2012 Mentors
Sean Marshall
Founder, The Marshall Report
Sean Marshall is the Founder of the Marshall Report, a compilation of early stage tech investment opportunities for active investors primarily listing deals between the $200,000 - $2,000,000 range. With extensive networks in Sydney, Sean is a passionate spokesperson for startups and has established himself as the go-to man for Sydney's startup scene.
Dino Talic
Product Manager, Freelancer
Dino Talic is a Senior Product Manager and passionate technologist. Experienced in leading cross functional teams in conceptual and technical development of product initiatives from beginning to end, Dino was formerly a Software Engineer.
His areas of expertise incluse user experience design and testing, product roadmapping, marketing, patent drafting, and more. Dino specialises in mobile, web, and e-commerce platforms and holds degrees from the University of Technology Sydney in Engineering and Business.
Brett Morgan
Blogger Relations, Google.
Brett is is a technologist who is deeply interested in making the world a better place through intelligent use of technology. He began programming at age 4, much to his father's delight and mother's dismay, and hasn't looked back since.
Deepak Roy Singh
Principal, VersaJeram Group
Deepak is a Strategy and Investment Engineer and a Principal at Versa Jeram, a boutique investment and strategy consulting firm that combines entrepreneurial and innovation skills to provide high impact services to their clients.
Whilst studying Aerospace Engineering at university, Deepak founded Valrio Enterprise which imported and distributed hand made carpets from Persia to Australia. Upon graduation, he was selected for the GE Aviation Leadership Programme. Subsequently, Deepak worked as a Manager at PwC Consulting for 4 years, where he consulted for leading companies across Asia in new market expansion plans, new product development and the development and implementation of strategic blueprints before starting his own firm, the VersaJeram Group.
Sebastian Robertson
CEO, Batyr
After graduating from the Australian National University with a Bachelor of Economics and a Bachelor of Commerce Sebastian joined the Financial Management Program with General Electric. Constantly involved in various extra-curricular programs including extensive volunteering, Sebastian recognised the role social enterprises play in creating a positive society and wanted to do more to contribute to this movement.
He started the organisation Batyr, at the age of 25, to engage, educate and empower young people to embrace the conversation around mental health, promoting help seeking bahaviours and advocating for the great organisations that provide direct support to young people. Batyr is 'giving a voice to the elephant in the room'.
In 2011 he was chosen as an Australian Youth Representative for the Commonwealth Youth Forum including presenting to the 54 Foreign Ministers of the Commonwealth, and was awarded a 'Time to Shine' Award for his work to date with Batyr by his local community in Sydney. Sebastian was awarded Sydney's Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2011 by the School for Social Entrepreneurs
Prashan Paramanathan
Senior Strategy Consultant, Social Ventures Australia
Prashan is a management consultant. No not that type - the good kind. He has worked with a host of great organisations in the non-profit world (Teach for Australia, Vision Australia, One Laptop Per Child, Alzheimer's Australia + more) to help them do what they do even better. He loves seeing corporates working with non-profits and has worked with some of the most innovative to help them figure out what they want to do.
His other full-time job is building Chip In, an online community of Australians who get non-profit projects off the ground - you can read what he's thinking about at the Chip In blog.
In his prior life, Prashan worked with the World Bank Group building microfinance banks in rural China and before that learnt his craft in the world of corporate management consulting.
Yvonne Brennan
Founder, The Inspiration Room
Yvonne Brennan is the founder of The Inspiration Room. The Inspiration Room is Australia's oldest and longest established dedicated innovation and consumer research consultancy. It specialises in exploring opportunities, ideas, evaluates concepts and determines if there is any commercial feasibility or value.
Yvonne is a creative facilitator, innovation and consumer research specialist. She has worked extensively in Australasia and Asia Pacific mostly with FMCG and packaged goods companies. She engages in ideation, creative workshops, research and innovation training.
Yvonne's experience includes working with blue chip companies such as Diageo (Smirnoff, Bundaberg Rum), Gatorade, Nestle, Smiths Snackfoods, Cerebos Foods, Kimberly Clark, Healthcare and organisations that include University of Technology (Sydney), Australian Museum as well as start-up companies. She has a gift to connect and blend science with marketing, making pragmatic and commercial outcomes.
Anita Hawkins
Co-Founder of We Are ULTRA, World leader in Eco-Fashion (Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, Sydney)
Anita is the Founder of the award winning 'We Are ULTRA' sustainable collective, 'ENTER' performance art experiment and 'SHE EATS HERE' online and offline platform.
Anita has experience across China, South East Asia, the US, Australia, Afghanistan and Europe with clients that include Nike, the Red Cross, Nokia, GAP, BMW, Canon, Converse, Westfield, Bayer, UHCR, LOHAS, MATRADE and Shisheido.
We Are ULTRA is a sustainable design collective that organize projects and events across the world. World leaders in Eco-Fashion, their internationally acclaimed ULTRA 10 Conscious Fashion Initiative was awarded the Innovation Award 2011 at the Ethical Fashion Forum UK. In the words of Treehugger: 'Merging the ultimate duo: sustainability and style. We Are ULTRA is cutting edge fashion with an eye toward innovative design.' ULTRA 10 has also been featured in Fast Company's Co.EXIST as a world changing idea and innovation.
