Profile: Mike Lynch, founder of Autonomy But those who got short shrift from Lynch for criticising Autonomy in recent years - one analyst was banned from meetings - may well feel vindicated now. Lynch was born in Tipperary, Ireland, the son of a fireman and a nurse. He grew up in Essex before reading natural sciences at Cambridge, completing a PhD in mathematical computing and a research fellowship in adaptive pattern recognition - studying the work of an 18th Century vicar, Thomas Bayes, who tried to prove the existence of God through mathematics. Lynch used a £2,000 loan to set up his first business in the 1980s before founding Autonomy in 1996. Using research begun during his PhD he pioneered software to search "unstructured data" such as voicemails. As Autonomy took off, Lynch earned the moniker "Britain's Bill Gates." Worth £400m before the Autonomy sale, which netted him $800m, Lynch has set about investing in other start-ups since leaving Hewlett-Packard. He blamed his departure on HP's failure to honour its plan to focus on software, which he suggested stifled Autonomy's growth. After yesterday's news, more may be inclined to listen to HP's side of the story - that Lynch was simply unable to deliver the numbers he promised.