Chris Andrews | CEO, Taggle Systems
Chris Andrews has more than 20 years of experience in senior corporate management and strategy consulting roles in Australia, Asia and Europe. His primary focus has been the development and implementation of programs that drive sustainable growth. He has held roles across a range of industries, with extensive experience in airlines, financial services, oil and gas and government services. Prior to joining Taggle in 2010 he sailed a 38 foot yacht from the UK to Australia.
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Jonathan Barouch | CEO, Roamz
Jonathan Barouch is an established entrepreneur, founding one of Australia's first online businesses, Fastflowers.com.au in 1999. Jonathan has been a finalist in the Australia Post Small Business Awards as well as being a semi-finalist for Young Australian of the Year in 2003. In 2010, Jonathan successfully exited Fastflowers.com.au when it was acquired by Jack Singleton's 1300 Flowers. Jonathan founded Roamz in January 2011 and raised funding for the venture shortly thereafter. Jonathan holds a Bachelor of Commerce with Honours and a Masters of Political Science from University of NSW and a Masters of Commerce from Sydney University.
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Matt Barrie | CEO, Freelancer.com
Matt Barrie is an award winning entrepreneur, technologist and lecturer. He is Chief Executive of Freelancer.com, the world's largest outsourcing marketplace connecting over 2.5 million professionals from around the globe, and in the top 250 websites globally.
Freelancer.com primarily connects small businesses and individuals from the western world with freelancers in the developing world, empowering entrepreneurs on both sides of the globe. To date, over 1 million projects have been outsourced through Freelancer.com.
Matt is serial entrepreneur, previously as founder and CEO of Sensory Networks Inc., a vendor of high performance network security processors. Prior to this he founded a telecommunications hardware company. Matt has raised over $40M USD in financing from venture capital, strategic investors and through government grants while running or assisting technology companies.
For the last ten years has been an external lecturer at the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of Sydney, teaching Network Security, and starting in 2010, Technology Venture Creation. He is the co-author of over 20 US patent applications. Matt holds dual first class honours in Electrical Engineering and Science, a Masters in Applied Finance and a Masters in Electrical Engineering from Stanford.
In 2006, Matt was awarded the State Pearcey Award for contribution to the IT&T industry. In 2010 he was named Alumnus of the Year for the Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Sydney. In 2011 he was named inaugural BRW Entrepreneur of the Year, by Australia's most prestigious business publication.
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Bill Bartee | Managing Director, Southern Cross Ventures Partners
Bill is a founding partner of Southern Cross Venture Partners and has co-founded three successful companies. At Southern Cross he focuses on early stage software, telecommunications, and internet services companies. From 1997 to 2001, he helped build and lead the early stage investing for Macquarie Technology Ventures (MTV), a balanced venture fund focused on software, telecommunications, internet and life sciences. At MTV, Bill led investments in several market leaders including Altium (ASX: ALU), LookSmart (NASDAQ: LOOK), Seek (ASX: SEK), Telera (acquired by Alcatel), Thrombogenix, ePredix, and onebox (NASDAQ: OPWV).
Before founding Southern Cross, Bill was the CEO of Mantara, a company that makes high performance, content based message routing systems. Prior to moving to Australia, Bill had 12 years of research, operational, and entrepreneurial experience in the United States.
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Simon Burke | CEO, IPscape Pty Ltd
Simon Burke has over 15 years expertise in global customer service strategy and technology innovation.
Simon is currently the CEO of IPscape Pty Ltd, an Australian cloud software company he co-founded in 2005. With operations in Australia, Asia and Europe, IPscape uses innovative cloud technology to deliver an agile, smart, mobile customer experience which redefines the way businesses communicate with customers. IPscape clients include AAPT, NBN Co, ACCA, Lend Lease, New Zealand Post and some of Australia's largest financial services companies.
Simon has always enjoyed being at the cutting edge of market development and in the early 1990's he led the development of the Deloitte business in Romania. In his next role as Director CRM for BT Asia Pacific he was responsible for designing and executing BT's first Asian CRM solutions portfolio. Simon's current business IPscape is the only provider of public cloud customer service solutions in Australia, and one of only 5 globally.
Simon is a graduate of the London Business School MBA programme and an Australian qualified Chartered Accountant.
