School Places is Australia’s first ever marketplace for unfilled private school places

Sendle is tapping into big business delivery networks and making them available to everyone

Skedulo is a mobile workforce management system bringing ‘Uber-ification’ to the enterprise

Stackla is a social content marketing platform that puts user-generated content at the heart of brand marketing

Surefire’s Transaction Platform makes it easy to keep pace with the fast changing world of mobile Point of Sale and payments

Tiger Pistol is a unique social marketing platform for small and medium businesses

Tzukuri designs and makes sensory intelligence products

Cities worked in: Glasgow, Preston, Detroit, Frankfurt, Sydney, Tokyo, London, Paris, Melbourne (all places I have lived in as well)

Most exciting part of VC: Meeting people everyday who fly in the face of others who think “You shall not!”

Biggest business challenge faced: Budget cuts, office closures, staff layoffs, pushback against change and improvement etc etc – all of these seemed like showstoppers until you work out how to come out the other end

Amazed by: Mountains, it’s the experience of climbing or riding up them and finally making it to the top that blows me away. Seems like the start up’s journey that they all want to aim for

Advice for founders: Spend more time listening than talking and remember getting your product into market is just the start of your journey

Achievement most proud of: Overcoming the GFC to achieve an outstanding exit for Jajah in Jan 2010. Also starting an early stage Venture Capital fund in Australia when VC was still a dirty word

Career highlight: So far...realising the sheer depth of incredible talent and vision in this country

Biggest business challenge faced: Telling my wife (and 6 month old baby) that instead of moving from London to Australia we were moving to California. In two weeks. And we didn't have a place to live

Started life as: An account executive at a global advertising agency...didn't take me long to realise it was a glorified paper shuffling role

Advice for founders: Dream big, listen to advice, choose carefully which advice to follow

Cities worked in: Melbourne, Jakarta, Sydney

Biggest business challenge faced: Starting at a not-for-profit as CFO when it was going to run out of money in a month and then turning the business around to be self-sustaining and able to help tens of thousands of young people each year

Career highlight: Switching from the corporate world to the more exciting world of Australian VC and being able to be a part of an ecosystem which is really starting to take off

Started life as: An investment banker at Goldman Sachs

Most exciting part of VC: Meeting people who are able to solve problems in a completely unique way and who are not afraid to question the status quo

Biggest business challenge faced: The stock market crash of 1987 and the high teens interest rates that put so many of the companies that I was associated with at risk. All survived!

Achievement most proud of: Being intimately involved in the spectacular growth and success of the Pratt Group over 30 years

Career highlight: Co-founding Hindal Corporate with David Beatty, growing it with him then selling it successfully to Credit Suisse

Started life as: Corporate adviser at Hill Samuel, the predecessor of Macquarie Bank

Advice for founders: Be flexible; be persistent; seek advice from every possible credible source