Former spy boss Paul Symon, Australian Missile Corp CEO Rear Admiral Lee Goddard and former Senator Arthur Sinodinos have signed on with VC fund Salus Ventures as strategic advisors as the firm sharpens its focus on defence and national security. The Sydney-based $40 million fund, launched in 2023 and led by former Salesforce Ventures Australia… Read more »
Zip cofounder Larry Diamond has called time on his board roles at the ASX-listed buy-now-pay-later fintech, stepping down as a director and US chairman, effective immediately. “Now is the right time for me to step back from my day-to-day role at Zip,” he said in a statement to the ASX. “I’m very proud of what… Read more »
Birchal, Australia’s leading equity crowdfunding platform, has announced the appointment of two industry heavyweights to its leadership team. Darren Westlake, the founder and former CEO of Crowdcube, joins Birchal as a Strategic Advisor, while Rod Bristow, former CEO of Investible, has been appointed as a Non-Executive Director. Westlake, a pioneer in the global equity crowdfunding… Read more »
A group of Australian-based Harvard Alumni will fund two new scholarships to send an entrepreneur and an investor to attend the Harvard Business School Executive Education Course in February 2025. The scholarships are the brainchild of three graduates of Harvard College and senior technology industry executives: Antler Australia founding partner, Bede Moore; Unseen cofounder and… Read more »
The 2024 Pearcey Awards saw industry pioneers recognised and the 75th anniversary of the first Australian computer celebrated at a gala dinner in Brisbane on Tuesday night. Professor Svetha Venkatesh received the 2024 Pearcey Medal for her work in pattern recognition, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and was inducted into the Pearcey Hall of Fame. Canberra defence… Read more »
Tesla chair and Blackbird partner Robyn Denholm, has one-upped Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes, part owner of US NBA team the Utah Jazz, by buying an entire basketball league, the WNBL. The deal between the Wollemi Capital Group Syndicate (WCGS) and Larry Kestelman’s National Basketball League (NBL) consortium to acquire a majority stake in the Women’s National… Read more »
Australia’s gender pay gap has been shrinking year by year, but is still over 20% among Australia’s private companies, a new national report card shows. But that gender gap is even bigger at 25% among chief executive officers, according to figures collected for the first time in 2023–24. And the widest gap of all is among… Read more »
Health and technology entrepreneur Dr Michelle Perugini has joined the University of South Australia as its new Head of Commercialisation. The cancer researcher turned artificial intelligence (AI) expert cofounded two successful AI startups with her husband Dr Don Perguni, who was a research scientist for the Department of Defence, developing AI technology ISD Analytics, founded in 2008,… Read more »
More than nine months after the sudden departure of Canva’s chief financial officer, after nearly 8 years, the graphic design giant has found his replacement with Zoom’s Texas-based CFO, Kelly Steckelberg, signing on later this month. Steckelberg took Zoom to its public listing on the Nasdaq in 2019. She was previously CEO of online dating… Read more »
The founder of Sydney workplace tech scaleup SafetyCulture, Luke Anear, will finish up as CEO at the end of the year after leading the business he founded in a Queensland garage for two decades. Anear will shift into the new role of executive chairman from January 1, with former SafetyCulture customer Kelly Vohs, most recently… Read more »
Samantha Harvey’s Orbital has won the 2024 Booker prize. What it so skilfully and ambitiously exposes is the human cost of space flight set against the urgency of the climate crisis. While a typhoon of life-threatening proportions gathers across south-east Asia, six astronauts and cosmonauts hurtle around Earth on the International Space Station. Their everyday… Read more »
On July 13, shortly after Donald Trump was targeted by an assassination attempt, Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter), tweeted to his more than 200 million followers: I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery. Musk’s efforts to influence who wins next week’s US presidential election have continued. For… Read more »
We’ve all been there. I once had a boss who rarely gave me a thought-out quarterly plan or strategy, instead they left it (mostly) up to me to decide. And then they’d nitpick all of my decisions after the quarter was over! So why let me decide? They left it up to me because they didn’t know… Read more »
Should employers prioritise efficiency at all costs? It might seem like a good idea. More processes than ever before can now be automated with robotics, artificial intelligence and other technology. But in case after case, we’ve also seen technology usher in a whole new era of workplace surveillance. Companies have powerful new tools to track… Read more »
WiseTech founder Richard White has stepped down as CEO of WiseTech Global, resigned from its board and also as a director of industry lobby group the TechCouncil of Australia. The billionaire fell on his sword late on Thursday afternoon following a fortnight of media reports about his private life, including legal action, settled on Monday,… Read more »
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