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Rebekah Campbell | CEO, Posse
Rebekah Campbell is one of the Australian music industry's best known names - or best kept secrets. Born in Scotland and raised in New Zealand, Rebekah enrolled at Victoria University Wellington whilst in Year 11 at high school to complete a degree in Politics and Maori Language.
After turning around 9inety6ixdot1 Radio Station at The Radio Network in Auckland, to a profitable radio station at age twenty, Rebekah headed for Australia to work for the Grant Thomas Management agency in Sydney - and within three months had signed a little-known Brisbane band, 'george'. Fortuitously, Rebekah met Australian music industry legend John Woodruff at an event to celebrate george's number 1 album debut. John encouraged her to launch her own management company and offered her support, a loan and a free office to help her get started. Within a few weeks of establishing Scorpio Music, Rebekah discovered and signed the company's first client - the youthful, Evermore. Scorpio Music is now one of Australia's largest music management companies, with a reputation for innovation, hard work and a high strike rate of hits.
In 2007, while promoting a major tour for Evermore, Rebekah encountered a problem when ticket sales to the band's Perth show flagged. She decided to ask the band's Perth fans if they'd become promoters of the Evermore show at school or university, offering to pay commissions for tickets sold. It worked. The result? A sold out show and a lot of empowered young fans who now felt they were part of the music business.
And the idea arose - could there be an internet version of this, selling tickets on a secure website? From this initial thought, Posse.com was born.
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Nic Cola | CEO, Marketplaces, Fairfax Media
Nic Cola is CEO Marketplaces at Fairfax Media, an area encompassing the Group's digital transactions and classified advertising businesses. He started with the company in 1986 and has held a wide-range of positions. Prior to leading Marketplaces, he was the Chief Operating Officer of Fairfax Digital. In this role he has played a vital role in driving growth across our online assets.
Through his Fairfax Media career, Nic has developed a deep expertise in our transaction and classifieds businesses. Fairfax Media's classified and transaction businesses include; Drive, My Career, Domain, RSVP, Stayz, InvestSmart, OMG, Australian Property Monitors, Commerce Australia, TenderLink and the recently acquired Occupancy. They are a significant component of the company's strategy.
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Peter Davison | Co-Founder, Fisburners
Peter Davison is a Co-Founder of Fisburners, a co-working space and entrepreneur community in Ultimo, Sydney with over 100 desks and facilities geared towards supporting young technology startups. Fishburners hosts over 50 of Sydney's most exciting upcoming startups, including GoCatch, GradConnection, Zeromail, and DesignCrowd.
Before co-founding Fishburners, Peter left his senior management role at Melbourne IT to start a small VC firm in Silicon Valley with a University friend in the late 1990s. The firm's big investments at seed stage in PayPal and early stage in Anonymizer.com both led to substantial financial exits. Peter then returned to Australia and started up his own internet marketing firm which he sold before undertaking a law degree in New Zealand for "fun".
Peter is currently undertaking a PhD in entrepreneurship at UNSW.
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John Dyson | Investment Principal, Starfish Ventures
John Dyson is one of the founders of Starfish Ventures and has played a crucial role in the establishment of the company. John has personally overseen and managed nearly 20 investments in a range of technologies and industries.
In May 1995, John was appointed General Manager (Australia) of JAFCO Investment (Asia Pacific). In this role John was responsible for establishing the Australian office, recruiting a team of investment professionals and overseeing investments into 24 companies totalling $95M invested and achieving 19 exits. Prior to joining JAFCO, John worked in the investment banking and stockbroking industry for Schroders, Nomura Securities, KPMG and ANZ McCaughan.
John is a passionate alpine skier and is the former Chairman of Mount Buller and Mount Stirling Alpine Resort Management Board, and is currently a member of the Committee providing advice to the Victorian Government regarding the ongoing strategy development of the Victorian Alpine Resorts. John is also a co-trustee of the Dyson Bequest, a $15M Charitable Foundation that provides grants to a range of social welfare, education and environmental causes.
John holds a Bachelor of Science from Monash University, a Graduate Diploma in Finance and Investment from Securities Institute of Australia, Masters of Business Administration from RMIT University and is a Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. John attended the Stanford University Executive Program in 2010. John is also the Chair of Swinburne Ventures Pty Ltd (the entity responsible for the commercialisation of technology for Swinburne University of Technology).
