Press Release. The 2014 NSW Tech Entrepreneur of the Year Awards were presented tonight at NSW Parliament by the Hon Dominic Perrottet, NSW Minister for Finance and Services, on behalf of the Pearcey Foundation, with the pinnacle awards going to Ben Richardson and Dave Greiner, founders of Campaign Monitor, and Tim Power, managing director for 3P Learning.
Earlier this year, email marketing solutions firm Campaign Monitor was the recipient of the largest ever venture capital investment into an Australian technology startup, when US firm Insight Ventures put US$S250 million in to the business.
In July, 3P Learning, well known for global products such as Mathletics, successfully listed on the Australian Stock Exchange raising A$285 million in the process.
The Hon Dominic Perrottet said ""This year's winners represent the fabulous talent that exists in our country. They have been extremely successful, taking different paths to build global businesses, but in the process maintaining their Australian roots and heritage. They prove Australian innovation and entrepreneurship is much very alive and well.
Head of the Judges Philip Takken of Deloittes said "This year we had a tremendous array of nominations, all highly successful entrepreneurs and great role models in different ways. The votes of the judges, all previous winners, were finely balanced across all the award recipients. Ben, Dave and Tim won by the pinnacle award narrowest of margins".
2014 winners:
Alec Lynch:Designcrowd Internet / crowd
Alec is the founder and CEO of the design crowdsourcing website DesignCrowd, The Company $7m in venture capital and has now launched in the UK, Canada, Singapore, India and the Philippines.
Genevieve George: OneShift Internet
Genevieve is a young entrepreneur and founder of online jobs network OneShift. The company already won the 2013 Australian Business Awards for Enterprise, Innovation and e-Business, as well as the 2013 Silver Stevie Award in three categories: New Company of the Year, Most Innovative Company of the Year and Young Female Entrepreneur of the Year.
Ben Richardson and Dave Greiner: Campaign Monitor Internet / web content
Ben and Dave are co-founders of Campaign Monitor, a firm that hit the headlines earlier this year when Insight Ventures invested a record US$250m in the business. Ben is the brains behind the technology and reliability of Campaign Monitor whilst Dave leads the design team.
Jeremy Levitt: Service Seeking Internet
Jeremy Levitt is co-founder and joint CEO at [ServiceSeeking]. Service Seeking connects customers who are looking for a particular service with local companies providing those services through internet connection. This way a "service seeker" can make his choice for the best provider.
Mike Ford: SiteMinder Internet / hospitality
Mike is managing director and founder at SiteMinder, which received US$30m series B financing from Technology Crossover Ventures earlier this year. As founder and Managing Director Mike is responsible for setting and executing the strategic vision of the SiteMinder organisation.
Tim Power: 3P Learning Internet / education
Tim Power is the managing director of and entrepreneur behind 3P Learning, an online education company that listed on the ASX in August and now has a market capitalisation of technology company of over $300m. He also is the Managing Director of World Education Games, Managing Director of Info Science and Chairman of Coraggio.
Student Pitching Competition Winners
Sean Pollock $2000 Ishaan Varshney $1000 Thomas Headland $500
'The awards also included a very lively business pitching competition, where students from the Universities of Wollongong, Sydney, UTS and UNSW competed for the kudos of winning, and cash prizes of $3,500.
Dr Khimji Vaghjiani, Chair of the Pitching Judging Panel said "the students prove there is a great spirit of entrepreneurship in Australian universities. It shows they have depth and vibrancy; budding entrepreneurs with burning aspirations and business ideas of great promise".
Young ICT Explorers
'The evening included presentations from three of the finalists in the Young ICT Explorers competition, with teams from Neutral Bay Public School, De La Salle College and Mosman High School winning over the audience of 150 or so business leaders present at the awards.
"We have to engage our youth in order to build our technology industry, so providing these young adults with the opportunity to meet senior business personnel is really important, to get these businesses investing back in our schools, said organiser Greg Miller from SAP.
About the Awards
The NSW Technology Entrepreneur Awards are awarded annually to the most outstanding technology entrepreneurs, through an open peer recognition system.
Last year the awards were won by Naomi Simson from Red Balloon and Simon Clausen from Startive Ventures, PC Tools and Freelancer.com.
Prior winners include Jo Burston from Job Capital and Mitch Harper and Eddie Machaalani, founders of BigCommerce (2012), Steve Frisken and Simon Poole from Engana/Finisar (2011) and Lars and Jens Rasmussen of Google Maps fame (2010). Also, Ian Gardiner, Viocorp (2009), Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian (2008), Jeff and Pia Waugh, Open Source Community (2007), Matt Barrie, Sensory Networks and now Freelancer.com (2006), James Dalziel, Melcoe (2005), and Hugh Durrant-Whyte, Centre for Autonomous Systems and now NICTA (2004).
About the Pearcey Foundation
The Pearcey Foundation is named in memory of Trevor Pearcey, who in Sydney in 1949 built CSIRAC, the world's fourth computer and the first computer in the world to play music. Now located in the Melbourne Museum and celebrating its 64th anniversary, CSIRAC is the oldest surviving computer in the world. The Pearcey Foundation is a not-for-profit that works to foster the aims and achievements of the Australian technology community and industry.
Partners
The awards could not have happened without the support of VMWare, NICTA, SIRCA, the Australian Stock Exchange and the Australian Computer Society. The awards are delivered in conjunction with the iAwards program run by the Australian Computer Society (ACS), Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) and Pearcey Foundation.
For more information please contact Mr Charles Lindop on 0419 224 214 or charles@ktmcapital.com.au.
