Seven things you need to know about CEO Lou Shipley

Globe reporter Michael B. Farrell recently spoke with Lou Shipley, the newly appointed chief executive of Black Duck Software Inc., a growing Burlington open source software company. Here's what he found out:"Sometimes we don't say this is a startup because it's a big company — it's a $40 million company. But in some ways it's good to be seen as a startup because it represents aggressive growth and pioneering new markets.""I want to grow it faster than it's been growing. With a few changes, we can probably grow maybe 40 or 50 percent. That's my primary goal. It's really fun when you can be in a company that grows and becomes public. You can have a really big impact on the community. I want to give ourselves the option."Advertisement"I got to know Black Duck when I went to sell my company Reflectent to Citrix. And Citrix said we're going to scan your code for open source. And, lo and behold, we found out that there was quite a bit in there. [Black Duck] started with this audit business. The real growth for us is going to be companies that have a lot of developers and help them understand how to use open source.""Those companies are big software development shops. They really need what we have. I think government, telecom, and media companies are going this way as well.""Company formation is so much easier now because of open source. You are leveraging the creativity that has come before you. You can take those ideas and work with them, and not have to go do everything yourself. You can do it faster and a lot cheaper.""You are dealing with all these young people who want to go and start companies. You have to remind people that there's a lot of risk here. There's 1,000 ways to blow up a startup. You've got to be careful about the decisions you make, but you also have to make decisions quickly."Advertisement7A serious pond hockey player, Shipley, 50, will return with his amateur team to the annual pond hockey tournament that begins Jan. 31 on Lake Winnipesaukee. He played hockey at Trinity College in Hartford as well as when he studied at Harvard Business School."Harvard Business School had a really good team. The only way I could get on was to be the accountant."