John is a former Chairman of the Australian Venture Capital Association Limited.
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Ian Gardiner | CEO, Viocorp
Ian is the co-founder and CEO of Viocorp, one of the world's leading online video companies. He co-founded the company in 2002 and has successfully grown it into an established and profitable operation. Viocorp employs over 60 staff from its headquarters in Pyrmont.
Ian has been running technology start-ups since 1997. He was the founding employee of newsbase.com, a successful news, analysis and business intelligence service from emerging markets. He also founded and ran lastorders.com, and on-line off-license in the UK.
He is the co-founder and President of the Australian arm of the Oxford Business Alumni. He sits on the Board of Metro Screen, a not-for-profit company providing training and support for filmmakers. He is also a member of the advisory board for Sydney University's Business Information Systems department where he guest lectures on innovation and entrepreneurialism. He is a founder and very active participant in Innovation Bay, a networking group for executives.
In November 2009 he won the NSW Pearcey award for ICT Entrepreneur of the Year. Ian holds a Master of Engineering from the University of Oxford where he also won two rowing blues in the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race. In his spare time he is a competitive cyclist, avid computer gamer, husband and father of two boys (not in that order).
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Paul Gray | Chief Marketing Officer & Community Director, Bubble Gum Interactive
As Bubble Gum Interactive Director of Community, Paul's job is to introduce kids and families around the world to the online game "Little Space Heroes" and ensure the community is a safe and fun place for all members. Part of the founding team, Paul played a pivotal role in establishing Bubble Gum Interactive including raising capital, setting the product roadmap, building the team and helping to establish distribution partnerships around the world. Paul's very passionate about customer-centric products and services and he's often found pacing around the office talking about how to deliver "ridiculously awesome customer experiences".
With a Bachelor's degree in commerce from the University of Wollongong and an MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management, Paul spent twelve years in the digital and entertainment industry roles in Europe and Australia. Much of this time was spent at the Walt Disney Company where he led marketing initiatives and product rollouts for online games, educational products and mobile content in markets including the UK, France, Germany, Brazil, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand.
A storyteller by heart, Paul's (very rare) spare time is spent working haphazardly on various screenplays and stories or spending time at Sydney's beautiful parks and beaches with his wife, son and daughter.
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Mitchell Harper | Co-Founder & Co-CEO, BigCommerce
Mitch is the co-founder & CEO of BigCommerce, a SaaS e-commerce platform he and co-founder Eddie Machaalani launched completely bootstrapped in September 2009. With over 20,000 clients, 100+ employees and revenues approaching $20M, BigCommerce is the fastest growing e-commerce platform in the world and has empowered thousands of businesses to take advantage of e-commerce.
Starting with $20,000 in credit card debt and from a rented office above a mate's phone shop in Sydney's inner west suburb of Rozelle, the company grew over 100% year-over-year before raising a $15M series A financing round from General Catalyst in Boston last July. Mitch is passionate about building an amazing company culture and software that truly empowers business owners to take advantage of the worldwide trend towards e-commerce. He lives in Sydney with his wife and spends a lot of time in the company's Austin, Texas office.
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Hamish Hawthorn | Chief Executive Officer, ATP Innovations
Hamish Hawthorn has served as the CEO of ATP Innovations since 2007. His extensive business networks span all areas of technology, and he has a proven track record in building early-stage businesses. He has led capital raisings and strategic investments for a number of companies and serves on the boards of several portfolio businesses.
Prior to joining ATP Innovations in 2005, Hamish held senior roles in business development and strategy. He was the Director of R&D for the leading custom automotive wheel manufacturer, where he ran product development programs for race and road applications.
Hamish holds a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Sydney, a Master of Business and Technology from the University of New South Wales, and completed the Executive Program for Growing Companies at Stanford University. Hamish is a Visiting Fellow at the University of New South Wales and was the recipient of the Faculty Entrepreneur Award in 2009.
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Chris Hitchen | Executive Director - Local & Commerce, News Digital Media
Chris Hitchen is the Executive Director, Local and Commerce at News Digital Media.
