Exitwise Productions · 2026-05-13 · 34 min
In 1999, Dan Cornell sold his first company in an all-stock deal and watched the shares ride from 8 15/16 to nearly $94 - and then, contractually barred from selling or hedging, watched the same stock crash all the way back down. He ultimately sold his shares in chunks at 32 cents, 18 cents, and 9 cents. Twenty-two years later, he sold his second company. Dan walks Exitwise Managing Partner Todd Sullivan through the full arc: co-founding Atension out of Trinity University and selling it to Rare Medium at the peak of the internet bubble, then starting Denim Group in San Antonio in 2001 with Sheridan Chambers and John Dickson. He explains the four-business evolution that took Denim Group from custom software dev to a leading application security firm, the creation of the ThreadFix vulnerability management platform, the asset sale of ThreadStrong to Veracode in 2015, the minority investment from Wipro that started as a full acquisition attempt, and the 2021 sale to Coalfire.
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