Matt Barrie | Chief Executive Officer, 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 9 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 and skilled professionals on both sides of the globe. To date, almost 5 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 Matt 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 and most recently in 2013 he was awarded Entrepreneur of the Year from Engineers Australia.
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Bill Bartee | Managing Director, Blackbird Ventures
Bill Bartee is a Managing Director of Blackbird Ventures and a co-founding partner of Southern Cross Venture Partners. He has co-founded several successful companies. At Southern Cross he focuses on early-stage software, security, and internet 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), and onebox (NASDAQ: OPWV). At Southern Cross Bill has led investments and is a Board Member or Observer in Mocana, Bislr, wooBoard, Inporia, Mantara, Liaise, and Shoes of Prey. Before co-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. Bill earned a Bachelor of Science, MBA and Juris Doctorate degree (University of Richmond).
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Paul Bassat | Co-founder, Square Peg Capital
Paul Bassat is a co-founder and major shareholder in Square Peg Capital, which is an active investor in early stage and growth stage technology businesses throughout the Asia Pacific region. Paul is passionate about mentoring management teams that are focussed on building outstanding businesses.
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Paul is a director of Wesfarmers Ltd and a Commissioner of the Australian Football League (AFL). He is on the board of a number of not for profit organisations including the Faculty of Business and Economics at The University of Melbourne, the Peter MacCallum Cancer Foundation, the Mount Scopus College Foundation and the P&S Bassat Foundation. He was designated as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum in 2009.
Paul co-founded SEEK in 1997 and served as CEO and then as Joint CEO from 1997-2011. SEEK is the world's largest online employment business and in 13 years went from a start up to one of Australia's top 100 companies with a market capitalisation of $2.5b. SEEK has operations in numerous markets throughout Australasia, Asia and Latin and South America. SEEK has consistently been ranked as one of Australia's best employers over the past decade.
Paul started his career as a lawyer and practiced for six years working on a range of corporate transactions. Paul holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Commerce from The University of Melbourne.
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Doron Ben-Meir | Chief Executive Officer, Commercialisation Australia
Doron Ben-Meir has extensive experience in the venture capital industry and commercialisation more generally. Over the past twenty years, he has been involved in numerous venture capital organisations, and has been a founder or co-founder of six start-up companies, as well as an investor, investment manager, and advisor to several other businesses. Through these activities, he has built a substantial network both domestically and internationally.
Doron has wide-ranging experience in innovation, commercialisation and technology across various industry sectors. Having founded and supported startup companies, he has an intimate understanding of the practical challenges they face, as well as of what is required to make a company successful. Through his investments and advisory work, he has been involved in identifying and assisting innovative companies to commercialise their intellectual property and transition through various stages of business development.
Doron is the Founder and CEO of Prescient Venture Capital, and has also held the positions of Principal, Private Equity and Venture Capital at Jagen Pty Ltd; General Manager, IT&T Investments at Escor Pty Ltd; and Investment Director at Momentum Funds Management. Doron also co-founded several companies, including EneSolve Pty Ltd (energy efficiency); Centricom Pty Ltd (on-line payments); Giesecke & Devrient Australasia Pty Ltd (smart card manufacturing), and Security Magnetics Pty Ltd (identification security).
Doron was appointed CEO of Commercialisation Australia in April 2010. Commercialisation Australia has funding of $278 million through to 2014 ($82million per year thereafter) which provides Australian businesses with access to a range of measures tailored to help them bring their intellectual property to market (www.commercialisationaustralia.gov.au).
Doron's qualifications include a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering (Hons) from Monash University, Melbourne. He is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the ANZA Technology Network.
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Rachel Botsman
Rachel Botsman is a global thought leader on the power of collaboration and sharing through network technologies to transform the way we live, work and consume. She has inspired a new consumer economy with her influential book
What's Mine is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption Is Changing The Way We Live. TIME Magazine recently called Collaborative Consumption one of the "10 Ideas That Will Change The World". Rachel was recently named a 2013 Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, which recognises individuals for their achievements and commitment to improving the state of the world.