In 2005 he co-founded comparison shopping site Getprice, with staff across offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Tel Aviv. In 2007 he secured investment from News Digital Media, which culminated in a complete sale of the business in 2010.
In his role at News, Chris is responsible for shaping the company's strategy across the areas of local and commerce. He also continues to oversee the operations of Getprice and has responsibility for online business directory Truelocal.com.au. He is a director of News' investments in group buying business Ourdeal and Australia's largest community sports media network, Sporting Pulse.
Prior to Getprice, Chris worked for Lycos Europe in Munich, Germany where he was responsible for the expansion of their ecommerce business Pangora into the UK.
Chris is active in a number of digital businesses as an investor/advisor, including Hiro Media, Mogeneration, Sellmycastle, Compare Broadband, Study Choice, buildAR, Affinity Click, Pollenizer Ventures and Startmate. He is a member of the Australian Institute of Directors and lives in Melbourne with his young family.
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Alan Jones | Chief Hindsight Officer, The New Agency
Since 1995, Alan has advised early-stage companies and new product development teams, helping with online strategy for communications, product development and marketing.
He has hands-on experience founding and co-founding web and mobile startups, as well as senior management experience in larger companies including Yahoo!, News Digital Media and Microsoft.
He advises and invest in new Australian startups through Startmate and Pollenizer Ventures and by day is a co-founder of digital agency The New Agency and a director of Bugherd. In his abundant free time, Alan volunteers as Social Media Director for TEDxSydney and as a member of the Sydney chapter of the Awesome Foundation.
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David Jones | Founder StreetHawk, Founder & Director ThreatMetrix, Mentor StartMate
David is a serial internet company founder who previously started SurfControl Email Filter (now WebSENSE), SpamMATTERS and ThreatMetrix - now a Gartner "Visionary" company for Web Fraud Protection. Each of these companies are distinguished by filtering large amounts of "big-data" as automated analytics engines. The results provided significant revenue generation and cost reduction value to customers.
David was CEO from inception through acquisition by Surfcontrol plc and was CEO of ThreatMetrix establishing early AU and US customers, grants and raising initial rounds of capital whilst "flipping up" to a US Inc.
David's role as co-founder at StreetHawk is in driving the product development of the StreetHawk's 'RRR Engine' and initial iPhone and Android StreetHawk apps.
In his copious spare time (not) David can be found freezing in lap pool somewhere, mangling mandarin and aiding the Australian Startup scene via initiatives like StartMate.
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Mick Liubinskas | Co-Founder, Pollenizer
Mick Liubinskas is Co-Founder of Pollenizer, a local incubator with Spreets as a recent success and several other innovative companies in their portfolio. A veteran in the startup space, Mick has played key roles at startups like Tangler, Zapr and Kazaa since graduating from the University of Newcastle in 1995. With Pollenizer, he is a key player in the Australian entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Currently Mick is also Co-Founder & Director of Wooboard - an online application that lets teams boost morale through tracking recognition. By using gaming elements, it increases productivity and improves team work.
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Matthew Macfarlane | Co-Founder, Yuuwa Capital
Matthew Macfarlane has been both an investor and an entrepreneur in early stage ICT startups.
Following 11 years in Europe working on large-scale international mergers and acquisitions ultimately working on opportunities in over 25 countries. Matt was head of international business development at Swisscom and led a US$300m investment into Malaysian-based Mutiara Telecom (now DiGi.com) during the mid-90?s. Matt led Equant NV's sale of a controlling stake in the business to France Telecom in a US$8bn subscription and merger transaction. Matt subsequently led the negotiation with SITA to replace Equant's network Joint Venture with what became the (then) largest outsourcing contract in the world (worth over $2bn per annum).
Upon returning to Perth he co-founded the Web 2.0 start-up Vibe Capital that launched the Minti.com website raising over $2.7m in funding.
Matt is a co-founder and Investment Director of Yuuwa Capital and has a particular interest in new technology investments including software, web based businesses and mobile communications. Matt received his Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Western Australia, is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia and is a Graduate Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He currently holds eight directorships including with Yuuwa investee companies: iCetana, Agworld, Filter Squad and Dealised.
