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Dave Aicken - Founder & Managing Director


Company » Centryc Pty Ltd

Dave Aicken photo Dave Aicken, founder of Centryc Solutions Pty Ltd, has 10 years marketing and advertising experience, a strong grasp of marketing and ICT integration and proven ability to grow companies, raise capital, develop and deliver software concepts from idea to market implementation.

Dave, currently the MD of Centryc, works relentlessly to create collaborative partnerships with to deliver upon new business opportunities. His professional creative background positions him ideally to lead Centryc's innovative approach to marketing.

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Jonathan Barouch - CEO


Company » Roamz

Jonathan Barouch photo 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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Andrew Campbell - Co-Founder


Company » goCatch

Andrew Campbell photo With 13 years of sales, business development and management experience, Andrew Campbell is a self-starter with huge enthusiasm and infectious positivism. He established himself as a top performing sales representative for Optus and later in New York for Norvergence. Andrew entered the media industry in 2004 and at APN News and Media he demonstrated the skills to land large accounts and personality to establish long term client relationships. In 2010, managing mobile marketing start-up TXT2GET he built the Australian team from the ground up. Andrew is currently in his element as one of the two co-founders of goCatch, responsible for business development.

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Bronwen Clune - Co-Founder


Company » Friendorse

Bronwen Clune photo Bronwen Clune is the customer development manager at Friendorse. She has worked in start-ups for the last five years, running two of her own in the local news and media space. Her company received a web honoree and two Australian Web Industry Award for news. She is a regular commentator on media and online technologies, having spoken overseas and nationally on the subject of online disruptions. Prior to working on the web, she was a print journalist. She is also on the board of the Public Interest Journalism Foundation which runs a crowd-funding website for investigative journalism.

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Pem Dechen - General Manager & Co-Founder


Company » Momentum Cloud Technologies

Pem Dechen photo Pem Dechen has worked in online education for over eleven years. She has extensive business development and marketing experience in both the higher education and in the K-12 education space. Pem successfully helped raised USD15 million for NextEd, an application service provider for the higher education sector, from investors such as GE Equity and Fidelity Ventures. She also managed the distribution of accredited content for the Global University Alliance (ten universities from Australia, Canada, USA, UK and New Zealand that put their content online) for local distribution in Malaysia and Singapore. Whilst with Editure Pem managed relationships with the Catholic Education Office of Western Australia and with CEnet that represented 15 Dioceses with more than 800 schools across Australia.

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Dr Ashod Donikian


Company » Navisens Pty Ltd

Ashod Donikian photo Dr Ashod Donikian received his BE and PhD degrees from the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) in 2003 and 2010, respectively. Ashod has worked on several projects involving sensing, manned and unmanned vehicles, and assistive technology. In 2007, Ashod spent 6 months residing in the US as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley working on the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, a highly regarded robotics challenge sponsored by the US government. Ashod has spent several years working as a research engineer on various robotics projects at UTS, and as an academic teaching within the UTS Faculty of Engineering.

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Alan Downie - Co-Founder


Company » Bugherd

Alan Downie photo Alan Downie is a website and applications developer with over 15 years experience in the industry. With a background in developing enterprise software he now concerns himself with developing web applications to improve the lives of web developers and designers.

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Scott Frew - CEO


Company » iAsset Pty Ltd

Scott Frew photo Serial Entrepreneur, multiple successful startups, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2009 (eastern Reg., Products Cat), BRW Fast 100 9 times, ANZ Private Business Awards Finalist 2010, Deloitte Tech 50 Aus and 500 APAC (09 and 10) built 200M Co from scratch sold to US Co, built another 160M co from scratch (current).

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Nicholas Gruen - Chairman


Company » Kaggle

Nicholas Gruen photo Nicholas Gruen is the chairman of Kaggle. He advised two Ministers in the Australian Government in the 1980s and 1990s before being appointed to the Australian Productivity Commission. In 2000, after a stint at Australia's peak business association, the Business Council of Australia, he founded Lateral Economics and Peach Financial.

Dr Gruen was a member of the Cutler Review into Innovation in 2008. In 2009 he chaired the Australian Government's Government 2.0 Taskforce, which recommended ways of getting Australian governments to embrace the incredible possibilities presented by Web 2.0. He is also a board member of Sustainability Victoria and Chairman of Online Opinion.

