Cameron Adams is Chief Product Officer and co-founder of Canva, an online design and publishing tool which makes graphic design simple for everyone.

Since launching in 2013, Canva has grown to over 10 million users across 190 countries, with more than 400 million designs created – that’s 13 designs per second! Today Canva is growing from strength to strength, with over 250 team members working together on a mission to empower everyone to create beautiful designs.

Cameron is responsible for heading up the design and product teams, as well as playing a key role in future product directions and innovations.

Prior to joining Canva, Cameron ran his own successful design consultancy, before joining Google, where he found himself working closely with Lars and Jens Rasmussen (co-founders of Google Maps) to realize the design vision for Google Wave.

He then moved on to build an email startup Fluent, before meeting Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht and deciding to bring Canva to the world.

With a strong design background, Cameron has also authored five books on web design and regularly speaks at conferences around the globe.

In his spare time, Cameron enjoys spending time with his two kids, playing music or DJing. And you’re also likely to find him relaxing with a nice cup of hot chocolate!

Holly Liu is co-founder of the mobile gaming company, Kabam, a world leader in AAA mobile games. Her work has contributed to record revenue growth for Kabam year over year from $0 to $400 million in 2014, which has led to Kabam’s valuation of $1 billion in 2014. She led the design for Kabam’s award-winning Kingdoms of Camelot franchise, which has grossed more than $250 million in less than four years. She was also the founding mobile designer for extension Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North, which was the top grossing app on iOS in 2012. Currently, Holly is Chief Development Officer leading the development of Kabam internationally through key relationships and industry presence, focusing primarily on China. In addition, she continues to develop global cultural initiatives within Kabam.

Co-founder of Hobo Labs, making guild-based casual mobile games.

Co-founder and former CEO of alivenotdead.com, an online community for artists and their fans. Sold to mig33 February 2014.

Executive Producer of "The Heavenly Kings", directed by Daniel Wu (Best New Director, 2007 Hong Kong Film Awards).

Co-founder and former CEO of Rotten Tomatoes (rottentomatoes.com), a leading entertainment website focused on movie reviews and news and one of the top 500 most trafficked sites in the world. Sold to IGN Entertainment June 2004.

Co-founder and former CEO of Design Reactor (designreactor.com), an internet marketing firm focused on the entertainment industry. Clients included Disney, ABC, Warner Bros., and Artisan Entertainment, among others.

Advisor to Casetify, Instaread, Frenzoo, Kiwi Campus, WePloy, Lecker Labs (Yomee), SupportBee, Privy Groupe, and LEEO. Instructor at MentorBox and MentorClass.

Current or former mentor at various SOSV Accelerators (MOX, Chinaccelerator, Leap.Axlr8r), Founder Institute, Gateway Incubator, Berkeley LAUNCH Startup Accelerator, Laudato Si', nest.vc, and CoCoon HK.

#55 on Bizzabo's list of "The 100 Most Wanted Speakers at Tech Conferences" (Mar 12, 2014):

http://blog.bizzabo.com/the-100-most-wanted-speakers-at-tech-conferences

Holds a BA in Cognitive Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

William is a Partner at SOSV and the Managing Director of MOX the Mobile-Only Accelerator in Taipei and Chinaccelerator, China’s the first startup accelerator based in Shanghai. William joined SOSV from SingTel Innov8 where he was Managing Director supporting China investment activities. While at Innov8 he led investments in Yodo1 (mobile games), Gmobi (Android platform), Lekan (childrens video platform), and Massive Impact (mobile advertising) among others. Previously William was a Partner at Softbank China & India Holdings, an early stage venture capital firm backed by Softbank of Japan and Cisco. While at SoftBank he led investments in Silk Road Telecom or SRT (mobile enterprise cloud SaaS), Playspan (payment platform acquired by Visa), Punch Entertainment (mobile game developer acquired by DeNA) and Peacesoft (Vietnam eCommerce and payment platform). William began his career as an equity research analyst most recently with Deutsche Bank where he was responsible for Internet and Telecom Equipment across Asia and China technology, media and telecom. William began his technology investment career 18 years ago as a technology analyst in Taiwan.

