Sanjiva Weerawarana's journey is a testament to Sri Lankan entrepreneurial spirit. In 2005, he founded WSO2, an enterprise software company that grew to nearly $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) before being acquired by private equity firm EQT for $600 million in May.

Despite his success, Weerawarana occasionally drives for Uber. Sri Lanka's startup ecosystem is still developing, but WSO2 has stood out over the past two decades. This open-source enterprise software provider, with clients like Samsung, Axa, and AT&T, recently agreed to be acquired by EQT for exactly $600 million, as confirmed by TechCrunch.

The acquisition, pending regulatory approval, will make EQT the sole owner of WSO2, buying out all shares from investors and current and former employees. Notably, 30% of the proceeds will go to these employees, potentially fostering new entrepreneurial ventures.

"We've always emphasized the importance of equity," Weerawarana told TechCrunch. "Every employee has been a shareholder from day one. This concept, previously unfamiliar here, is now validated by our success."

Thriving Amidst Challenges

Founded in Colombo in 2005, WSO2 offers a middleware stack with tools for API management, similar to Google's Apigee, and identity and access management (IAM), akin to Okta. Weerawarana, a computer scientist and prominent figure in the open-source community, has been the driving force behind WSO2. He also created

Ballerina, a cloud-native programming language for integrating distributed systems.

Before WSO2, Weerawarana worked at IBM's R&D team in the U.S., contributing to web service specifications like WSDL and BPEL. His vision for a new middleware stack led him to start WSO2 after IBM showed no interest.