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Alison Hardacre - Managing Director


Company » Specialist Link

Alison Hardacre photo A former Young Australian of the Year, Alison Hardacre combined her health and community service and corporate executive background to found Specialist Link in 2009, and harness technology to transform health in Australia and internationally. She is an accomplished general manager with a professional background in health, banking and management consulting in Australia and Asia, with profit and loss responsibility for up to $18B in assets. She also has 10 years' experience as a director of some of Australia's largest charities. Alison speaks five Asian languages, and holds an MBA from Melbourne Business School, as well as Law and Arts degrees from Monash University.

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Chandika Jayasundara - CEO


Company » Cinergix Pty Ltd

Chandika Jayasundara Chandika Jayasundarais the CEO of Cinergix, which he co-founded in 2008. Since then, Chandika has been instrumental in building the team, company, product and establishing Creately as an innovative and leading visual collaboration platform globally. Before Cinergix, Chandika was a Software consultant and an engineer serving leading global companies with Virtusa, a global software solutions provider. He holds a BSc. (Hons) from the University of London and a MSc. from the University of Melbourne. He was also a key member of research teams at the University of Melbourne focusing on online collaboration.

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Bart Jellema - Co-Founder


Company » ZeroMail

Bart Jellema photo Bart Jellema was only 6 years old when he started coding. At the age of 14 he developed a complete CRM system for a large company. He's been developing new software applications ever since. In 2007 Bart co-founded the online discount coupon service Tjoos which was acquired by US based Internet Brands in March 2010.

Bart is also the founder of Startup Australia and was honoured as The Next Web Australia’s Startup Person of the Year in 2010.

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Scott Julian - CEO


Company » Effective Measure International

Scott Julian photo Scott Julian has been the CEO of Effective Measure since July 2008. Scott is also a Director at Lapbase and Managing Partner at Digital Crossroads.

Scott is a seasoned Internet start-up professional with years of experience both building start-up and sitting on start-up boards.

Scott's current project is the launch and management of venture-backed, global audience measurement company Effective Measure, servicing a client base of multinational brands, advertising agencies and online publishers.

Scott is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management. Scott’s specialties are: Seed and Early Stage Investment, IT Company Optimisation and Cutting Edge Web Application Technologies.

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Rob Manson - Managing Director


Company » buildAR

Rob Manson photo Rob Manson is the Managing Director and co-founder of http://mob-labs.com He regularly presents on mobile, AR and future technology development. He is a co-founder of http://AR-UX.com and http://ARStandards.org and is an invited expert on the W3C’s Points of Interest Working Group. Rob has been building web based startups in Sydney since 1994.

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David McKinney - Founder/CEO


Company » Filter Squad

David McKinney photo David McKinney is Founder and CEO of Filter Squad. Prior to Filter Squad David McKinney was a UK Top 40 charts musician and promoted one of his own records into the UK charts by using social media for a total spend of $282. David has also worked extensively as a marine scientist where he worked on the manipulation of large scientific data sets for the Australian Federal government to extract and present useful results for decision making.

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Matt Milosavljevic - Co-Founder


Company » Bugherd

Matt Milosavljevic photo Matt Milosavljevic walks a fine line between designer and developer, with the singular goal of creating beautifully compelling user experience. He has spent the last four years building tools and applications aimed at helping other designers and developers get more done and have more fun doing it.

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Ned Moorfield - Co-Founder


Company » goCatch

Ned Moorfield photo Ned Moorfield is a detail oriented, client focused software engineer with over 8 years experience in IT solution delivery. With a degree in Computer Systems Engineering from University of Adelaide, Ned has managed projects in the advanced manufacturing, online media and investment banking industries. Whilst Working for Macquarie Bank, Barclays Capital and AMP Capital Investors, Ned developed a reputation for diligence, attention to detail and for fostering strong client relationships. Ned is currently enrolled in an Executive MBA with the Australian Graduate School of Management and as one of the two founders of goCatch, he is responsible for product development.

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Dan Nolan - Lead Software Engineer


Company » vtalk Holdings Pty Ltd

Dan Nolan photo Dan Nolan is the lead software engineer at vtalk, having started at the company in 2010. An avid fan of technology and programming from a young age, Dan has been working in the web, desktop, mobile and embedded fields for over five years. In that time he's been an advocate for creating powerful systems that provide high usability and compelling user experiences. Dan is a passionate supporter of unified communications and loves working in a space that helps people stay connected.

