The Founder Institute's four-month curriculum covers everything you would expect from an early-stage startup program, including topics like "Startup Legal and IP” towards the beginning, to “Fundraising” near the end. What makes the curriculum special is the Mentors that teach it, whose passion, feedback and support helps our companies avoid rookie mistakes and set the foundation for a meaningful and enduring company.
The Founder Institute carefully recruits approximately 25 Mentors per Semester, who are normally the CEO or founder of a successful startup. Rather than specialists or consultants, we prefer Founders and CEOs to give our companies "the entrepreneur's perspective." The mentors share their experiences, best practices, and mistakes, while also providing specific guidance and feedback on the Founder companies.
In addition, the Founder Institute's unique Graduate Liquidity Pool allows our mentors to share in the equity of companies formed in each program - and, their share is based solely on the anonymous ratings they receive from the Founders both during, and after the program. In this way, the Founder Institute incentivizes mentors to take a special interest in our startups, and provide as much assistance as possible after the program.
We have a great lineup of Mentors confirmed for the Autumn 2013 Sydney Founder Institute, including many from out of town. See the full list below.
Adam Benson
Director, Recognition PR
Adam is a Director of the PR firms Recognition PR (www.recognition.com.au) and Write Away Communication and Events (www.writeaway.com.au) and marketing services firm Outsource (www.outsource.com.au) Clients include Red Hat, BAE Systems Detica, SAP, Informatica, Pitney Bowes Software, RSM Bird Cameron, EI Group, Fluke, Exact Target, Breville, Kambrook, Villeroy and Boch Tableware, Uniden, and others. Adam has more than 17 years experience creating and executing public relations and content driven lead generation programs. Adam is a Fellow of the Public Relations Institute of Australia and a former Chair of the Registered Consultancies Group which represents PR agency owners and directors in the PRIA. He holds a Masters of Business in Marketing and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies.
Alec Lynch
Managing Director, DesignCrowd
Alec is the Founder and CEO of DesignCrowd.com, a leading design crowdsourcing website. Prior to DesignCrowd, Alec was a Senior Consultant at Booz & Company, where he worked across a variety of industries including Internet, Telco, Government and Oil and Gas. Alec has written articles for TechCrunch, Smart Company, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Next Web. He has a Bachelor's of Information Technology from Sydney University of Technology.
Andrew Rogers
Managing Director, Anchor
Andrew is the co-founder of Anchor, an Australian-based web hosting and management company. Anchor uses a deep technical expertise to deliver a hosting service that goes all the way through the application stack to the code, going beyond the role of a traditional hosting provider and becoming part of your team. This unique approach has seen Anchor attract attention from tech startups in Australia and the US, working with iconic sites such as Github, TestflightApp, Groupme and Kazaa.
Ari Klinger
Partner, Right Click Capital
Ari Klinger is a Partner at Right Click Capital, based in Sydney, Australia. Ari has extensive experience in starting, building and selling Internet-related businesses. He was the co-founder and CEO of iMega, an online media network with over 30 million visitors a month which he sold to a publicly listed marketing services group in 2006. In 2008 he co-founded and served as CEO of Online Marketing Group (OMG), which quickly grew to become Australia’s largest network of websites and owner of premium domain names. Ari managed the sale of the business to Fairfax Media and now spends his time as a partner at Right Click Capital, helping to find and build great Asia Pacific-based Internet-related businesses. Ari is a longstanding member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation, as well as the Australian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (AVCAL).
Benjamin Chong
Partner, Right Click Capital
Benjamin has a track record of investing in and building successful Internet-related businesses over the last fifteen years. These include Online Agility, an incubator and developer of online concepts, and Jetabroad, one of Australia's leading online travel companies.
Benjamin Ranck
Advisor, All Over Geo
Benjamin brings more than 10 years of commercial experience in both development and management based roles. He returns to Australia after 5 years in the United States which included acting as CTO and co-founding a data-mining technology company, ChatterSpike Inc. Benjamin's international experience, spans both technology startups and Fortune 100 and 500 companies. He has started All Over Geo, a mobile software company for the construction industry here in Sydney as well as other adviser roles in the startup community.
Bjorn Behrendt
Managing Director and Co-Founder, StyleTread
Years of experience in web development, complex software projects, online marketing, systems integration, mobile, web 2.0 and project management. Currently running a start-up with www.hiogi.de and www.service-community.net.
