The Arc of Achievement

“As long as you can sell, you’ll be able to put food on the table.”

This was the advice that Edward Herman gave his young grandson, Jonathon, and the boy never forgot it.

Himself the grandson of immigrants and a child of the Great Depression, Edward and his wife Ruth knew what it meant to struggle, but even more so, they knew what it meant to persevere.  Whatever product he sold, he believed in wholeheartedly.  “Pop-Pop taught me that, if you believe in something enough and are passionate about it, others will see that in you, and it will really speak to them,” Jonathon remembers today.

Edward grew up in a generation where people stuffed money under mattresses, yet through hard work and incredible passion, he built a wonderful life for himself and his family, to the extent that he was able to enjoy his passions, retire, travel the world, and try his hand at a game he could never afford to play before—golf.  He found that he didn’t particularly like the sport, but he bought an ugly red plaid golfing hat, complete with a green pompom, which he wore from time to time for fun.

Years later, when Edward passed away during Jonathon’s junior year of college and the family gathered together to sort through his things, his very distraught grandson noticed the hat amongst his belongings and immediately recognized it as the thing he would remember his grandfather by.  “To me, that hat represents an arc of achievement, whether it’s financial, cultural, or familial, that connects across generations,” Jonathon describes.  “It represents the incredible strides my grandfather made in his own life, which echo those made by generations of people who came to this country to build a better future.”  Now a founding partner of Fortify Ventures, an early stage investment fund that lives side by side with its portfolio companies to provide support along the way, Jonathon surges toward achievement with each professional endeavor he engages in, employing that same infectious and transformational passion he learned from his grandfather all those years ago.

As an early stage technology fund investing primarily in software companies to date, Fortify believes in funding innovators.  “Our goal is to inspire and support entrepreneurs,” Jonathon says simply.  “We invest, syndicate with other investors, help companies put in place the tactical steps to achieve their strategic goals, and most importantly, we let them know that they can do it.” This is done in part via direct funding and community support through the Fortify Ventures Fund.  Another component of the company, a pitch series called Distilled Intelligence designed to bring founders and funders together, reviews hundreds of companies for a rigorous vetting program.  Through this series, Fortify has awarded $125,000 to entrepreneurs in the two years since its inception, and an estimated $50 million has been committed through other investors to companies in the program.  Fortify also created D.C.’s first tech Accelerator, a 20-week program created in support of startups that want to grow their teams and bring products to the market.

At the core of these programs is belief.  “In the two years since we launched Fortify, we have paid employees, but I haven’t taken a salary myself,” Jonathon explains.  “I’ve been doing this because it needs to be done, and the payoff to me is represented in more than money.  Fortify was a startup as well, and we are growing it like any bootstrapped entrepreneur would. The venture capital landscape is evolving along with how investors engage entrepreneurs, and Fortify is evolving with the market.  We operate differently.  We don’t sit in an ivory tower awaiting founders to pitch and educate us; we engage them directly.  There are open, active channels of communication and information so that everyone can learn from each other. We’ve been referred to as the Jerry Maguire of investors because we care to spend quality time with our companies and see them as more than just a collection of statistical data points.”  With 34 promising companies in its portfolio so far, Jonathon and his team plan to grow the fund and continue to support and invest in their companies as Fortify lays the groundwork for a second fund.

Jonathon’s vision for Fortify reflects a lifelong drive to achieve that was evident even at an early age.  He was born in New Jersey but moved with his family to West Germany when he was very young.  The Perrelli family then moved to Great Falls in Northern Virginia.  “I think I developed an early hunger for success because I grew up in a relatively rural area and saw a lot of lower middle class families that seemed trapped by their circumstances,” he remembers.  “I once asked my mother what it was that makes kids want to get out of challenging inner city environments, improve their situation, and do better than generations before them.  She said that the fact I was so curious exhibited to her that I already had it.”

Indeed, young Jonathon did have something best described as chutzpah.  The youngest of three brothers, he was a risk taker and early entrepreneur who took his grandfather’s lessons on sales to heart.  He experienced the value of a dollar early in life when he started selling bubble gum, and when he had made enough money doing that, he could afford to start selling fireworks instead—a more profitable venture.  His efforts earned him thousands of dollars each summer which, along with assistance from his parents, he parlayed into investment accounts that ultimately allowed him to purchase his first townhouse in college.  “Those early experiences with money helped me understand supply and demand,” he recalls.  “And I always had cash on hand from the sales, so when banks were closed on the weekends, my parents would come to the Bank of Jonathon if they needed cash in the pre-ATM days, so I was able to return the favor.”

