Venture Capital by Design: Seminar

This first event in Anthill’s upcoming ‘Tunnel Talk’ series, held in conjunction with Design Victoria, is a two-part initiative developed for business builders, commercial innovators, aspiring entrepreneurs and creative professionals seeking to identify investment ready ideas and acquire growth capital.

Are you seeking venture capital to accelerate
your business growth?

Do you need an angel investor to inject knowledge
and funds into your venture?

Do you have the commitment, creativity and capital
to get your business or idea to the next level?

SEMINAR

During this two hour seminar, attendees will learn from five of Australia’s leading experts on venture capital and business development – real investors, currently seeking investment opportunities, and successful entrepreneurs, who have ‘been there’ and secured private funding for their growing companies.

• Spencer Maughan (more…)
  Australian adviser to Silicon Valley VCs.
• Domenic Carosa (more…)
  Founder, Future Capital Development Fund Ltd
• Jordan Green (more…)
  Serial angel investor and co-founder of the Australian Association of Angel Investors.
• Martin Hosking (more…)
  Serial entrepreneur, involved in the raising of over $100 million in last 12-months.
• Ryan Trainor (more…)
  Two successful exits and one $24 million private equity deal to his name.

Don’t miss out! Only 100 places available!

When: Wednesday 26 August 2009
Where: Bureaux Business Lounge, Level 1, 530 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne VIC
Cost: $60 inc. GST (Two for $90)
Not based in Melbourne? Want us to bring this event to your town? Register your interest here.

A line-up not to be missed…

Spencer Maughan

With a string of academic qualifications as long as your arm, Spencer Maughan would at first glance seem an unlikely adviser to venture capitalists in the cut-throat landscape of the Silicon Valley investment community. Maughan completed a PhD in Genetics from the University of Melbourne. He then re-located to the UK, as a Marie Curie Fellow at Cambridge University, where he researched malaria-related drug-resistance genes, work which was recognized by the UK Parliament.

A shift in focus brought Spencer to the US where he completed an MBA at Stanford University concentrating on early stage investment finance and entrepreneurship as a AAA-Macquarie Bank Fellow. Over this period he was one of 18 delegates to attend the 20/20 satellite conference in Washington DC hosted by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to discuss technology and early stage capital markets.

Within Silicon Valley Spencer has consulted to various private equity firms including top tier venture capitalists, with a focus on cleantech and life science investment. Currently Spencer is developing a cause-based Facebook application and an associated platform to facilitate donations through social media.

Domenic Carosa

Domenic Carosa is a serial entrepreneur who recently launched his own investment fund.

Carosa is perhaps better known for his role in destra Corporation which he co-founded as a teenager in 1993 and reverse-listed on the ASX in 2000 (a matter of hours before the tech crash on Wall Street). He then built destra into a $100m company with 300 staff nationally, before losing his equity and role in the company, as a casualty of the Opes Prime collapse in early 2008.

Carosa has since founded his own angel investment fund, the Future Capital Development Fund Limited, and will share insights from both sides of the capital raising process – from startup funding to capital raising for a stock exchange listing.

Jordan Green

Jordan Green is co-founder and Deputy Chairman of the Australian Association of Angel Investors, he founded and leads the angel investor group Melbourne Angels and was a founding partner and Managing Director of Melbourne Venture Partners, one of Australia’s best performing venture capital fund managers.

In the last fifteen years, Jordan has been active as an angel and venture investor on three continents and continues to pursue his interests in Australia and overseas as board member and board adviser to a number of private and unlisted public companies. He has been director, CEO, executive, or engineer for over a dozen technology and engineering companies since starting his career with IBM, including a Silicon Valley software company, Australia’s largest Internet registrar and an Internet Business Incubator.

He is a leading voice on the Australian angel investment landscape.

Martin Hosking

Martin Hosking is an entrepreneur and investor. He is the Chairman of Aconex, the dominant provider of collaboration services to construction and resource projects. He is co-founder and Chairman of RedBubble, the third largest and fastest growing art site in the world, and sits on the board of Southern Innovation, which provides a next generation in digital pulse processing capability.

Hosking started his career with DFAT, serving as a diplomat in Egypt and Syria before joining McKinsey & Company, serving Australian clients focusing on emerging technologies. In 1996 he joined Evan Thornley and Tracey Ellery at LookSmart. He was with LookSmart in various senior roles through to its IPO in 1999 on the NASDAQ, when it became the highest returning investment ever for Australian VCs.

More recently, Hosking has been instrumental in successful capital raising projects for RedBubble and Aconex, for which he secured a massive $107.5m investment from US private equity firm Francisco Partners.

Ryan Trainor

Ryan Trainor has grown companies organically (with earnings) and with the assistance of private equity.

He started his first company, a retail security firm, in 1997 at the age of 23. After three years, with a host of major retail outlets as clients and contracting more than 500 staff, he sold his company to an Australian multinational, clearing the way to launch and grow several additional businesses, including a national training business which was sold to a publicly listed company in late 2003.

Trainor recently returned to the education sector, in 2008, raising $24 million in funds to create Franklyn Scholar Learning, a workplace training company that provides government funded training. Ryan now employs more than 110 staff across all capital cities and will train more than 5,000 people this year for clients such as David Jones, Boost, One Steel and Toyota.

Ryan’s entrepreneurial reputation has seen him recognised in 2000 and 2001 as a finalist in the National Australia Day Young Achiever of the Year Awards and is the past President for the Entrepreneurs Organisation (EO) in Melbourne Australia.

Don’t miss out! Only 100 places available!

When: Wednesday 26 August 2009
Where: Bureaux Business Lounge, Level 1, 530 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne VIC
Cost: $60 inc. GST (Two for $90)
Not based in Melbourne? Want us to bring this event to your town? Register your interest here.

Sponsored by

Design Victoria, in collaboration with key industry stakeholders, is increasing the competitive skills of designers in local and international markets, and developing the design innovation and excellence capabilities of small to medium sized businesses in Victoria.

www.designvic.com