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Kerry Plowright - Managing Director


Company » The Early Warning Network (EWN)

Kerry Plowright photo Kerry Plowright is the Managing Director of EWN. Kerry was previously an Army Officer before share farming in Central Queensland and then getting involved in marketing and sales. Kerry founded New Zealand Green Magazine (Dist 60,000) in 1992 and in 1996 the ezimerchant business, arguably the first to offer an affordable, packaged ecommerce solution to small and medium business. Kerry also has significant experience in the environmental movement orchestrating and heading numerous pro-active conservation efforts. This included a mission into Kuwait during the first Gulf War to protect habitat from oil inundation. Kerry has been bootstrapping EWN since late 2007.

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Matt Powell - Co-Founder & CTO


Company » Agworld Pty Ltd

Matt Powell photo Matt Powell is Co-founder and CTO of Agworld. He has over 15 years experience in the Computer Science industry, and holds a Bachelor of Computer and Mathematical Science from the University of Western Australia. Matt is Perth born and bred and was engaged in various programming, consultant and management roles for SAS Institute Australia, Nokia, Bullant (now Xumii) and Colleagues Information Solutions both in Australia and Europe. His entrepreneurial ventures include a computer building business at University, a number of start-up Internet Service Providers, a music promotions and DJ business, technical leader at a Digital Pen startup and most recently building Agworld from the ground up. Matt is passionate about technology and keenly interested in helping Agricultural businesses capture and manage information better, and world peace ;-) .

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Catherine Prosser - CEO


Company » StageBitz Pty Ltd

Catherine Prosser photo Catherine Prosser is a former stage and production manager for theatre with experience in designing and making props, costumes and puppets, festival and event management and venue operation. Catherine began developing software solutions for the professional theatre industry in 2006, when development on Production Genie® Theatre Software began. She created StageBitz™ in 2010. Catherine has also served on many panels, including four years on the ABC Advisory Council, on the boards of The Street Theatre and Canberra Youth Theatre and a as peer-assessor for artsACT’s Theatre & Dance and Film & TV funds as well as the ACT Festival Fund.

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Dr Mark Reed - CEO / CTO


Company » InterfereX

Mark Reed photo InterfereX CEO/CTO, Dr. Mark C. Reed is a world leading authority on wireless small cells and has given presentations on the subject at IEEE Conferences, Femtocells World Summit (UK), and to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). He has performed research and commercial projects on wireless systems in Europe and Australia over the last 15 years with a number of world-firsts. Mark has spent significant time in Silicon Valley and San Diego and is highly connected to industry. Mark holds a PhD in communication engineering. He has more than 60 publications, 9 patents and a number of Awards.

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Guy Sewell - CEO


Company » Thereitis.com Pty Ltd

Guy Sewell photo Guy Sewell is the CEO of Thereitis.com Pty Ltd, having successfully spun the IP out of Flinders University, South Australia in 2010. He has since raised seed funding, built a development team, managed strategic product development, secured beta customers and is now executing a go to market strategy.

He has 13 + years of sales, business development and management experience in global media and technology companies, including AOL, Reuters and Fairfax. Guy's energy and enthusiasm for engaging with his clients means that he has consistently been a top performer in each company. He is thriving on the day to day challenges that running a start-up presents and excited to be taking the this technology to a global market.

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Tony Surtees - CEO


Company » Hyperlocalizer Pty Ltd

Tony Surtees photo Tony Surtees is CEO of HYPERLOCALIZER. He was CEO of iPrime, for Prime Media Group Limited, Vice President and General Manager of Yahoo!’s commerce division in the US, responsible for 14 business units generating US$200 million per annum in advertising and US$2.5B in gross sales. Previously Chairman of Independent Advisory Group for Australia Post's Postzone, External Advisor for the Victorian Innovation Strategy and Parliamentary Secretary to the Premier of Victoria, delegate to the 2020 Summit, he sits on the Global Advisory Board for Advance.

Tony was named as one of Australia’s Top Ten Digital Entrepreneurs by ‘Smart Company’ magazine. Tony holds a B.Comm from UNSW and a Master of Science in Management from the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, California, where he was a Sloan Fellow.

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Sheng Yeo - Director


Company » Orion Virtualisation Solutions Pty Ltd

Sheng Yeo photo Sheng Yeo is a Director and Co-Founder of OrionVM. He deals mainly with the business operations of the company, and works closely with the other founders to deliver a great product and customer experience to our users. In the past Sheng has worked in both the Accounting and IT fields. He spent several years working for a Big 4 Accounting firm, as well as a Systems Engineer at a software development company.

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