Rob started working on the Sydney helpdesk of Borland, a Silicon Valley software company at age 17. His mind was blown wide open when he picked up an initial CD of Java and taught himself how to program. He delivered training on Delphi and Java related products across Asia Pacific and worked his way through several projects and a stint in the research and development department working on distributed application management.
In 2000, Rob moved to the Bay Area to work for a training company, CustomWare and contributed and co-authored several books and publications Enterprise Java. During this time he delivered courses across the United States for BEA Systems and webMethods as well as contributing to the curriculum development for these companies. After the 2001 dot-com crash he took the opportunity to move back to Sydney.
At the same time he started CustomWare, which later re-launched in 2013 to ServiceRocket. Since 2001, ServiceRocket grew from Rob to where it is today – a company with over 180 employees and offices in Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, Palo Alto and Santiago. Building out and running training departments in Asia Pacific and globally for companies such as Sun Microsystems, webMethods, BEA, Atlassian & ServiceRockets’ own products.
He has been listed 3 times as one of Australia’s top 30 entrepreneurs under 30 years of age and in 2009 was recognized with an ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ award by Ernst & Young. In 2014 he was listed as one of Silicon Valley Business Journals’ 40 under 40.Rob was a director for the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards - an annual competition encouraging student entrepreneurs around the world as well as a mentor for Endeavor. He represented Australia at the G20 Summit for Youth Entrepreneurship in Toronto 2010, receiving a personal letter of appreciation from President Barack Obama. He served as a board member of the Entrepreneurs Organization in Sydney and served as the President of the EO San Francisco chapter in 2011/2012. He is also very active in youth sports coaching in the local community.
As of now, Rob is spending time between Palo Alto and Santiago, helping his company establish their Latin American presence and helping to drive innovation in the Customer Success and Education spaces. He lives in Los Altos with his wife and three children.