Rachel is the founder of Collaborative Lab, the leading source of expertise for businesses and governments that want to embrace the collaborative economy. She was a founding partner in the Collaborative Fund, an early stage investor in disruptive ventures and a former director at President Clinton's Foundation.
Her thought leadership and writings on the intersection of technology and human behavior have appeared in Harvard Business Review, The Economist, CNN, New York Times, The Guardian, Fast Company and other publications. Rachel has a monthly future tech trends column in the
Australian Financial Review and is a contributing editor to
WIRED UK. She was named by Monocle as one of the top 20 speakers in the world to have at your conference. She has presented at high profile events including The Clinton Global Initiative, TED, HP, Google, and No.10 Downing Street.
She received her BFA (Honors) from the University of Oxford, and undertook her postgraduate studies at Harvard University. Her work has taken her to every continent, except Antarctica
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Michelle Deaker | Managing Partner, OneVentures
Dr Michelle Deaker established OneVentures in 2006, coming into the venture capital industry as a successful IT industry business owner and entrepreneur. OneVentures current fund is a $40 million Innovation Investment Fund backing innovative companies with global relevance in CleanTech, IT&T /New Media and Life Sciences. Michelle founded E Com Industries which became the leader in prepaid card and electronic voucher technologies in Australia and was acquired by a UK publicly listed company returning $30m cash and an excellent return to investors. For three years prior to establishing E Com, Michelle was the Managing Director of Sydney-based computer and web design firm, Networks Beyond 2000.
Through her interest in high growth companies, Michelle has provided advice for, invested in and raised capital for emerging technology companies. She has extensive experience in the development of early stage companies, a strong background in Australian R&D and expertise in international business expansion. Michelle serves on the Board of NICTA, Australia's National ICT centre of excellence. She also has a number of active board and advisory positions with OneVentures investee companies including Datacastle (Seattle) and AdGent 007 (San Francisco) and an interest in Sydney-based BuzzNumbers. Michelle has over 10 years experience in research and development with leading Australian Universities and CSIRO. She holds a Bachelor of Science (First Class Honours), and with both a Commonwealth and the CSIRO Postgraduate Research Scholarships, was awarded a Masters of Science and a PHD in Applied Science.
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Mark De Ambrosis | Investment Director, M.H. Carnegie & Co
Mark De Ambrosis joined Carnegie in 2011 and quickly established himself as the leader of the investment team. He previously gained several years' relevant experience in the areas of focus for the fund. In 2009 he was backed by a group of investors including legendary US venture capitalist Bill Egan and mid market private equity fund Prairie Capital to launch a search fund in the US, being one of very few prospective funds to successfully fundraise during that period.
Previously Mark worked at Catalyst Investment Managers, and prior to that was a consultant with McKinsey & Co. Mark was a Baker Scholar at Harvard Business School, and received a high distinction average in his dual degrees in Commerce (Finance and Accounting) and Economics from the University of Queensland.
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Martin Duursma | Vice President Citrix Labs & CTO Office Chair, Citrix Systems, Inc
As Chair of the Citrix CTO Office Martin Duursma guides the company’s technology strategy, and is responsible for evangelizing technology directions, trends and standards within Citrix. As VP Citrix Labs, he is chartered with conceiving and producing creative products, components and technologies as well he is responsible for external innovation through the Citrix Startup Accelerator program. He holds bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, and is a member of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
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Peta Fielding | CEO, Burleigh Brewing
Peta Fielding is the co-founder and CEO of Burleigh Brewing Company, 2013 Telstra QLD Business of the Year. After studying Law and Japanese at Bond University, where she was the co-winner of the John Kearney Law Gold Medal, Peta’s career began in corporate law at Arthur Robinson and Hedderwicks. In order to follow her passion to build a business, Peta moved to the States to study an MBA. She subsequently worked for the Nagano Winter Olympic Organising Committee and the Australian Consulate General in Honolulu, before co-owning a Waikiki-based brewing operation. Peta returned home to Queensland to launch Burleigh Brewing in 2007. Peta also sits as a Director on the Council of Bond University.