Elicia has been part of the investment team at AirTree since 2016. Prior to AirTree, Elicia worked in Enterprise Sales at LinkedIn and a B2B SaaS start-up in Sydney. She also worked in Investment Banking as part of the Technology, Media and Telecommunications M&A team at Credit Suisse. Elicia has a Bachelor of Laws (First Class Honours) and a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance) from the University of Sydney.

Niki is a co-founder of Blackbird Ventures, a venture capital firm with the mission to be a partner to the greatest business stories born from Australia. Prior to Blackbird Ventures, he founded Startmate, an accelerator that helps people with ideas become great CEOs and build global startups. Earlier, he founded Homethinking and worked at Jupiter Research in New York.

Blackbird Ventures is an Australian venture capital firm that exists to supercharge its most ambitious founders. The company partners with founders at the very beginning and surrounds them with a community of other founders who have built successful technology companies before. The firm was founded in 2012 and currently manages half a billion dollars.

Prior to Baidu Ventures Fang worked at Comet Labs, an early stage AI & robotics fund, as an Operations Director. Before Comet, she did business strategy & operations for two “unicorn” startups. Early in her career, Fang was a consultant at Oliver Wyman Financial Services consulting, focusing on general management, operational and IT improvements for major corporations globally (US, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, etc.).

Tony and Maureen Wheeler’s six-month trip along the ‘Hippie Trail’ in 1972 led to Across Asia on the Cheap, the very first Lonely Planet guidebook. The company grew to become the world’s largest independent guidebook publisher and today has close to 150 million books in print in English as well as digital versions and a busy website. Despite the completion of the sale of the company in 2011 Tony still contributes to their publications, most recently Epic Drives and the new edition of The Cities Book. The Planet Wheeler Foundation, with more than 50 health and education projects in the developing world, the Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing & Ideas in Melbourne, Australia, the recent launch of the Wheeler Institute of Business & Development at the London Business School and his position on the board of the California-based archaeological organization Global Heritage Fund also keep him busy. Recent travels have included visits to the rising-sea-level-threatened Pacific nation of Kiribati, Reactor 4 at Chernobyl 30 years after its meltdown and a reprise of his Hippie Trail adventures along the Silk Road, now part of China’s major One Belt One Road development.

Jane Martino is renowned for developing thriving businesses, having founded and built one of Melbourne’s best known communications agencies, Undertow Media, subsequently acquired by the Bastion Group of companies. She was recognised as a finalist in the Telstra Young Business Women’s Awards in 2005.

While managing her business and raising three children, she became a published author, selling 72,000 copies of her series of Thank You books. She also founded the fundraising platform ‘Shout for Good’ that was acquired by ANZ Bank in 2015. She is currently the Executive Director of Ventures at Light Warrior, on the Board of Melbourne Football Club and Launch Vic and is Advisor to tech start up TRIBE.

Through her work and co-founding Smiling Mind, Jane has been able to combine her love of young people and meditation to create a modern approach to mindfulness that young people will more easily adapt into their hi-tech, busy lifestyles. The aim of Smiling Mind is to assist young people to cope better with some of the stresses they experience today, and help them embrace virtues that she believes are important in life: resilience, gratitude, happiness and giving back to the community.

After studying journalism Ruud Hendriks (1959) started his career as a DJ on board legendary pirate station Radio Caroline. At the age of 20 he got his first opportunity as a TV-reporter and with public broadcaster Veronica. During a 9-year period Ruud anchored many Dutch TV programs mainly on news, current-affairs and sports.

He initiated the first non-stop Newsradio format in the Netherlands and several innovative TV formats.

In the late eighties Ruud became a co-founder of Sky Radio and Radio 10. In 1989 he wrote the business plans for TV stations RTL4 and RTL5 and became their first program director. Under his tenure RTL became the market leading TV broadcaster in the Netherlands.

In 1992 Ruud became President of NBC Europe in Londen and transformed Superchannel into NBC Superchannel and finally into CNBC Europe.

Back in the Netherlands where he became an executive member of TV-production company Endemol Entertainment. When Ruud joined in 1994 the company operated in 3 countries, when he left in 2001 Endemol had subsidiaries in 21 countries. Market value grew from 135 million Euros’ to 5.3 Billion.

