A book highlighting 26 Aussie tech rockstars making their mark in the US has been released, following a successful ACS meet-up in San Francisco.

More than 40 people attended the Zelos Hotel on Sunday night for the launch of the ACS publication, Rockstar Aussie Founders Living in the US.

Held in collaboration with the Aussie Founders Network and supported by Austrade, the event was preceeded by a four-person panel discussion facilitated by ACS President Yohan Ramasundara on ‘Bringing Deep Tech to Life’.

The panel included Silicon Valley-based Olivia Humphrey CEO of Kanopy and Michael Dunworth CEO of Wyre, joined by Australian-based Peter James, Chairman of Macquarie Telecom, Nearmap, DroneShield, Aquabotics, and Mandy Ross Chief, Information Officer of Tabcorp.

At the conclusion of the panel session, Ramasundara launched the book showcasing 26 Australian tech entrepreneurs who have set up shop in the US and are having an impact across global tech markets.

The front cover of the book.

“Our nation has had some amazing successes when it comes to innovative technology with the genesis behind WiFi, the black box flight recorder, google maps, and medical ultrasounds all coming from Australia,” he said.

“This publication showcases the next generation of Aussie tech founders who are having impact on the global stage. Take Alisdair Faulkner for example, Co-founder of ThreatMetrix, which is a 280-employee business protecting over a billion user authentication accounts and was acquired by LexisNexis Risk Solutions for US$830m.”

Executive Director of the Aussie Founders Network Carl Hartman said, “The report showcases the breadth of Aussie talent making it in the US and across global markets. It includes a number of founders who have been incredibly successfully by raising over $50m in capital such as Casey Ellis at Bugcrowd, Sarah Eathorne at Insightly and Karl Redenback at Live Tiles.”

“There is also some serious talent included who are ones to watch in coming years such as Emma Weston, with a Cloud-based commodity management system for agriculture, Jessica Ruhfus with Collabosaurus which is an end-to-end platform for sourcing, negotiating, leveraging and tracking brand to-brand collaborations, and Mandy Solomon who is developing virtual worlds for dementia patients”.

ACS Chief Executive Officer Andrew Johnson said, “Through this report, we really wanted to shine a light on Australian tech founders who are succeeding in the stronghold US technology market, many of whom still keep R&D offices in Australia while expanding to other parts of the world.

“By showcasing Aussies making it in the US, we hope to inspire the passion in others to follow a similar path and build out a vibrant tech ecosystem in Australia”.

The book features Casey Ellis of Bugcrowd, Emma Watson of AgriDigital, Scott Farquhar of Atlassian, Robert Castaneda of Service Rocket, Liesl Yearsley of Akin, Vanessa Wilson of StorReduce, Adam Broadway of PlatformOS, Geoff McQueen of Accelo, Jessica Ruhfus of Collabosaurus, Alisdair Faulker of Threat Matrix, Karl Redenback of Live Tiles, Andrew Lacy of Prenuvo, Mandy Salomon of Mentia, Anthony Goldbloom of Kaggle, David Cannington of Nuheara, Maria Sipka of Linqia, Michael Dunworth of Wyre, Carl Hartmann of Shortlyster, Olivia Humphrey of Kanopy, Damien Mahoney and Peter Cassidy of Stackla, Rachael Skinner of Zuus Workforce, Deb Noller of Switch Automation, Sean McCreanor of Assignar, Sarah Eathorne of Insightly, Francis Vierboom and Rory San Miguel of Propellor Aero, and Tania Yuki of Shareablee.

Over the coming weeks, Information Age will bring you excerpts from the book ‘Rockstar Aussie Founders Living in the US’. It is available now as a free download here. Requests for hardcopies of the book may be registered at ia@acs.org.au.