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Bob Frater | VP Innovation, ResMed
Dr Bob Frater is Vice President for Innovation with ResMed, an Australian founded US$6.5 billion medical devices company. He has been with ResMed for the past 14 years since leaving CSIRO, where he had been Deputy Chief Executive. At ResMed, his activities have ranged across R&D, training and mentoring with an emphasis on improving the flow from ideas to products.
Bob is an eminent Australian scientist and research administrator with extensive experience across the industry, CSIRO and university sectors. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1996 for his contributions to science on the Australian and international scenes, including his work on the construction of the highly successful A$50 million Australia Telescope at Narrabri in northern NSW. This telescope celebrated its 25th anniversary this year.
Other current roles include Chief Technology Officer for venture capital company Innovation Capital and research advisory roles at Australian Hearing and Sydney University, as well as in engineering, physics and astronomy at Macquarie University. He also serves on the NSW Chapter Committee for ACU.
Bob Frater holds degrees in science and engineering from the University of Sydney where he has also been awarded the degrees of Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Science in Engineering. Macquarie University awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Science degree in 1999. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.
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Sue Klose | Chief Operating Officer, 12WBT
Sue Klose is Chief Operating Officer for 12WBT, the online health and fitness company run by Michelle Bridges and team. In this role, Sue oversees product, marketing, member support and administrative functions for the company within Australia. Before joining 12WBT, Sue was Partner leading the Digital practice of Venture Consulting, an independent strategy consultancy, specialising in media, telecoms and digital. Prior to her consulting role, she was formerly head of digital corporate development for News Limited where she led growth initiatives and acquisition strategy for digital. Previously in the US, she was the Tribune Company's director of strategy for publishing, based in Chicago. In both the Australian and US markets, Sue has led strategy, change management product and business development and brand positioning initiatives, working with corporates and high-growth emerging companies. In addition, Sue has held board roles on CareerOne, Getprice, Wego and Carsguide.
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Larry Marshall | Managing Director, Southern Cross Venture Partners
Larry Marshall is Managing Director of Southern Cross Venture Partners. Previously he has founded six successful companies in the communications, laser/optical, semiconductor, and medical sectors, with solid exits for investors, including two IPOs generating over $1B in value. Larry began his career as an engineer with a PhD in Physics and over 100 publications and presentations. He became an inventor with 20 patents protecting numerous commercial products generating over $200M in revenue; then became an entrepreneur, raising over $100M and now an investor with two $200M VC funds.
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Craig Mudge | Managing Partner, Pacific Challenge
Dr. Craig Mudge, an ANU graduate, with a PhD in computer science from UNC at Chapel Hill, was a computer designer at DEC (now Hewlett Packard) in Boston, and a founder and CEO of computer chip company Austek Microsystems Ltd, spun out of his CSIRO microelectronics research group, the VLSI Program in Adelaide. Austek produced chips for PC manufacturers in the US, for Cochlear, and the Australia Telescope. Its signal processing chips formed the basis of CSIRO's Wireless LAN patent. Currently he is Managing Partner of www.pacific-challenge.com, a strategy consultancy working in both the private and public sectors, and has a visiting research position in CSIRO.
Craig returned to Australia in 2005 after 10 years in Silicon Valley. There he led the legendary Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC) computer science lab. In 2010 he was Chairman of a Working Group of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) on Cloud Computing. He was Professor of Innovation at Macquarie University from 2005 to 2007, built in part on a partnership with Stanford. He was inducted into the Pearcey Hall of Fame.
Craig Mudge was elected a Fellow of ATSE in 1985, holds six patents, served on NICTA’s International Advisory Group, serves on the Steering Committee of the new IBM Research Lab in Melbourne and as a mentor in the InnovyzSTART accelerator.