During his stint at Endemol he was responsible for all its online activities, international expansion and distribution. Amongst others he developed the online business model for “Big Brother” making Endemol the most profitable online company of the Netherlands in the late nineties. He played a key role in Endemol’s I.P.O, the start of failed sports channel Sport 7, and the 2000 take over of the company by Telefonica from Spain.

After Endemol Ruud accepted several supervisory board positions at Eyeworks TV, Dutch bank Theodoor Gilissen and a member of the advisory boards of BSUR (ad agency), MAS Services, AIMgen (neuromarketing) and Mobitto (mobile sales).

Ruud is a regular speaker about innovation and media at seminars and host of two weekly current-affairs programs at BNR Newsradio.

Ruud is a co-founder of Startupbootcamp Amsterdam and Startupbootcamp Global.

Sam Yam is the Co-Founder and CTO of Patreon, a membership platform that makes it easy for creators to earn salaries directly from their biggest fans. Prior to Patreon, Sam co-founded AdWhirl, which was acquired by AdMob. Sam is also a YCE at YCombinator and has worked at Google, Yahoo, and Stanford's StartX. Sam graduated with a BS in CS from Stanford and is currently on leave from Stanford's Master's program in CS.

Founder & CEO (http://healthmatch.io) // Forbes 30 under 30 Class of 2019 : Featured Honouree in Healthcare and Sciences // My passion lies in bringing clinical data and digital technologies to improve the inefficiencies in delivering better healthcare. 

Paul is a co-founder and partner of Square Peg Capital which is a venture capital fund focussed on investing in early stage technology companies in Australia, Israel and South East Asia.

Paul is a Commissioner of the Australian Football League (AFL). He is also on the board of Innovation and Science Australia, the Peter MacCallum Cancer Foundation and the P&S Bassat Foundation and served as a director of Wesfarmers from 2012-2018.

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 has market leading businesses in Australia, China, Brazil, Mexico and throughout South East Asia.

Paul started his career as a lawyer and practiced for 6 years. Paul holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Commerce from The University of Melbourne.

Audrey is the Co-founder & COO of GlamCorner - Australia's largest online designer fashion rental business. In 2012, Audrey and her husband Dean set out on a mission to revolutionize the way Australian women think about their wardrobes by harnessing the power of the sharing economy to provide a platform that allowed their customers to borrow clothing on demand and on a subscription. The company they built now employs over 100 people and processes over 50 tonnes of shared clothing per month.

Alex Zaccaria is the Co-Founder of Linktree, the Australian tech platform giving users the ability to connect followers to their entire online ecosystem — not just one feed. Founded in 2016 and the first tool in market of its kind, Linktree helps users to share more, sell more, curate more and grow more. It’s become the front door to the online world of more than 3 million users worldwide (including the likes of Alicia Keys, Jamie Oliver and Chelsea Handler) and an invaluable tool for brands, influencers and celebrities online.

Shira Levine is a pioneer and innovator in customer engagement, online community marketing and social media, having held leadership positions at DC Comics, eBay, Zynga and Sephora. She is a tireless evangelist for how organizations partner with their online customers to drive ROI, lock in retention, and reduce overall costs. She specializes in consumer & business to business engagement best practices, delivering customer relationships that transcend the transactional, and supply-side marketplace community strategy. Shira shares a wealth of examples from 20 years in Silicon Valley to help other companies understand the power of strategic engagement. 

Warrick Cramer former CEO of Vodafone’s Global innovation centre ‘Tomorrow Street’ headquartered in Luxembourg. After receiving a Bachelor of Commerce and Masters of Marketing in his home country of Australia, Warrick built numerous businesses from the ground-up in the automotive, mobile payment, and advertising industries.

Warrick’s passion for and experience in innovation and business development, ultimately brought him to Vodafone, where he devoted his talent and entrepreneurial mind-set to revamp innovation at the heart of Vodafone. His vision was to create a global technology centre to bridge the gap between mature startups and corporates, unlocking a new way of working and helping Vodafone on the digital transformation journey. He has been seen as a pioneer and thought leader in corporate innovation and has won numerous global awards for his efforts.

Warrick strives to give back to the community as a mentor to up-and-coming start-ups and is driven by creating meaningful technology that helps to enhance humanity. He is keen to remind startups and organisations to start with empathy in technology design. Warrick believes we should all be responsible about creating a better world.

