startup founder, adviser & investor

Dean has had a varied and interesting career starting in business consulting, marketing and advertising with big business.

Translating business strategy into code with Australia's best web development agency during the dot com boom of 1999 to 2001, learning about local business first hand when he owned, managed and successfully sold his own bar and restaurant.

This is where he came up with an idea which he developed and patented. He commercialised and patented Booking Angel with customers, revenue and a global presence. It was during a year living in Silicon Valley that Dean came across Groupon and the group buying model.

 With his understanding of local business and technology background he co-founded Australia's first group buying site, Spreets.com. It went live in Feb 2010, grew very quickly and maintained a market leadership position. This attracted the interests of Yahoo7 who acquired the business for around $40 million just 11 months after launch. Dean's earn-out period finished in June 2012 and he has been investing in startups through startmate.com.au and his investment company, Binary Investments since then.

Dean’s 4th startup: IconPark.com being the world's first online crowdfunding platform and real estate fund for bars and restaurants. It was a play in increasing the yields on commercial property which proved successful at his first location. Increasing the value of the building by around 24% by attracting better tenants who could afford to pay more. There was difficulty rolling out to more sites due to some structural issues in the way commercial property is financed and how REIT’s can work. This uncovered a bigger opportunity that Dean is pursuing but then the opportunity to do something that gives back to the ecosystem came along and TechSydney was born.

Dean believes that there has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur in Australia. The recent Google commissioned report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), The Startup Economy: How to support tech startups and accelerate Australian innovation suggests that Australian Startups could become the backbone of our economy by 2033 as our mining boom comes to an end. To help foster this, Dean believes we need to create an entrepreneurship ecosystem; a place in Sydney where Startups can meet up and have a coffee - a place where serendipitous cool shit can happen so he teamed up with a bunch of other tech entrepreneurs to launch TechSydney

Part of that vision has been realised with the birth of the Sydney Startup Hub which was funded by the state government and will be fully realised with the birth of the innovation precinct at Central Station Tech Central. Scott Farquar the Co-Founder of Atlassian and myself pitched this idea to the Premier of NSW a few years back and its exciting to see that its going to be a reality.

To read more about Dean's background and achievements, connect with him on LinkedIn.

If you're interested in having a chat to Dean regarding your startup, make sure you get in touch.