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Alan Noble | Engineering Director, Google Australia & NZ
Alan Noble is the Engineering Director for Google Australia and New Zealand. He has lived and worked in Australia, Japan and the US for multinationals and startups alike. In 1996 Alan co-founded NetMind, which in 2000 was acquired by Puma Technology, later renamed Intellisync, and in turn acquired by Nokia. Alan left Pumatech in 2002, returned to Australia and joined Foursticks as CTO. In 2005 He founded NetPriva, which was acquired by Expand Networks in 2007, and in turn acquired by Riverbed Technology in 2011. Alan is also a co-founder of SA Angels, co-founder and director of startupAUS and he also serves on the advisory boards of several Australian universities (Adelaide, Melbourne and Carnegie Melon) and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) Industry Advisory Committee.
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Fiona Pak-Poy | Non-Executive Director & General Partner, Innovation Capital
Fiona Pak-Poy is a Non-Executive Director and General Partner with Innovation Capital, an Australian/US VC fund that invests in Australian technology companies. She has many years experience in engineering and technology companies, from start-ups to large corporations - including experience founding an e-commerce start-up in 1999. Prior to this Fiona spent was a strategy consultant with The Boston Consulting Group in the US and Australia, advising globally recognised companies in the areas of strategy, marketing and operations. Earlier in her career she worked as an R&D Engineer. Fiona serves on boards of Innovation Capital investee companies including Audinate (Portland, Oregon - digital media networking); Wine Preserva Holdings (Melbourne - wine preservation); and Call Journey (Melbourne - cloud based communications). She on the Board of the Federal Government's Innovation Australia and is Chairman of its Clean Technology Investment Committee. She is member of the National Precincts Board and was formerly a Councillor of AVCAL. Fiona has an Honours Degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Adelaide and an MBA from Harvard.
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Stuart Richardson | Founder & Managing Partner, Adventure Capital
Founder and Managing Partner of Adventure Capital, Australia's leading early-stage technology venture capital investment firm whose portfolio contains World, Asia and Australian leading companies. He is the architect of the supercharged ecosystem which provides enhanced pathways to entrepreneurs and the includes the establishment of Aurelius Digital and the York Butter Factory.
Experienced Executive and Entrepreneur with deep experience in creating, leading and guiding companies through periods of rapid growth and significant transformation leveraging technological and organisational change and has operated across both advanced and emerging economies of Australia, Asia, the Middle East and US. Previously Stuart was an Officer in the Air Force and founded a multi-award winning consulting business. He is a founding investor and director of revolutionary technology companies, Axiflux, 121cast, and Equiem, and Chairman of Peazie Social Media Group.
Stuart holds a Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering, Master of Management and Engineering Science, Executive MBA, and is a graduate of the distinguished Australian Defence Force Academy and Stanford Executive Program.
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David Spence | Chairman, Vocus
David Spence is well known in the internet and communications industry both in Australia and New Zealand. He has been involved in over 20 Internet businesses, as Chairman, CEO, director, shareholder or advisor.
Until February 2010, David held the role of CEO at Unwired Ltd. Since joining Unwired in January of 2004, he grew the company from a handful of employees to one of the world's largest portable wireless broadband carriers, servicing in excess of 70,000 customers in the greater Sydney and Melbourne areas.
In late 2008 the company was sold to Seven Network Limited. From 1995 until 2000, David held various positions with OzEmail, including Managing Director and CEO. Mr Spence grew the business to become Australia's second largest ISP. He is a past Chairman of the board of the Internet Industry Association. David has a Commerce degree and is a chartered accountant graduating from Natal and Cape Town Universities of South Africa.
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Pia Waugh | Director of Coordination and Gov 2.0, Australian Government CTO
Pia Waugh is an open government and open data ninja, working within the machine to enable greater transparency, democratic engagement, citizen-centric design and real, pragmatic actual innovation in the public sector and beyond. She believes that tech culture has a huge role to play in achieving better policy planning, outcomes, public engagement and a better public service all round. She is also trying to do her part in establishing greater public benefit from publicly funded data, software and research.