Jodie is passionate about helping businesses start and grow. Currently, she is the General Manager at SBE Australia, co-founder of Melbourne co-working space depo8, Melbourne ambassador for Innovation Bay and mentor at Startmate.

At SBE Australia she is leading a team in supporting some of Australia's most innovative women leaders.

At depo8 she is part of the community of creatives, startups, and entrepreneurs. Over the past seven years, the community has grown to include over 500 members. During this time, the two-sided marketplace, Occasional Butler, was acquired by rival Airtasker.

At the Wade Institute, she was a mentor, lecturer, and co-leader of the Wade Inc accelerator program.

Prior to this, Jodie spent nine years as the General Manager for leading Australian fashion designer Leona Edmiston, where she oversaw strong business growth.

Additionally, she was an Account Manager for Ericsson Australia and also for NCR Corporation in both Sydney and London.

Jane is experienced in Product Development, Product Management, Publishing, Digital Media, Technology, Leadership Development, Consumer Durables, Television, Radio, Print, Direct Mail, Advertising, SEM, SEO, Social Media, E-Commerce, Project Delivery, Project Leadership, Mobile Apps, Mobile commerce, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Innovation, Innovation, Self Service, Customer Advocacy, ROI.

Paul is an internationally experienced investor and senior marketing executive within technology businesses, having spent years living and working in Silicon Valley, the UK, and Australia. Specializing in strategic communications, Paul was responsible for marketing and communications for a series of Silicon Valley and Israeli companies, including two acquired by Facebook, three acquired by large telcos and a NASDAQ listing.

In 2013 Paul co-founded rampersand to backs early-stage companies (series A or even earlier) with outstanding teams and big visions. Since launch, it has invested in 13 companies and is actively looking for more.

Kate Kendall is a tech entrepreneur, advisor, and community builder. She founded investor-backed marketplace CloudPeeps, crowdfunded city guides The Fetch, and recently, Indie Labs, a product platform and services studio that champions the indie way for building companies. She also created the startup pre-accelerator program for female founders, Atto.VC and IndieConf – a conference for bootstrappers and profitability-driven companies. She serves on the advisory board of One Roof Coworking Space.

Sam Wood is one of Australia’s leading fitness experts and a personal trainer with over 18 years of experience in the fitness industry.

Sam’s methods and training techniques have achieved incredible results with thousands of people worldwide. The reason? He keeps things simple, gets what works, gets what doesn’t work and loves people.

From a humble fitness instructor at his University gym during his first year of Exercise Science to a personal trainer doing 90 appointments a week and opening Gecko Sports (Australia’s first-ever kids gym), a company he built to 30 + national franchises, Sam has been lucky enough to experience it all.

Today Sam is the very proud owner of The Woodshed, Australia’s largest personal training studio in Brighton, Victoria.

He’s also a celebrity trainer and media commentator, with a refreshingly honest and relatable take on all things health and fitness and the founder, mentor and trainer at 28 by Sam Wood.

Managing Director of Sport & EventTech at global accelerator Startupbootcamp. Startupbootcamp engages global startups, accelerating their growth and helping them scale through a structured 13-week program and giving direct access to a wide network of partners, investors, and mentors. Oliver Chairs AFL Europe, the governing body of Australia Rules Football in 21 European countries responsible for strategy, growth, and development of the sport across the Continent. He has a passion for developing the sport he loves in new markets. A commercial lawyer by background, Oliver has broad experience investing in and guiding early-stage technology, media, and sporting businesses through capital raising, international growth, commercial partnerships, strategy, and corporate governance.

As a pioneer into new forms of learning, Michelle helped found the field of professional coaching in Australia in 1997 and became a leading voice forging developmental and transformational coaching worldwide.

She has co-authored two international handbooks on coaching, is featured in 10+ books, and is sought out by media as a leading voice in the fields of coaching and entrepreneurship.

As an unexpected researcher, she led a groundbreaking longitudinal scientific study (20-year) of founders at various stages of their business evolution, including a sample who failed and those who sold their businesses for between $6m and $1.2b+.

Using her experience and research, she led a team to create Fingerprint for Success, a web application and community that assists entrepreneurs, investors, and enterprises to illuminate entrepreneurial talent and diagnose blind spots while also providing resources to improve their venture success.