As civil servants, Jonathon’s parents were hard workers and instilled in their children an extraordinary sense of patriotism and family values. “They’re extremely caring and motivational.  They taught us that, no matter what your profession is, hard work pays off,” he affirms.  “It may not be that day, year, or decade, but it will.  Hard work pays off for you, your children, and your grandchildren.  And above all else, it builds character.  My team and I work incredibly hard, and that is in part thanks to their influence.”

Fortify is far from the first team that has benefitted from this work ethic.  While Jonathon was growing up, there wasn’t a lacrosse team in Great Falls, so his parents would shuttle him to nearby Vienna to play.  When he started his freshman year at Langley High School, he and some friends decided to start a team of their own, raising the money themselves and with the support of their parents to start the endeavor.  Jonathon was the captain of Langley High School’s lacrosse team, leading his classmates to an incredible near victory at the regional championship.  “We lost by a single goal, but we gained a great deal from the entire experience,” he emphasizes.  And while the win was not immediate, Jonathon helped to build something that withstood the test of time.

Now, two decades later, the program not only perseveres, but thrives, and the team has won state championships for the last four consecutive years.  “To me, that’s what business and entrepreneurship is all about,” he says.  “With Fortify, I see a twenty-year plan that creates value across a variety of fronts and advances entrepreneurship in the region, similarly to how the lacrosse program adds value to the community and helps kids learn the value of team work, as well as earn scholarships.  For some reason, I feel like some people have an attitude that if you fail, you’ll be written off.  But sometimes we learn from failures more than we learn from successes, so failing often leads to more valuable success.”

One key failure came during Jonathon’s junior year of high school, when he did something wrong and was grounded for the entire school year.  “I was a really social kid, so I thought it felt like the end of the world,” he laughs.  “But I look back now, and it was one of the best things that could have happened to me.  For one thing, I got closer to my parents, which I cherish.  For another, they brought me along to events where I had the opportunity to meet real captains of industry.  One of Ross Perot’s right hand men lived in our town, and he shared stories with me about his time in the Vietnam War and about his journeys in business.”

Jonathon always had an affinity for business. He would literally cut and paste newspaper articles about the founding of companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and Dell, following the stories of the entrepreneurs and taping them to his walls. He even ended up investing in those companies himself as a teenager.  In college at Virginia Tech, many of his closest friends were entrepreneurs, and they would sit around and talk about business and technology ideas.  He would pet-sit for Edward and Norrine Spencer, the Dean of Student Affairs and the Associate Dean of the Business School, who encouraged him to apply for a real estate investor scholarship, which he was awarded. “Ed and Norrine taught me the importance of putting on different hats when looking at every situation to understand the perspective of an investor, employee, customer, potential recruit, advisor, competitor, or friend,” Jonathon says.  “There’s a way to do business where everybody wins.  Thanks to them, I am always trying to think this way.”

After earning his bachelors of science in finance and particularly enjoying his psychology courses, he graduated and took a job with a small consulting firm, where he learned he couldn’t work for a company that didn’t truly care about its clients.  With that, he decided to start his own company, HelpNet.  “Many of my parents’ friends were professionals with their own practices, but they were not connected and often weren’t even aware of the internet, so I’d go into those offices and install modems,” Jonathon explains.  “I started connecting these businesses to large ISPs and ended up meeting with the sales team of UUNET, once the world’s largest ISP and based in Northern Virginia.”  He believed in the network they were building and accepted a job as a salesperson.

Before long, the UUNET leadership team indicated that their biggest challenge was not scaling the network or winning customers, but instead growing the company by hiring the right people.  “I took that as a challenge and transitioned over into recruiting,” Jonathon says.  He essentially built an online recruiting system that streamlined the application process, revolutionizing the way the company was able to process and hire top-notch team members.  UUNET grew from a few hundred people to over 8,000, and from $25 million in revenue to over $5 billion.  Thanks to his vital contributions, Jonathon had his pick of opportunities within the company, acting as director of a group in Engineering dealing with tier one VC-backed hardware and software vendors.

In the five years he spent with UUNET, Jonathon had a hand in hiring a former Marine to serve as COO of their engineering group, and the two developed an immediate friendship that revolutionized the way Jonathon viewed leadership. “Layne Hefner made things happen and did it as a true servant leader,” he remembers. “On his first day, he wanted to meet the people in every department who really kept things in order. He helped me see that a leader might have the tools, resources, and ideas to get something done, but the power was in the hands of the employees that actually took action to make things happen. At least, he made them feel that way and empowered them to take action, to enjoy their contribution, and to feel like they were a part of something bigger than themselves. Thanks to Layne, I came to appreciate various styles of leadership, management, and sales skills as a powerful trifecta.”

