I can go out every night with Brits. It’s important to say that the early years of the Blair government were good for entrepreneurs, and there were a lot of things done that sent messages about how we created value for everyone, not just the few.’

Since Gordon Brown’s arrival, much of that work has been undone, Lynch says. He cites a loophole that let businesses that were still being run by a founder pay a lower rate of capital gains tax. It was closed, largely because it was being exploited by the private equity industry. ‘The message that someone who remortgages their house and stays up all night every night for three years to found a business is the same as a private-equity fat-cat is ridiculous.’

As I leave Lynch’s office, the neon lights continuing to buzz Bayesian equations, my mind turns to the Presbyterian minister who departed this life in 1761 and was buried in Bunhill Fields cemetery in London. A shy, modest man, he never published his work, and did not succeed in proving what he most dearly believed. Now, two and a half centuries later, it has an application far beyond his wildest dreams. I wonder if he knows and, if he does, what on earth he thinks of it all.