Within Equilibrio, the first business Michelle founded, she and a team of behavioral and developmental coaches work both personally and professionally with individuals and organizations.

Michelle’s specialty as a coach is working with entrepreneurs thought leaders, CEOs, and creative artists; such as writers, producers, and actors. She has coached thousands of individuals locally and internationally.

Birthed out of her own experience with an aggressive life-threatening brain disease, Michelle's cause, and mission is working with otherwise 'incurable' diseases by developing advanced coaching methodologies and the latest discoveries in neuroscience to facilitate well-being and even complete recovery.

Founder of ShopFree.com back in 1999 and RecipeLover in 2004, he has spent a career in technology startups.

Brendan currently is APAC Director of cloud email provider SendGrid. He is also an ambassador and pitch coach for Rise (Hong Kong) and Web Summit (Lisbon), Director of Startup Grind in Sydney and is the Entrepreneur in Residence for the Qantas Avro Accelerator.

Helen Souness is a senior leader with a career spanning more than 20 years across digital strategy, marketing, and product development in market-leading enterprises including Seek, Lonely Planet, Envato, Etsy and RMIT Online where she joined as CEO in 2017. As CEO of one of Australia's leading educators, Helen has led the charge in e-learning by spearheading RMIT Online’s portfolio of over 30 short courses, as well as traditional online degrees. The courses have been designed alongside leading industry partners to ensure the university's community of lifelong learners have the skills they require to navigate the new world of work by offering directly relevant, accessible and flexible educational opportunities online.

Emily is an investor at AirTree, one of the largest VC funds in Australia having recently raised an A$275m fund to invest in Australia and New Zealand's most ambitious technology entrepreneurs. Prior to AirTree, Emily worked as an investor at Albion, a London-based VC firm, and in the TMT investment banking team at Rothschild & Co, helping technology companies raise capital in the UK and NZ.

His friends and family say he is cursed with ambition, afflicted with initiative, dammed by an unquenchable drive for success and more! But according to him, that’s not HIS fault; He was merely born with and molded by his father’s highly successful entrepreneurial flair and zest for concept creation.

He visualizes, maps, creates & delivers on everything he promises... with passion & integrity.

Currently CEO & Co-Founder @ CreativeCubes.Co

Investor in OrangeTheoryFitness

Investor in Wag Dog Food

Has had 2 US exits from businesses started on the back of a napkin and scaled globally.

Chanie Hyde has been working to grow startups for more than 8 years. As one of the first hires at BugHerd, Chanie was instrumental in the companies' early success. Once the Head of Marketing for Australia's largest startup accelerator (BlueChilli), Chanie mentors and guides many small businesses through growth marketing strategy, including being back at BugHerd!

Remco lives and breathes startups. He’s not your typical accountant, which is why he founded Standard Ledger - an accounting firm dedicated to startups.

Remco’s career combines management consulting experience gained over 10 years in multinationals like Accenture and PricewaterhouseCoopers, with experience at the coalface as a full-time CFO inside tech, medtech and crypto startups and as a virtual CFO for others. He has been doing the latter for 10 years, plus four years in venture capital firms, and during that time he has helped raise and invest more than $40 million.

He is a chartered professional accountant with an advanced MBA degree from the University of Adelaide, and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Remco also teaches finance topics at General Assembly in Melbourne and Sydney, and entrepreneurial programs for the University of Adelaide and Swinburne University in Melbourne. Because as a virtual CFO, investor and managing partner of his own business, he knows that entrepreneurs must be financially savvy to turn their startups into stayups. 

Neil Luo is Airwallex's Head of Growth, leading acquisition channels and growth product. Prior to joining Airwallex, Neil spent time at SEEK, Australia's #1 online job board and was also based in London for over 7 years where we worked for Expedia and led the data science and technology team in acquisition marketing. Before Expedia, he worked at BCG as a management consultant and graduated from Melbourne University with first-class honors in Engineering and Commerce.

Kylie is a specialist capital raising/M&A lawyer and spent 15 years advising on transactions across a variety of sectors including technology, resources, agriculture, and consumer products. She has started her own technology businesses and has leveraged this experience to help other emerging companies secure funding and scale. These days she is particularly interested in Australian ag-tech opportunities and backing brilliant women.

