http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/sourcefire-founder-martin-roesch-shares-lessons-from-building-a-27-billion-business/2014/06/26/bc6e005a-fcb1-11e3-932c-0a55b81f48ce_story.html By Steven Overly The Washington Post June 26, 2014 Martin Roesch founded cybersecurity software firm Sourcefire in 2001 with the goal of making money on a widely used and freely distributed security program he had built years earlier called Snort. Twelve-and-a-half years later, Cisco bought the company for $2.7 billion. Now that’s what you call making money. In an interview last week at start-up hub 1776, Roesch shared lessons learned along the way with a gathering of tech and security enthusiasts: Admit what you don’t know. In 2002, Roesch was flying back and forth between Sourcefire’s Columbia headquarters and the offices of West Coast investors. Every time he returned, there was a new face in the office. The company went from four employees to 30 in less than six months. “I was very, very scared. We were growing so quickly and things felt out of control and I didn’t have any experience with what we were doing. I was terrified I was going to screw up and kill us all,” he said. So Roesch made a decision that more egotistical founders might find difficult: He hired someone to take over as chief executive who had the business acumen to complement his technical know-how. […]