Christian Magel
Founder & CMO, amaysim Australia
Christian Magel is Chief Marketing Officer and founder of amaysim, Australia’s first low cost mobile service provider dedicated to delivering simplicity, fairness and low prices to mobile consumers with its customer centric mobile services and low cost guarantee. An international marketing expert and entrepreneur, Christian is a Founding Partner of Shark Holding GmbH, an investment and management company that combines extensive knowledge in business strategy, marketing, sales, operations and finance, with investment intelligence in the online and telecommunications market sector.
Claire Robertson
Co-Director, Founder Institute, Perth Chapter
Claire is an eCommerce & Digital Marketing Consultant at Evantage Pty Ltd, as well as a mentor for Startup Weekend. Prior to returning home to her native Australia, she spent 6 years in London working as the Product & Marketing Director for MedicAnimal.com, the largest online pet supplies retailer in the UK. Claire joined MedicAnimal as the company's vet and employee #5, eventually leading MedicAnimal's marketing and product effort through an institutional fundraising round and a competitor acquisition. Claire holds a BSc BVMS in Veterinary Medicine and Surgery from Murdoch University.
Colin Fabig
Chairman, LivingSocial Australia
Colin Fabig is a serial entrepreneur and is currently the Founder and Chairman of LivingSocial Australia. Feel free to connect and browse my profile on Linked in: http://au.linkedin.com/in/colinfabig
Conrad Yiu
Principal, Arden Point
Co-founder of ArdenPoint - investing and building online retail companies in Australia, including Temple & Webster and ParcelPoint Ex- Corporate Development for Newscorp's Australian's digital media division - investor / Board Member for Getprice, Moshtix, Wego & SportingPulse 15+ years as advisor, entrepreneur and investor in Technology, Telecoms & Media sector across Sydney and London with MBA from Cambridge University
Daniel Ringrose
Intrapreneurial Change Consultant, Future Results
Daniel is involved through the Sydney startup community both as an entrepreneur and mentor. His latest venture, Future Results, is a consultancy to bring startup-style innovation into large enterprise companies. He recently worked as a lean business evangalist for Optus and has background of 15 years in technology management for major corporates in UK and Australia
David Jones
Founder, StreetHawk
David is a serial internet company founder who previously started SurfControl Email Filter (now WebSENSE), SpamMATTERS and ThreatMetrix - now a Gartner "Visionary" company for Web Fraud Protection. Each of these companies are distinguished by filtering large amounts of "big-data" as automated analytics engines. The results provided significant revenue generation and cost reduction value to customers. David was CEO from inception through acquisition by Surfcontrol plc and was CEO of ThreatMetrix establishing early AU and US customers, grants and raising initial rounds of capital whilst "flipping up" to a US Inc. David's is now co-founder at StreetHawk - driving the product development of the StreetHawk's 'RRR Engine' and initial iPhone and Android StreetHawk apps.
Dean McEvoy
Co-Founder, Spreets
Dean has had a varied and interesting career starting in business consulting, marketing and advertising with big business. Translating business strategy into code with Australias best web development agency during the dot com boom of 1999 to 2001, learning about local business first hand when he owned, managed and successfully sold his own bar and restaurant.This is where he came up with an idea which he developed and patented. He commercialised and patented Booking Angel with customers, revenue and a global presence. It was during a year living in Silicon Valley that Dean came across the Groupon phenomenon.
Garry Visontay
General Partner, Sydney Seed Fund
Garry has successfully started-up five businesses across a variety of industries and is an active angel investor with significant board-level experience. He currently serves as Chairman of DesignCrowd; as cofounder and Chairman of RecruitLoop and is a Director of The Fresh Venture Group, a multi award-winning corporate services company. He is also a General Partner in the Sydney Seed Fund, a newly established fund that invests in early stage technology start-ups. Garry holds a Bachelor of Applied Science (Honours) in Computing from University of Technology, Sydney.
Jonathan Barouch
Founder and CEO, Roamz
Jonathan Barouch is an established entrepreneur, founding one of Australia's first online businesses, Fast Flowers in 1999. In 2010, Jonathan successfully exited Fast Flowers when it was acquired by Jack Singleton's 1300 Flowers. Jonathan founded Roamz in January 2011 and raised funding for the venture shortly thereafter from ASX listed media company Salmat. Jonathan was a finalist for BRW Entrepreneur of the Year in 2012. Jonathan holds a Bachelor of Commerce with Honours and a Masters of Political Science from University of NSW and a Masters of Commerce from Sydney University.