Jason Fishman has 10+ years of experience as a “New Media Enthusiast”, who genuinely enjoys planning, activating, and managing scalable marketing strategies across the full spectrum of verticals and goals. He is an expert in digital channels including Search Engines, Social Media Platforms, Programmatic Ad Exchanges, Influencer Networks, Email Automation, Content Marketing, and Partnerships. He has held leadership roles at all sides of the marketing table: Agency, Brand, and Vendor, which explains his ability to structure unique opportunities for DNA clients.

Jason managed the Product Marketing Division of a major Mobile Ad Network who exclusively represented ad inventory for 1,500+ Print Publishers Tablet apps and worked with many Top 100 Advertisers. Leveraging traffic algorithms, Jason now takes this knowledge and applies it to scale brands with effective marketing tactics.

Since launching DNA in 2014, Jason and the team have worked with over 250 brands and deliver industry-leading results across eCommerce, Lead Generation, and Digital Funding campaigns. DNA worked with over 40 Reg CF, Reg A, Reg D, and International ICO campaigns that have produced over $75m in funding.

Judy is the CEO of Startup Victoria, a non-profit organiser of the largest startup events in Australia. Startup Vic’s community numbers 19,000+ practising and aspiring startup founders, investors, startup service providers and government. Judy is on a personal mission to make Victoria one of the best places in the world to build a high growth tech company. She’s worked with some of Victoria’s most exciting startups. If you buy her a whisky - she’ll tell you her favourites! 

Kristen has been working in the tech and digital industry since the late '90s and has worked with companies dozes of startups during that time, companies such as 99designs, health.com.au, MYOB and various others in between. He now mentors, helps and scales businesses across a range of different verticals

Christie is co-founder of Brand Catalyser and brings to it a passion for the search industry. Christie has spent the last eight years building her expertise in the Marketing industry with the past two years for Brand Catalyser, a Melbourne-based Multicultural Brand Experience Agency specialising in both Australian and Chinese customer acquisition. Brand Catalyser provides the best in class cross-border & cross-cultural marketing strategy for brands. Our portfolio includes leading brands such as Alibaba, Deakin University, Servcorp, Nutra-Life and so on. Her Australian experience specialising in the APAC market has enabled her to hone her skills in cross-border and cross-cultural communications. Having worked with premium Australian brands including ANZ, Medibank, Myer, AGL, Stan, Red Energy, among others, Christie now supports her own client base in their endeavours to straddle the Australian and Chinese markets. From Strategy to Client Advisory, Optimisation to Business Development, Christie’s energy and enthusiasm abounds particularly in the digital space.

Steve Glaveski is the founder and CEO of Collective Campus, and his mission is to unlock the latent potential of people to create an impact in the world and lead more fulfilling lives.

He co-founded children’s entrepreneurship program, Lemonade Stand, is the author of several books, including Wiley book Employee to Entrepreneur: How To Earn Your Freedom and Do Work That Matters, is a contributor to the Harvard Business Review and hosts the award-winning Future Squared podcast.

He previously worked for the likes of EY, KPMG, Westpac and Macquarie Bank.

Emma is passionate about creating, collaborating and community building. Her experience spans across marketing, communications, events, the arts, tech, and creative industries. She creates relationships with content (information), community (people) and commerce (business). She specializes in engaging and grow a company’s community by using a range of digital marketing tactics and strategies. These include creating, planning and executing high-profile digital campaigns and events.

Across her professional career, she has created, planned, marketed and executed hundreds of events and activations, with some of the biggest names in the industry. She also curated a vast number of classes and workshops taught by industry leaders and experts in their field.

She can help your company/product/service reach a wider audience through a range of strategic community engagements, exposing your brand to wider consumer space.

TalkiPlay was founded by Dr. Annie McAuley, an experienced medical researcher. She applied her biomedical PhD background with her own experience of language loss following an earlier traumatic brain injury - to create a learning experience to accelerate language development through interactive play. TalkiPlay was created to unlock her youngest child’s speech delay, and due to the rapid traction for this product, children globally will have the opportunity to talk & thrive.

