Mark Shuttleworth

Shuttleworth was born in Welkom, Free State, South Africa, to a surgeon and a nursery-school teacher. He attended Western Province Preparatory School (where he became Head Boy in 1986), followed by one term at Rondebosch Boys' High School, and then Bishops/Diocesan College where he was Head Boy in 1991. Shuttleworth obtained a Bachelor of Business Science degree in Finance and Information Systems at the University of Cape Town. As a student, he was involved in the installation of the university's first residential Internet connections. Since childhood, Mark Shuttleworth had a dream of becoming a cosmonaut and flying into space.

In 1995, Shuttleworth founded Thawte Consulting, a company specialising in digital certificates and Internet security. According to The Official Ubuntu Book, Thawte became the second-largest certificate authority after VeriSign. Shuttleworth sold Thawte to VeriSign in December 1999, earning him R3.5 billion (US$575 million, equivalent to $1015 million in 2024).

In September 2000, Shuttleworth formed HBD Venture Capital (Here be Dragons), a business incubator and venture capital provider, now managed by Knife Capital. In March 2004 he formed Canonical Ltd., to promote and commercially support free software projects, especially the Ubuntu operating system. In December 2009, Shuttleworth stepped down as CEO of Canonical Ltd. to focus on "product design, partnerships, and customers", with COO Jane Silber succeeding him. Shuttleworth returned to the position of CEO of Canonical in July 2017, with Silber moving to Canonical's board of directors.

When moving R2.5 billion in capital from South Africa to the Isle of Man, the South African Reserve Bank imposed a R250 million levy to release his assets. Shuttleworth successfully sued the Reserve Bank in the Supreme Court of Appeal to have the levy returned. However, on 18 June 2015, the Constitutional Court of South Africa reversed the lower courts' ruling, finding that the primary purpose of an exit charge was to regulate conduct rather than raise revenue. The court held "...that the exit charge was not inconsistent with the Constitution. The dominant purpose of the exit charge was not to raise revenue but rather to regulate conduct by discouraging the export of capital to protect the domestic economy."