|  | Ben Keighran, Bluepulse
|  Tuesday 11 December 2007
| (brought to you by Viocorp)
| (thanks to Alan Jones for this)
| Ben Keighran, Bluepulse Founder and CEO (www.bluepulse.com) spoke to a packed house at our Innovation Bay breakfast on Tuesday 11 December.
Ben had an inspiring story to tell and looks certain to gain huge success with Bluepulse. We will be seeing much more of Ben in the future we believe.
Bluepulse is world's largest mobile social networks. With active users in 167 countries, bluepulse is positioned as a 'social messenger', explained further on bluepulse.com:
| "Take the best of a social network, the best of an instant messenger, revolutionise both and combine them to run on anyone's mobile phone. That's a mobile social messenger, that's bluepulse."
| Ben is one of Australia's leading entrepreneurs, taking Bluepulse from its seed stage in Australia through a US$6M series A financing with Vantage Point Venture Partners, http://www.vpvp.com/ an early stage My Space investor, in 2007.
With the bluepulse headquarters now based in Silicon Valley, Business Week recently named Ben one of North America's Top 25 Young Entrepreneurs under 25.
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| | Alison Deans, netus
| Thursday 22 November 2007
| Alison Deans, one of the founding partners of netus spoke to very bustling breakfast event at Slide Bar in Darlinghurst. Netus is Australia's newest technology focused venture firm, financially backed by News Ltd, with a significant pool of committed funds ready to invest. Alison talked about her experience in building consumer based web businesses, the lessons learned from the first internet boom and what is now important in companies that Netus looks to invest in.
Alison has played key roles in developing, managing and operating some of Australia's leading Internet businesses.
Alison also has eight years experience with strategy consultant McKinsey. She was a founding member of the McKinsey Growth Practice, which developed the content for the business bestseller, "The Alchemy of Growth".
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| | Simon Smith, eBay Australia
| Tuesday 21 August 2007
| Simon Smith joined eBay as Managing Director in 2000 and has grown the business to over five million members – a staggering one in every three Australian adults. At this small dinner, Simon shared his experiences at the helm of eBay and discussed their strategy in the local and global markets, key drivers and challenges in the immediate future.
Prior to joining eBay Simon worked with Lion Nathan as Premium Brands Director and McKinsey & Company for 10 years.
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| | Daniel Erasmus, Internet visionary
| Monday 25 June 2007
| Daniel Erasmus is one of the world's great thinkers around the internet and the internet economy. He was visiting Australia as a guest of AMP from his Amsterdam base. A small dinner group heard Daniel talk on all things future and internet - his insights and learning were truly remarkable.
Daniel is a fellow of the Rotterdam School of Management where he teaches MBA courses on scenarios and strategies for the Internet; and organisational design and entrepreneurship for the knowledge based economy. He is a prized speaker internationally. He consults to many multi-national organisations on scenario processes and Internet strategy.
He is co-founder and director of a virtual community the Digital Thinking Network. The DTN is a space to think about the impact that inter-networking technology has on the world. At the DTN Daniel facilitates strategies and business cases for companies and countries on the opportunities and threats of a digital economy.
Daniel has been cited by Infonomia as one of the top 100 thinkers on cyberspace.
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| | Ian Lowe, Facilitate Digital
| Tuesday 8 May 2007
| Ian Lowe, CEO of Facilitate Digital addressed a breakfast crowd about "managing a growth business, to list or not to list". This was a wonderful insight from someone who has lived through the decision process behind whether to list or not.
Under Ian's leadership Facilitate has successfully navigated the somewhat rocky road to listing on the ASX via the merger with a current listed entity.
Ian previously held roles as CEO of Traffion, Managing Director of RedSheriff Australasia and State Manager for PMP Communications.
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| | Burns Night
| Tuesday 23 January 2007
| Our second annual homage to Scotland's national bard (read a good excuse to enjoy good company, drink whisky, recite unintelligible poetry and talk fondly about the opposite sex). The dinner for 30 lucky attendees was Slide Bar, Darlinghurst. There was no real business agenda - let's face it, not much happens in January - just a good excuse to get together and have a great time.
Robert Burns is Scotland’s national poet. He was born in 1759 to a poor Ayrshire farming family. He became well known for his wonderful and prolific output of poetry, songs and letters. He loved whisky, women and writing. He was reckoned to have fathered about 50 illegitimate children. He died at 37, otherwise he’d probably have had even more!
Robert Burns has become Scotland’s national bard, and is celebrated each year by Scots around the world. They gather on the anniversary of his birth to celebrate Burns’s great loves (a reminder - whisky, women and poetry).
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