Alan Downie is the founder and CEO of Splitrock Studio. No stranger to starting successful businesses, he's the co-founder of successful SaaS products BugHerd and Usability Hub. Alan believes in generously giving back to the Aussie startup community, as a mentor for Startmate and numerous early-stage startups.

15 years experience in Marketing Strategy and Communications across the Entertainment, Automotive and SAAS industries.

Dynamic, passionate, and solution-driven marketing professional with proven experience in marketing strategy and communications across the Health Insurance, Automotive and Entertainment industries.

Her expertise involves brand launch and evolution, data-driven strategy development, proven success in achieving business results, proven success in on time and on target delivery of major projects along with stakeholder engagement and relationship management.

James Posnett is Senior Manager, Listings Business Development at the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) in Sydney. He has over 15 years’ experience in financial markets in Australia and internationally.

Since joining ASX in 2012 he has been responsible for the development of the listings and capital raising business, both domestically and globally. He works with companies from a broad range of industry sectors, including technology, healthcare, and resources. James formerly worked for NYSE Euronext in London in the capital markets and trading businesses, most recently as Managing Director, International Listings. He has also worked for BNP Paribas Equities in Sydney.

James holds a BSc (Hons) from Loughborough University and an MBA from the University of Adelaide.

With first-hand knowledge of founding his own Startup, Jonni has over 17 years’ experience in software development which combined with his business mindset, makes him the ideal leader for Weploy’s Engineering team. Previously, as growth focussed Senior Software Engineer at Redbubble, Jonni led various initiatives that boosted acquisition and conversion rates helping to grow the online marketplace into one of Australia’s best technology companies. As a techie who loves startups, Jonni enjoys building world-class, growth-focused engineering teams from the ground up.

Devon’s diverse skillset stems from international experiences in digital, news and television production. In the Philippines, she produced stories as a video journalist with Rappler under the leadership of Maria Ressa (TIME Person of the Year, 2018). Following Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, she was recruited by UN-Habitat to develop a post-disaster communications strategy and shared stories from the field of recovery and resilience. As a television producer in Singapore, she developed pitches and produced regionally-televised documentary programs for major networks including National Geographic and Channel NewsAsia. The first television program she produced and directed (Singapore’s Finest) won ‘Best Sports Programme’ at the 2015 Asian Television Awards.

In her hometown of Vancouver, Devon has consulted for the City of Vancouver Mayor’s Working Group on Immigration (producing a feature-length film + public screening/dialogue), helmed the video production department of the David Suzuki Foundation, and refined the branding and marketing strategy for the Minerva Foundation.

She is inspired by the power of storytelling for community-building, and thrives on working alongside values-based organizations with a mission for social change.

She is a Princeton-in-Asia fellow, a member of the Canadian and American Journalists Associations, and on the advisory group of the first Chinese-Canadian Museum.

Devon holds a BA in Sociology and Gender Studies from the University of British Columbia. 

Omar is an entrepreneur, investor and advisor.

Over the past decade, Omar has focussed heavily on the education sector within Australia, launching the nation’s first bachelor's degrees in Applied Entrepreneurship and Social Entrepreneurship, before then founding professional education provider The Plato Project.

Through this time, Omar has worked extensively as a consultant and advisor, supporting organizations of varying sizes - from micro-businesses through to multi-national corporations - to develop and optimize strategy and leadership for the modern economy.

In 2018, Omar also established For Men - an NFP solely focussed on proactively developing the mental health and wellbeing of Australian men.

Omar spends the majority of his time managing a portfolio of clients and business investments, passionately trying to introduce entrepreneurial thinking into the education and corporate sectors, changing the conversation around mental health in men and critically, as a husband and father of two.

Innovator. Disruptor. Skywalker. Entrepreneurship, startups and political campaigns are Niko's things. He’s the founder of 1derground and Peoplekind.

Politics is a passion working with the Greens on Local, State and Federal Elections - he also campaigned for Hillary in the USA.

A former journalist, Niko transitioned to a leadership role at a multinational pharmaceutical company before becoming a corporate rebel and joining the startup community.

He was Head of Sales + Innovation at Brand Collective for Australia + New Zealand driving change across the retail landscape.

Based in Athens, Niko is now the Chief Operating Officer at MarineTraffic, the shipping tech disruptor known as Google of the sea.

