Phil Morle, is a Partner at Main Sequence Ventures, an Australian-based venture capital firm attached to the CSIRO. Prior to this, he was the co-founder and CEO of Pollenizer, an Australia-based company that builds early stage internet companies using lean startup techniques. Prior to co-founding Pollenizer, Phil held a number of positions in the internet sector working with startups and large companies. His most renowned role was as CTO of Kazaa, a popular peer-to-peer file sharing service that was shut down in the face of legal action from record companies. Morle began his career in theater and was a founder and artistic director of Kaos Theatre in Perth for ten years.
Marc Canter is an American internet entrepreneur, speaker, technology evangelist and early pioneer of online software, and is often called the "godfather of multimedia". Canter is a CEO of Instigate, Inc. Marc is best known for being the co-founder and CEO of MacroMind, the company that became Macromedia.
Brent Shawzin Hoberman is a British entrepreneur and investor. During the dot-com boom, he co-founded lastminute.com with Martha Lane Fox in 1998, where he was CEO from its inception, before selling the business to Sabre in 2005 for $1.1bn.
BBC iPlayer is a video on demand service from the BBC. The service is available on a wide range of devices, including mobile phones and tablets, personal computers and smart televisions. iPlayer services delivered to UK-based viewers feature no commercial advertising. The terms BBC iPlayer, iPlayer, and BBC Media Player refer to various methods of viewing or listening to the same content. To use the service, a valid TV Licence is required.
Simon David Miller is a British film writer, director, producer and investor, having also co-founded several technology media companies. His debut feature, the Scottish Gaelic feature film, Seachd: The Inaccessible Pinnacle, was nominated for 3 BAFTAs. He later founded the New Forest Film Festival.
Justin Kan is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder of live video platforms Justin.tv and Twitch, as well as the mobile social video application Socialcam. He is also the cofounder and former CEO of law-tech company Atrium. In 2024, Kan announced that he had founded Stash, a payment and e-commerce platform for video game developers.
Aber Whitcomb is the CTO and Co-Founder of Jam City, Inc. As CTO of Jam City Inc, a multi-platform game developer and distributor, Aber Whitcomb oversees the cross-platform technology strategy and plays a key role in developing and operating Jam City titles on a global scale. Whitcomb is a recognized expert in large scale computing, networking and storage and frequently speaks on these topics at industry events. He has been profiled in publications such as VentureBeat, The New York Times, and SoCalTech.
Graphicly was a platform for publishers which offered work flow integration, self-publishing, digital distribution, conversion, and promotion for digital content. Launched by Kevin Mann and Micah Baldwin, the website was initially a platform for digital comic books, but later added support for children's books, art books, and magazines. Graphicly accumulated more than 3,500 publishers and more than 10,000 independent creators. The website hosted an active social community, allowing creators and fans to interact directly. Graphicly shut down in May 2014, and some of its key staff moved on to fellow digital publisher Blurb.
Microtask was a Finnish technology company founded by Ville Miettinen, Harri Holopainen, Otto Chrons and Panu Wilska in 2009 to create a technology platform for crowdsourcing and distributed work. The company went bankrupt 2021.
Beamly was a social platform based in London, UK and New York City, United States. The company was founded in April 2011 as tBone TV, later renamed to Zeebox, by Ernesto Schmitt and Anthony Rose. It was started as a social discovery and engagement platform with 2nd-screen TV, creating the concept of social television.
9gag is an online platform and social media website based in Hong Kong, which allows its users to upload and share user-generated content or other content from external social media websites. Since the platform for collections of Internet memes was launched on April 11, 2008, it has grown in popularity across social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Blueseed was a Silicon Valley-based startup company and a seasteading venture to create a startup community located on a vessel stationed in international waters near the coast of Silicon Valley in the United States. The intended location would enable non-U.S. startup entrepreneurs to work on their ventures without the need for a US work visa (H1B), while living in proximity to Silicon Valley and using relatively easier to obtain business and tourism visas (B1/B2) to travel to the mainland.
Tariq Krim is a French entrepreneur, creator of Netvibes and the founder of Jolicloud, a personal cloud content computing platform and Joli OS, a free operating system based on the Jolicloud platform. In 2008, he was the first French national named by the MIT Technology Review as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35. He was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture in 2011.
Soldsie is a social eCommerce platform based in San Francisco, CA. Co-founders Chris Bennett (CEO) and Arrel Gray (CTO) met through the startup community of Silicon Valley in 2011. They officially launched Soldsie in May 2012 at a time when the viability of f-Commerce was still being questioned by the industry. The founders of Soldsie were able to show that Facebook commerce is a viable form of social commerce when it wasn’t just another tab on a retailer's Facebook page for users to click onto.
Enplug was an American technology company headquartered in Culver City, California that offers software for digital displays, allowing real-time social media interaction between brands and users. The company was a software licensing business.
Eleven is a British television production company founded by Jamie Campbell and Joel Wilson. It was formed in 2006 and was the first drama production company to benefit from the Channel 4 Growth Fund, set up to nurture independent creative companies based in the UK.
Ernesto Gottfried Schmitt is an American-born entrepreneur and investor. A founder of PeopleSound, Beamly and DriveTribe, he also founded venture capital fund The Craftory, with a $600m first fund for consumer goods challenger brands.
DriveTribe is a social networking platform founded as a hub for automotive content and digital socialising. Founded by presenters Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond alongside entrepreneur Ernesto Schmitt, the platform was characterised by its use of themed Tribes to build groups.
Appticles is a multi-channel mobile publishing platform that assists content creators to package their existing content into cross-platform web applications. Appticles was developed by London based company, Webcrumbz Ltd, which was founded in 2010 by Alexandra Anghel and Ciprian Borodescu. The company is incorporated in UK with its engineering team located in Bucharest, Romania.
Hambro Perks is a London-headquartered investment firm. Hambro Perks was founded in 2013 by Rupert Hambro CBE and Dominic Perks. Sir Anthony Salz is the Chairman of Hambro Perks.
