Lee Chen Named No. 1 Private Computer Hardware Vender

Lee Chen built A10 Networks from a one-man shop to the nation's leading computer hardware vender.

Lee Chen has built his A10 Networks from a one-man shop in 2004 into the nation’s leading computer hardware vender, according to the Inc 500 list of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies.

This is the third consecutive year that A10 has been named to the Inc 500. Since 2007 it enjoyed a three-year sales growth of 3,786% to total sales of $55.1 mil. for 2010 from just $1.4 million in 2007.

“We now have 17 consecutive quarters of revenue growth as customers turn to A10’s high-performance AX Series platforms to solve a wide range of networking problems,” said Chen, A10’s founder and CEO. “A10 is the most innovative and fastest growing company in the Application Networking market, and we continue to grow rapidly with over 300 employees worldwide.”

A10 Networks also ranked in the top 10 among all privately-held Internet companies. The list provided early exposure for companies like Microsoft, Zappos, Intuit, Jamba Juice, Zipcar, Clif Bar, Vizio and Oracle among others.

As a group the 2011 Inc. 500 firms are smaller but much faster-growing than those in last year’s list, according to the September 2011 issue of Inc. Aggregate revenue is $10.5 billion, with a median three-year growth of 1,275 percent. The companies collectively employ more than 46,000 people and generated over 35,000 jobs in the past three years.

A10 Networks makes high-performance server appliances that deliver security, speed and performance to organizations of all sizes. A10’s flagship AX Series platforms are designed from the ground up with a 64-bit shared-memory and multi-process, multi-core, multi-CPU architecture that boasts high performance, scalability, efficiency and flexibility. It is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in the United States, United Kingdom, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Brazil, Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore.

Lee Chen founded A10 Networks all by himself in the fourth quarter of 2004 to prove to a former boss that it was still possible to start a tech company alone. Before starting A10 Chen was s co-founder and vice president of engineering at Foundry Networks. Lee was also a founding member of Centillion Networks which was ultimately acquired by Nortel. He held management and senior technical positions at Apple Computer, Convergent Technologies and InSync Group.

Chen received an M.S.E.E. from San Jose State University and a B.S. in electrophysics from Taiwan’s National Chiao-Tung University in Taiwan.