When Jay Chaudhry sold his first company for $70 million, he focused less on his own riches, he says — and more on how the deal could turn dozens of his employees into millionaires.
Chaudhry, 65, is known today as the billionaire founder and CEO of Zscaler, a cloud cybersecurity firm valued at roughly $28 billion, as of Wednesday afternoon.
Nearly two years after the deal closed, as VeriSign's stock price soared, more than 70 of SecureIT's 80 employees "on paper, were millionaires," Chaudhry tells CNBC Make It.
"People were going crazy in the company, because they had never thought of so much money," he says.
The bubble burst later that year, and VeriSign's stock lost roughly 75% off that high point at the end of 2000, sinking to a low of nearly $4 in 2002.
Persons:
Jay Chaudhry, Chaudhry, Jyoti
Organizations:
CNBC