After UUNET, Jonathon cofounded a digital media company called e-Tantrum, a Shazam-meets-iTunes vision that ultimately became a dotcom tragedy, but from which Jonathon learned a great deal. After taking a motorcycle trip with his brother through the Himalayan Mountains to refocus his mind, he returned to the U.S. and became more involved as an angel investor. As a co-founder and investor in Plesk, Jonathon continues to enjoy the success of a hosting automation software platform now known as Parallels that has over $150 million in annual revenues and is poised to go public.

While Jonathon had failed with e-Tantrum, he made the most of the situation by re-hiring some of the e-Tantrum security engineers to do perform security posture assessments for ISPs, including UUNET. “Make the most of your network and try your best to make lemonade out of lemons,” he advises. “We had an incredible team and everyone needed to put food on their tables, so I went back to what Pop-Pop had taught me. I sold our capabilities, and it worked!” This effort evolved into a business called The Shadow Group, which was sold within six months.  Jonathon was also involved in the founding of cyber security companies SecureSoftware (acquired by Fortify Software and subsequently by Hewlett Packard) and SecureForce, the latter of which is entering its tenth year. After seven years as President and CEO of SecureForce, Jonathon moved on to Chairman.

The fabric of Jonathon’s career is woven with mind-expanding ventures, influences, and accomplishments. He was an early employee at the world’s largest ISP, co-founded companies whose products are now sold all over the world, and exchanged thoughts and ideas with some of the best venture capitalists in the country.  But one of the most life-defining of those experiences was the day he met a venture coach named Chris Bradley.  As Chris helped out with marketing, product messaging, and sales at SecureSoftware, Jonathon found himself telling Chris, “Someday, I would like to do what you do.”

That’s the dream Jonathon accomplished when he opened the doors of Fortify Ventures in May of 2011, and that’s what continues to drive him today.  “In startupland and as an angel investor, I learned that I’m more effective at being a coach and cheerleader than a quarterback,” he affirms.  “I’ve cofounded and run my own companies, but I’m enjoying being effective at driving and motivating others, helping them to achieve their dreams. I’m driven by innovation, disruption, inspiration, and vision. That’s why I love coaching—it’s all about helping someone who dares to innovate in the face of obstruction.  It’s about shaping a dream into something others believe in and invest in, bringing in the capital to actually make that dream come true. The backbone of our economy is entrepreneurs and the creation of jobs through the growth of individuals, and I hope to be able to support both in my role at Fortify.”

And as Jonathon’s own childhood indicates, this is a dream that can start even at a very young age.  “I believe innovation and entrepreneurship is something that every child has within them,” he remarks.  “Its creativity and the urge to think about something new, and I try to support that as much as I can.”  This encouragement is not only professional, via his involvement as the Executive Producer of a documentary series called ‘Startupland’, as a mentor aboard the inaugural Millennial Trains Project, at a variety of Startup Weekends, at The Founder Institute, as a Mentor at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, with the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, and at a number of universities in the region. It’s also personal, via his own children.  At home, he plays a version of Shark Tank with them after watching the show, in which they pitch entrepreneurial ideas to him which he in turn actively engages them on. “Whether my children become entrepreneurs, scientists, teachers, public servants, athletes, artists, or any career path that they choose, I want for them to be exposed to a variety of options,” he says. “And most importantly, I want for them to be happy.”

In advising young people entering the business world today, Jonathon reminds us that it’s easier than ever to start a business.  “In the past, you’d have to spend millions of dollars to build corporate communications systems with your own server infrastructure, along with hiring professionals at every turn,” he says. “Now, all of that is virtual. It has never been this easy and cost effective to start and manage a business, and it can be done from your smart phone. So pursue your passion and take action to make things happen.  The world of angel investors, accelerators, and incubators needs innovative young people with great ideas just as much as those young people need it.  I believe that the main goal in life is to be happy, so why accept a job doing something that you don’t enjoy?  Ask yourself what you’re best at, and what you love to do, and find a place within that intersection.” And as he stands at that intersection today, making dreams into reality and fueling future generations of entrepreneurs, Jonathon never forgets that the arc of achievement extends backward as well, connecting him to those past generations of dreamers that paved the way for today.

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