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Dean McEvoy | CEO / Co-Founder, Spreets.com.au
Dean has had a varied and interesting career starting in business consulting, marketing and advertising with big business via Artur Andersen and a small advertising agency that launched Microsoft in Australia.
Then translating business strategy into code with one of Australia's best web development agencies Hothouse Interactive during the dot com boom of 1999 to 2001, his first Entrepreneurial venture was a bar and restaurant which sold in 2003, his second was a technology startup which was a patented online restaurant reservation system called Booking Angel. It was nominated one of the top 100 startups in Silicon Valley in 2007 and the #7 Web 2.0 application by BRW.
Dean's third and current startup is Spreets.com.au - Australia's No. 1 group buying site that has attracted $2 million investment from the investors in Facebook and Skype and uses the power of social media to drive customers to local businesses.
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Deepak Natarajan | Managing Director, Intel Capital
Deepak Natarajan directs Intel Capital's investments in South-East Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, and is based in Singapore. He serves as a Board Observer at Packet-1 Networks, Select TV, Dealmates, and Reebonz.
Prior to Intel Capital, Deepak spent 27 years in Silicon Valley as a marketing executive, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. As an executive, Deepak established a track record of success and accomplishment in a broad spectrum of pioneering technology companies including Sun Microsystems, Autodesk, Seeker Software, and Roamware. As a managing director at Redwood Ventures and an EIR at Storm Ventures, Deepak served on the BOD and advisory boards of several Silicon Valley start-ups.
Deepak holds an MBA and MSME from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BSME from the University of Washington, Seattle.
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Ric Richardson | Inventor & Founder, Uniloc
Ric Richardson is an Australian inventor, technologist and founder of Uniloc, the software company he started in 1992. Uniloc recently received worldwide attention when a jury in Rhode Island sided with the company against Microsoft in a patent infringement dispute. The judge subsequently overturned the jury's decision and the case is now going to the appeal court in the US. During his career at Uniloc, Ric has held the positions of Chairman, CEO and CTO, and remains one of the largest individual shareholders.
Ric left day-to-day activities at Uniloc to begin working as a full-time independent inventor in late 2007. Since that time Ric has worked on a small number of major technology projects as well as a diverse assortment of smaller projects. Major projects include Logarex which is an ambitious logarithmic compression technology that he hopes will radically reduce the size of all stored digital data by between 50-98%, and zkimmer, a digital document viewing technology that uses digital mapping engines to elegantly handle large numbers of photographic quality magazine and publication images.
Ric stepped down as chairman of Uniloc in early 2009 but continues to develop inventions for the company on a regular basis.
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Vivian Stewart | Director, Hall Capital
Vivian Stewart has a wealth of multi-disciplinary business experience as an investor and operationally, gained from founding two companies personally, his work in the venture capital community and with many other early stage businesses. This is underpinned by his years with NASDAQ-listed Intel Corporation in Hong Kong in a regional marketing role.
Vivian joined Hall Capital as Director in 2005. Since this time, he has worked on a number of successful transactions and assignments for public and private companies including capital raisings, trade sales and strategy.
Prior to Hall Capital, Vivian contracted as a Commercialisation Manager with the University of Technology, Sydney where he negotiated and executed deals for UTS via licensing, assignment, joint venture and spin-out arrangements.
In 1999, Vivian co-founded early-stage investment group TiNSHED, which specialised in the Internet, media and telecommunications sectors. The group invested over $25 million in equity placements during this period.
Between 1996 and 1999 Vivian lived and worked in Hong Kong for Intel Corporation where he managed multiple marketing programs and online brands throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Vivian received two Divisional Recognition Awards for his efforts from Chairman Andy Grove (Time Magazine Man of the Year) and CEO Craig Barrett.
In 1993, Vivian co-founded and was an executive director of pioneering Australian Internet Service Provider -Magna Data. Magna Data led business Internet access in Australia and ultimately became the country's leading corporate ISP with offices in five cities. In 1999 Magna Data was sold to publicly listed Davnet.
Vivian is a member of the Board of Directors of ASX-listed BigAir Group Limited, the owner and operator of Australia's largest metropolitan fixed wireless broadband network.
Vivian is a co-founder of Sydney Angels and an active member of the Angel investment community. Vivian is a Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from The University of Sydney and an MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management.
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