Christopher J. Horn is an Irish academic and businessperson, co-founder and CEO of Ireland's first NASDAQ-listed company, IONA Technologies, once one of the world's top ten software-only companies by revenue. He also led fundraising for, and became founding chairperson of, Dublin's Science Gallery, and later its international spinoff projects. Horn, an electronics engineer and holder of a PhD in computer science, has also written extensively on technology and business innovation, and on privacy, including for The Irish Times. A former president of Engineers Ireland, and later made a Fellow of that body, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Trinity College Dublin, and a Gold Medal of the Royal Dublin Society. He has been chairperson or member of multiple commercial and voluntary boards, including those of Trinity College Dublin and Science Foundation Ireland.
Early life and education
Christopher J. Horn was born in the UK and his family moved to Bray, County Wicklow when he was very young. He grew up in Blackrock, Dublin, attending the local Newpark Comprehensive School. His first job was as an attendant at the Butlin's Mosney holiday camp north of Dublin.
He took his first degrees in Trinity College Dublin (TCD), graduating with BA and BAI (Engineering) in 1978, with a specialism in electronic engineering. He continued study at Trinity, completing a PhD in Computing and Control Science and Technology in 1983, the thesis for which, entitled Dada - the language and its implementation, was published in 1984.
Career
Academic career
Horn was hired as a junior lecturer at TCD in 1979, working on a new BA moderatorship in Computer Science. After completion of his PhD, he worked for a year as a consultant for Chaco, which later became part of Baltimore Technologies, as a contracted civil servant ("functionary") at the European Commission principal offices in Brussels, dealing with the ESPRIT programme. He then continued as a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at TCD, where he worked full-time until 1991.
IONA
In 1981 Horn had visited Stanford University, where he met Andy Bechtolsheim, inventor of the Stanford University Network (SUN) workstation, and Bill Joy, and when they later went on to co-found Sun Microsystems, he began to talk to fellow academics about starting their own venture. Eventually, in 1991, Horn, Sean Baker and Annrai O’Toole, all then academics in the Department of Computer Science at TCD, put in each to found IONA Technologies. The company aimed to produce object-oriented software, specifically seeing a market demand for middleware. IONA received limited support from Trinity College, including an office in a TCD innovation centre on Westland Row. Horn took up the role of CEO, and was also the lead architect for at least one major product. The agreement with Trinity College did allow for Horn and one of his colleagues to work part-time for 2–3 years after launching IONA. The firm's main object-oriented middleware software product, Orbix, was successful. The company, which did not raise angel or venture capital, but did have some IDA Ireland support, grew, and, after securing a 25% investment from Sun Microsystems in 1993, was able to float on the NASDAQ, achieving the fifth largest debut on that exchange to date. At peak the company reached a market valuation of . Horn sold a substantial tranche of shares in 1998.
Horn stepped down from the CEO role in 2000, but remained as a non-executive director; he returned to the CEO role from 2003 to 2005, after the "dotcom crash". Having cashed in shares previously, Horn, who was vice-chairperson from 2005 onwards, received a further payout of around when the company was finally sold in 2008. He remained a shareholder, selling more shares in 2011, but still holding 10% of IONA, worth , after that; IONA was dissolved in 2017.
After IONA
Horn invested in a search and advertising technology provider, Sophia (sold to Boxfish), Nomos Software and a data storage enterprise, Gridstore (later Hypergrid), among others. He also worked with private equity outfit Atlantic Bridge, eventually joining as a partner and advisor. He served as a non-executive director on the boards two billing software companies, Sepro Telecom and LeCayla, and on a cloud-based dev-ops outfit, Cloudsmith, which he earlier co-founded.
He writes regularly for The Irish Times.