Montreal's Hammie Hill and his two sons Austin and Hamnett are heading off with another start-up.
The Hills first hit the spotlight during the dot-com boom in the late 1990s. After becoming millionaires when they sold off an Internet service provider business they started up while Austin and Hamnett were in high school, the Hills went on to found Zero Knowledge Systems (ZKS) Inc. In its first incarnation, ZKS was going to build privacy software for consumers.
Because the Hills — and Austin, in particular — were media-savvy and media-friendly, ZKS got a lot of ink (including lots penned by yours truly). Austin even testified before the U.S. Congress on privacy issues. The mindshare they created from that press and political coverage, the line of business they were in, and the general market enthusiasm of the day helped ZKS win more than $50-million (U.S.) in venture capital financing — tops at the time for a Canadian software startup.
But consumers didn't seem to be much interested in buying privacy-protection software and, to the Hill's credit, they recognized that fact, and tried to re-tool the company into a business that would provide other businesses — banks, ISPs and the like — with privacy consulting and software tools. They hired an outsider – Tamas Hevizi — as CEO. This re-focusing helped ZKS weather the dot-com bust although not without scads of layoffs.
Now the Hills are doing something else.
What was the enterprise privacy unit of ZKS has been spun out into a new company called Synomos Inc. It will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of ZKS. Hammie is to be chairman; Austin is to be CEO and president. Hamnett, meanwhile, has replaced Hevizi as ZKS' president and CEO.