With over 6 million monthly users on the platform, the MarineTraffic team is transforming the global shipping industry.

Gavin founded Ignition Lane to pursue his passion of working with amazing leaders to drive growth by leveraging his 20+ years of operational experience across startups, corporate and venture capital. Gavin’s early career includes being one of the first employees of Hitwise Inc (acquired for US$240m by Experian plc) where he was integral in growing the business to be one of the most recognized global internet measurements brands. Gavin held several roles within Hitwise including General Manager and Chief Technology Officer, at all times sustaining a mix of strategic and operational involvement. After the acquisition of Hitwise, Gavin was promoted to Senior Vice President within Experian (LON: EXPN), a leading global information services company, and a member of the global product and technology executive team leading employees across the globe. Gavin joined Square Peg Capital as a Partner when it was founded in 2013 to invest in early-stage technology companies before launching his business consulting firm. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Melbourne.

Geek turned business guy. Investor, advisor & mentor.

Since '96 he has been a software developer, mostly on the web, ran a hosting company. He co-founded and exited (with varying degrees of success) 5 tech startups. (River Dynamics, YourWeb, ProcessGo, Wattcost, DoneSafe). He became a partner at Lookahead Search, opened and ran the Melbourne office. He directed 'Founder Institute' for two semesters in Melbourne. He was the President then Treasurer of Ruby Australia. He made 11 early-stage investments (Pin Payments, Practice Ignition, Buildkite, Gyde, Hava, Teamsquare, Mentor Loop, Spaceship financial, CodeLingo, Making Things, Taggd). He helped Blackbird Ventures with deal flow. He Invested in and mentored with StartMate since 2017 Sydney batch, Partner since MEL17. He joined the Amazon AWS Startup team in Melbourne, VC BD. He formed Pick & Shovel, Australia’s first Revenue Based investment fund.

His goal is to connect dots, to help people with the others in his network. He has a specific interest in companies that allow software development teams to be as focussed as possible.

Ben is a doctor turned writer turned startup founder whose career progression has zigzagged from intern, ED resident, prison psychiatrist, novelist and now CEO of HotDoc.HotDoc is a Melbourne-based startup and is now the largest Patient Engagement platform in Australia with over 15,000 GPs and 4.5m patient users. Its mission is to enable the best possible patient experience for all Australians.

Co-founder of Australasia's no.1 e-commerce group The Catchgroup. After building catch.com.au from the garage in 2006, Catch was fully acquired by Wesfarmers in Aug2019 for $230m and it now sits under Kmart and Target. Gabby previously co-founded Eatnow.com.au - Online food delivery service. Eat now has merged with Menulog in early 2015, and sold to The JustEat group for $855m. He is also co-founder of Scoopon.com.au , Now merged with the Lux Group. Investor in around 20 tech businesses and startups including Luxury Escapes, Catapult, Zip, Tribe, Hipages, Fiverr, Ratemyagent, Park, Flippa. He is a Soccer Lover. ⚽️

Alan Tsen is an investor in early-stage fintech startups through SideFund. He's focused on finding companies solving big problems in B2B fintech. He's particularly interested in companies trying to 'stitch the financial world together'.

He is also the former founding GM of Stone & Chalk, Melbourne - an independent, not-for-profit fintech hub that fosters and accelerates the development of world-leading fintech start-ups.

He is currently the chair of FinTech Australia where he has led numerous submissions to government departments on digital currency and blockchain tech - including the removal of 'double GST' from digital currency and amendments to KYC/AML laws designed to incorporate digital currency.

Alan is also a former member of the Federal Government’s Fintech Advisory Group and a current member of ASIC’s Digital Finance Advisory Committee.

Alan was the founding CEO of Fintech Victoria, an organization designed to help grow the Victorian fintech ecosystem by amplifying, growing and connecting the fintech community. In this role, he helped forge the Victorian fintech strategy.

Prior to this, Alan was a professional services advisor. He worked for a top tier accounting firm on complex international tax structuring and M&A matters for a number of years.

Alan holds Bachelors degrees in Law and Commerce and a Master's degree in Commerce (Econ). He is also admitted to practice as a Barrister and Solicitor in the state of Victoria.