It is 15 months since Jill Popelka joined cyber security company Darktrace, thinking she was taking a board seat at the then publicly listed British tech group. In June she was appointed chief operating officer and she now holds the top job, after a whirlwind year in which the business was bought out by a US private equity firm.
“There were so many things that we didn’t know that transpired,” she says. “I would have been very happy in the COO role.”
In many ways it was serendipitous the American — “Texan, if you want to be more specific” — was already at the company when former chief executive, Poppy Gustafsson, was appointed UK investment minister by the new Labour government.
Under Gustafsson, Darktrace, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect possible cyber attacks against companies and monitor their IT systems for vulnerabilities, had expanded rapidly and built a strong reputation for product innovation. But it had been held back by a view among some investors that it lacked the operational rigour to support long-term growth. It had also struggled to disentangle itself from links to its early backer Mike Lynch, the late tech billionaire who was embroiled in a legal battle with US authorities over alleged fraud at Autonomy, the company he sold to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
Gustafsson initially brought Popelka in to strengthen Darktrace’s operational backbone and deepen its US reach. In previous stints at cloud-based software company SAP SuccessFactors and Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, Popelka focused on strategy and customer experience, and became known as someone who could professionalise operations as companies expanded.
“[Poppy] hated process because she felt like it stifled innovation,” says the 49-year-old chief executive, a firm supporter of her predecessor. “Today, we’re not going to over-index on process . . . but we are going to apply what helps us scale.”
Having started her career at Accenture, Popelka is well versed in consultant speak. She peppers conversation with strategy shorthand and glances periodically at a whiteboard listing her leadership priorities: customer excellence; an “unmatched” employee experience (she’s written a book on the topic); the systems needed to drive growth.
Since taking charge, Popelka has hired commercially minded executives and parted ways with others. She has focused on reducing contract terminations, customer churn and doing “some basic things” to enable growth.
That included turning more to third-party vendors that account for the majority of sales in the cyber security space, rather than primarily selling directly to customers.
“Our partners [third-party vendors] are still working off an expectation that we don’t appreciate them and we don’t want to work with them, so I spend a lot of time sharing the story . . . that we’ve changed, and we respect our partners and we want to be an 80 to 90 per cent partner-led business.”
Darktrace was founded in 2013 in Cambridge by a group of mathematicians and cyber security experts, including former intelligence officials from GCHQ and MI5. It listed in London in 2021 and its share price tripled in the six months after it went public. But ties to Lynch, who led Invoke Capital, an early Darktrace backer, were initially a concern. Many of Darktrace’s early employees, including Gustafsson, had worked at Autonomy, an association highlighted in a 2023 short seller report alleging potential accounting errors at the cyber security company.
The hedge fund claims were dismissed by an independent review but put pressure on Darktrace’s share price and forced it to spend much of its public life defending its business practices and governance procedures. One former employee reckons there was some “scepticism about Darktrace along its whole journey”.
Ultimately, the business was bought out by Thoma Bravo for £4.3bn last year. “The market was in a really difficult place, and we didn’t have the valuation we knew we could get,” says Popelka of the US takeover.
In a dramatic and tragic twist, Lynch, who was acquitted of fraud in a US court in June last year, died months later when his yacht Bayesian sank during a storm off the coast of Sicily.
Popelka, who is wearing Darktrace branded socks, insists the back-story is not an issue with customers. “I’ve probably had 50 to 60 customer conversations while I’ve been here. You know how many times Mike Lynch has come up? Zero,” she says. “It’s so far behind us.”
She is now focused on expansion — tapping into rising demand for cyber security as businesses become greater targets. The company is primed to make more acquisitions, having announced this year a deal to buy UK Cado Security, a cloud-based security specialist.
Popelka is keen to tilt further to the US, already Darktrace’s biggest revenue generator, with 35 per cent of the total. For the year to June 2024, the latest available figures before it went private, total revenues were $690mn and pre-tax profit around $70mn.
In time, the company’s American owner sees a potential to list it again, this time in New York. “I can see that, sure,” says Popelka. If Darktrace is able to focus on its strategic priorities and “get these things right, that outcome will come”.
In a swipe at UK business culture, she notes one difficulty for a technology company in the UK is “just that aversion to risk”. “We seem to have a hunger for it in the US. We’re willing to take on risk, as long as there’s a promise for opportunity . . . But [if] it’s not popular to do that in the market you’re in, then it’s a struggle.”
Popelka lives in Dallas with her husband and spends one week a month in the UK. She grew up on a farm, an only child to older parents. “My mom . . . loved me beyond belief. All she wanted was for me to live next door and make grandchildren,” she says. “She’s not with us much longer . . . I didn’t want to move here [to the UK] permanently until the end of her life. She needs to be my priority. I was hers for a long time.”
Popelka’s disposition is distinctly American: she declares she has “truly the best job in the world” and credits her father for building her self-confidence. “My dad believed I could be president of the United States . . . Not that I showed some major ambition, but he just believed I could do anything.”
That enabled her to leave her small town and study abroad. Later she lived in Germany and Singapore with her family; she has a daughter in her 20s who is a consultant and a son at university.
She says her early life on the farm provided valuable experience for navigating today’s volatile business environment. “There’s an endless stream of things you cannot predict when you are raising animals and taking care of the land . . . You have to be pretty steady to be able to accept the challenges that come to your desk every day . . . you’ve got to have a really good gift for reframing.”
Despite her self-assured nature, Popelka cannot help but compare herself to her predecessor. “I’m not polished. Poppy had this incredible polish . . . incredible charisma. Her energy was undeniable, and I’m maybe a little more undulating in some of those ways. I have great energy 80 per cent of time, and I can get frustrated. I’m a total open book.”
While Thoma Bravo is not “breathing down my neck”, she says she likes “moving fast” as the competition in the sector is fierce. But Popelka recalls one time she was pushing for a faster rollout of a project despite her team not being ready. “Something inside me was like, well, if I keep driving the urgency on the team, they’ll just get more done. They got more done, but not the right things done. So I needed to kind of reprioritise and reset that.”
As a female tech chief executive at a time when many in the sector, and in the US government, are touting the benefits of “masculine energy”, Popelka is firm on the importance of inclusivity, unlike US President Donald Trump, who she calls “divisive”.
“I sincerely believe leaders are expected to create an inclusive culture. Without belonging, your team can’t grow, cannot innovate,” she says. “I don’t think cultural awareness goes out of style. There’s such incredible value in understanding different cultures around the world.”
A day in the life of Jill Popelka
I do wake up at 5am when I’m in London. I work out and hit the sauna. I wouldn’t be able to carry on working until 9pm or 10pm if I didn’t do that in the morning.
Yesterday morning, I went and ran with the Darktrace Runners Club. I like to start with some quiet time, generally. Focused, thoughtful time on how I’m going to order my time for the next day. And I always take a look at what the next two weeks looks like. Generally, on Friday mornings, I block some thinking time.
I talk to my chair of the board once a week . . . I prioritise customers and partners over everything else right now. Because we have to focus on customer excellence, I need a deep understanding of what’s going on there.