Leigh Jasper, the serial founder who built construction software platform Aconex into one of Australia’s first tech unicorns, will deliver the keynote opening address at the Growth Summit in Melbourne in February 2026.
Presented by SmartCompany and Startup Daily, in partnership with Xero, the Growth Summit is Australia’s premier event for ambitious startup and SME founders and leaders.
Jasper, now the co-CEO and cofounder of Firmable, as well as the chair of venture funds SecondQuarter Ventures and Glitch Capital, and LaunchVic, has been an influential figure in the startup ecosystem for 25 years.
Jasper cofounded Aconex, a global cloud collaboration platform for managing construction projects, with his long-time school friend Rob Phillpot amid the 2000 dot-com bubble and subsequent crash.
Aconex was a SaaS (software-as-a-service) tech platform five years before the term was coined, and well before the cloud. The duo raised around $90 million in venture funding for the startup through the 2000s, and Aconex went on to list on the ASX in 2024. In 2017, Oracle acquired the business for $1.6 billion.
By then, Jasper had built the company to more than $200 million in revenue, with 850 staff in 50 cities globally, from Asia to the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas.
Now his focus as a founder is Firmable, a B2B database that helps businesses grow faster and drive smarter decisions through insights into leads, customers, and candidates.
Firmable raised $9 million in a 2023 seed funding round led by Airtree.
Meanwhile, he also teamed up with Phillpot again, as well as A Cloud Guru’s Sam Kroonenburg and Go1’s Andrew Barnes, to launch ANZ’s first founders fund Glitch Capital, with $50 million to back the next wave of potential unicorn founders.
Also keeping Jasper busy is his own fund Saniel Ventures as well as SecondQuarter Ventures, Australia’s first specialist VC secondaries fund manager, launched in 2020, which this week announced plans to raise a third fund. And he also chairs Victorian government-backed startup body LaunchVic.
Jasper will open the Growth Summit at Crown Melbourne on Wednesday, February 25, 2026, with a keynote address looking at the state of play and opportunities for Australian business and startups.
Finance expert and television personality David Koch and Breakthrough Victoria’s chief operating officer Lauren Morrey will be among the key speakers at the Growth Summit in Melbourne in February 2026.
The day-long event will cover three key themes:
Talent – how to attract, empower, and keep the right people
Capital – what funding strategies are working in 2026
Ambition – the mindset and systems that turn ideas into scale
You’ll find out more information about the Growth Summit, including ticket sales, here.
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