Bio

I have been working in the online / tech industry since 1991. My passion for online's ability to transform our lives still excites me as much today, as it did back then. While at university, I worked at the world's first commercial online service, CompuServe. This lead me to work for Australia's first privately held telco Optus as a technology strategist and evangelist. In 1999 I built and launched ShopFree which I grew out of my spare bedroom, to a successful business with over 100 advertisers and 1,000,000 members. My ShopFree journey also involved a move to San Francisco. After returning to Australia, I continued to run ShopFree and consult to companies from small startups to large businesses. My last 8 years have been dedicated to working with startups as a mentor, angel investor, startup evangelist & startup program manager. I have mentored with 500 Startups, Techstars, Startmate, Chinaccelerator and was Entrepreneur in Residence for the Qantas Accelerator program. After joining SendGrid (acquired by Twilio) I was promoted to Global Director, Startups where rebuilt and relaunched the Twilio for Startups program. This involved strategic deals with Y Combinator, AWS & 500 Startups plus onboarding over 750 partners. I love helping people and connecting people.