ENTER is Anita's ongoing experiment seeking to nurture a more intimate experience of performance. Using interdisciplinary performance and modified on-ground and digital environments ENTER aims to remodel the performer-audience dialogue. ENTER #1 was part of the 2011 JUE Festival in Shanghai.
SHE EATS HERE! is an online and offline platform celebrating great women eating and where they do it. SHE EATS HERE! promotes exuberance between women, food and themselves.
Amy Meyer
Technology Consulting, Deloitte
@amysmedia
Amy currently works in Technology Consulting at Deloitte. Amy is a creative and dynamic individual who is passionate about people, the digital world and new technologies. She was previously a Producers Assistant for an Australian film and television production company, producing television and digital content for Channel 9 and ABC. Also a young entrepreneur, Amy's most recent projects include importing consumer goods to the Australian market and creating an iPhone application development team. Amy has Master of Management and Bachelor of Visual Arts (Film and Digital Art), both from The University of Sydney.
Tim Fung
Founder and 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. Tim has a B.Comm (marketing) from University of New South Wales.
Cheryl Hayman
Founder and Principle, Hayman Strategy
Cheryl is a professional Director who is a NED on the Board of Clover Corporation, an ASX - listed company; as well as holding Director roles on the Australian Businesswomen's Network board, and the Peer Support Foundation board. She is also a member of the Osteoporosis Australia Fundraising committee.
In her professional life, Cheryl has strong understanding of social media platforms; is a writer of blogs, and provides online training through webinars and podcasts. Her current specialization focuses on 'branding across social media platforms'.
Prior to establishing her business Cheryl's lengthy corporate career encompassed big brands in major multi-national organisations. Much of her experience has been with consumer brands in retail environments. Cheryl is also an accredited Mentor for Coaching and Mentoring Australia.
Cheryl participates in many industry committees, including the AFA Advertising Effectiveness committee, and was a founder of the Marketing Women's Association, specialising in mentoring and developing young professionals.
Niki Scevak
Co-Founder, Startmate
Niki Scevak is a Managing Director at Blackbird Ventures, a firm that invests in global Internet startups being built from Australia and the creator of Startmate, a seed accelerator that has invested in 13 Australian startups in the past 18 months. He was also the founder of Homethinking.com, a site that helps US homeowners choose a real estate agent to sell their home with by ranking the agents on their past sales and reviews about the job they did.
Marc Lehmann
Founder and CEO, Saasu
Marc founded Saasu.com back in 2000 using a slow funded approach in order to create an extremely good value online accounting engine. Previously, Marc was a Director of Principal Finance and Credit Trading Risk at Deutsche Bank. His latest goal is to build a web application that helps business owners remove the operational glass ceiling from their business life.
Marc is a naturalist and a minimalist at heart believing the human race should be spending more time exploring and discovering and less time dealing with the paperwork of life.
Ehsan Fallahi
Principal Lawyer, MistryFallahi Lawyers and Business Advisors
Ehsan is a commercial lawyer who acts as legal counsel to entrepreneurs and is dedicated to maximising value, reducing risk and devising exit strategies. He has advised Australian and overseas entrepreneurs in industries such as information technology, telecommunication and e-commerce.
As an experienced business advisor, Ehsan provides practical and professional advice on legal considerations arising in trade and commerce and his commercial experience helps address the needs of emerging businesses and the growth of high net worth individuals. He is also involved in drafting, reviewing and negotiating contracts.
Ehsan assists clients with the set up of new ventures, incorporations, trusts, partnerships, joint ventures, dealing with governments, compliance, franchising, terms and conditions, advertising, marketing and distributorship.
Adam
Adam's approach to ideas and strategy always starts at the same point, by asking the really tough questions.
By asking the questions others don't, he's able to form unique point of view and arrive at solutions that others won't.
With a degree in industrial design he's able to combine both strategic and creative solutions to problems. He's deployed these skills across the not-for-profit sector, the government, big business and even by starting, and commercialising, his own business.
He takes a triple-bottom-line view of success, and his thinking has been sought out and implemented by the likes of AusIndustry, Red Cross, Sony Music and 3M.
C.J. Foo
Co-founder and COO at Delivery Hero Australia
CJ oversees Delivery Hero Australia's business operations and is also responsible for the IT and Finance functions. Through leading Delivery Hero's online takeaway ordering operations, he combines his dual passions of technology and food. Prior to Delivery Hero, CJ held a number of regional and national leadership roles in the information and communications technology industry working for a global technology vendor. His professional interest is in applying a blend of technical, operational and business experiences from the corporate sector to the start-up environment to design and build a strong foundation of robust business systems and processes that is ready to support scaling of the business. CJ holds a B.Eng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Western Australia and received an MBA with high distinction from the Melbourne Business School.
Would you like to join us as a mentor or a judge for Sydney Genesis 2012? Email Julia Di Kang at business.competition@sydney.edu.au