Matt Allen
Director, DevLogic
I'm Matt Allen, Founder, Dev Logic & Co-Founder ProcessGo! . I've been building for the web since 1996, that's pretty much the beginning. Previous CTO of iseekgolf.com and founding member of the Sydney Rails Group. My co-founders and I won the first Sydney Founder Institute class in 2012 and also pitched, and won SydStart 2012
Peter Cooper
Founder, Cooper Sydney
Passionate advocate for the Sydney Startup ecosystem. Founder of sydstart. Cofounder of fishburners. Angel investor. Experienced innovator and investor in financial technology (ASX, Macquarie Bank, Rothschild, Standard Chartered Bank). Proven track record of success in most stages in the industry value chain over 20 years and more than a dozen countries. Now consulting to and investing in primarily financial technology innovators and actively working with them to deliver internationally. Enough here, just google me.
Phil Morle
Director, Pollenizer
Phil Morle is the Co-Founder of Pollenizer, a full service startup investment machine. With Pollenizer, he has created an ecosystem which allows for new tech companies to start including inception funding (up to $100K AUD), team (engineering, product, UI, back office, customer development), process (lean startup). Before Pollenizer, Phil held the position of CTO at Kazaa for 5 years and led the development of a technology strategy which saw 5 million users online at any one time, millions of downloads per day and a total global user base of over 100 million; all this powered by innovative technology, a globally distributed team and a sprinkling of imagination. Prior to his work in the tech industry Phil was a theatre director with companies in the UK and Australia.
Rebekah Campbell
CEO, Posse
Rebekah founded top music management company Scorpio in 2002 and developed the careers of 11 of Australia’s biggest stars. In 2010, Rebekah switched careers to start Posse. Posse is a community marketing system that helps better stores and better customers find each other. Posse launched in the music industry in September 2010. Within months, over 200 bands had started their own Posses on the platform. Check out one of our most successful music Posses at futurefans.com.au.
Roby Sharon Zipser
CFO, hipages Group
I am a Chartered Accountant by training and an entrepreneur at heart. I started my career as a Senior Accountant, working with PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Allco Finance Group. The breadth of Accounting responsibilities I held, gave me exposure to a broad range of industries with companies of differing sizes and complexities. It was here that I learned the nuts and bolts of setting up entities and managing organisations from a Financial perspective. I then went on to set up my own boutique Accounting firm, offering Audit, Accounts Payable and Recovery Services. My clients included large corporates such as JB Hi-Fi, Arnotts biscuits, Corporate Express, Tyco, Elgas and General Pants. I also offered a small business advisory service.
Soren Harner
Vice President Engineering, BigCommerce
Soren Harner is the Vice President of Engineering at BigCommerce, the fastest growing SaaS ecommerce marketing platform in the world. BigCommerce helps small businesses power anything and everything related to an online storefront from search to inventory to online payments to marketing and SEO. Previously, Soren Harner was the director of the software and consulting business, Permaling. Permaling provided mentoring and hands-on help to software teams and specialised in building data intensive web applications. Prior to starting Permaling, Soren held leadership positions in startups in Sydney and San Francisco. From 2007 through 2009 Soren was the Vice President of Engineering for Atlassian, an innovative and fast growing Australian software company, which makes tools for software developers. Soren grew the team from 25 to 100+ developers.
Tim Fung
CEO, AirTasker
Tim is responsible for the strategy and marketing of Airtasker. Prior to this role, Tim was a founding team member and investor in mobile startup amaysim. He is a founder of several web businesses (including online custom designer Joe Button, and motorsport events business Circuit Club). He has worked as a consulting talent agent at Chic Management and before this, spent five years as an investment banking executive at Macquarie Bank and Macquarie Capital Advisors.
Tom Frazier
CTO, HotHouse Interactive
Tom is an American expat serial entrepreneur. He has founded 3 different companies, is an advisor to several more and has a stake in more than a dozen companies. He is a regular speaker on technology, the CTO of Australia's largest digital agency and occasionally even teaches dance.