Pia is currently working as a Director of Coordination and Gov 2.0 for the Australian Government CTO looking at whole of government technology, services and procurement. This is in the Department of Finance & Deregulation, itself a central agency focused on whole of government operations.
Prior to that she worked in the ACT Government as an Open Government Policy Advisor and on the dataACT open data platform, the first of it's kind in Australia.
Pia started work as an Adviser to Senator Kate Lundy in April 2009. Pia is also passionate about the Australian tech sector, and continually works to improve the scene for startups, SMEs and clever people who do clever things in Australia.
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Melissa Widner | General Partner, SeaPoint Ventures
Melissa Widner is a General Partner at SeaPoint Ventures, a US based venture capital firm focused on early stage technology investments. She is the cofounder of 7Software, an enterprise software company providing web based applications for corporate e-procurement. As CEO, Melissa managed the company from inception to a successful acquisition by Concur Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: CNQR), resulting in a 10X return to investors. Previously, Melissa was the CEO of Northwest Supply, an industrial products manufacturer and distributor, where she managed the company to an acquisition, resulting in a 15X return to investors.
She was the founder and President of the Northwest Chapter of the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and a member of the board of the Alliance of Angels. Melissa served as a lecturer at the University of Washington's Graduate School of Business where she taught courses on venture capital and entrepreneurship. Melissa is a founding member of the Sydney Angels, a group focused on investments in early stage companies.
She is an active angel investor, who has structured and led financing rounds for technology and consumer goods focused companies. Melissa served as a board director on several US based venture backed technology companies as well as a director on the University of Washington, Bothell's Business School Advisory Board. Melissa holds a Masters degree from Stanford University and a Bachelor's degree from the University of Washington. Melissa relocated to Sydney in 2009.
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Susan Wu
Susan Wu is a hacker, entrepreneur and venture capitalist who splits her time between San Francisco and Australia. As an angel investor and advisor, she's been actively involved in the earliest stages of some of the world's leading consumer technology startups, such as Twitter, Square, Obvious (Medium, Lift and Branch) and Findery, amongst others.
A serial entrepreneur, Susan was a co-founder of an enterprise SaaS company that had a successful NASDAQ IPO and a senior executive at a NASDAQ-listed white hat digital security company. Susan was also an institutional venture capitalist at Charles River Ventures, an early stage venture fund based out of Silicon Valley. As a founder or investor, she has contributed to companies that have generated over $20B in value.
Susan has also been a long time contributor to the open source and online gaming communities, as the CMO of the Apache Software Foundation and a founding producer of the Virtual Goods Summit.
Fast Company named Susan as one of the "100 Most Creative People in Business" and "Most Influential Women in Technology." She was named by the San Jose Mercury News as one of the "10 Most Influential People in Silicon Valley."
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Joseph Ziegler | Startup Business Development Manager, AWS Asia Pacific
Joe is originally from Texas, but began his career in Silicon Valley. In 1995, he worked on some of the first e-commerce applications at Netscape, and worked at NetGravity during the time of its IPO. After that, Joe built several startups from the ground up. As a technical executive, he was responsible for the company IP, and for managing engineering groups. His recent venture, Iris Data Services, was listed as one of the
"Forbes 500 Fastest Growing Companies in the US".
In 2006, Joe used cloud services and virtualisation for his startup, Iris Data Services, as the Director of Technical Services. Later, he worked with several enterprises that developed on Amazon Web Services, including his own company, IndexMedia. Today, he works across Asia Pacific as the AWS Startup Business Development Manager, enabling the ecosystem and working with amazing startup companies.
Joe has lived on five continents and enjoys meeting people in different parts of the globe. He has studied Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Currently, he enjoys long-distance running in and around Singapore.
He has a degree in Computer Science from Texas A&M University, and an MBA from The University of Texas at Dallas.
Joe can be followed at his Twitter handle @jiyosub.
Specialties: Cloud computing, startups, and enterprise software development.
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