StartSoc Team

Our Team at The Start Society

The Start Society team is a fluid collection of volunteers we refer to as Co-GMs.

Members wanting to volunteer please contact us to be introduced to the current core team.

About Pete Cooper – Founder

Pete Cooper is the Founder of The Start Society. He has been an advocate for the Australian tech startup ecosystem since 1999 and has been working in major roles in blue chip banking, trading and financial markets real-time technology globally for over 25 years including major exchanges, banks and investors.

Pete is also a proud graduate of UTS where he worked and also studied Computer Science with a Business sub-major, his major project was on the introduction of technological change in organisations. He has also studied at Oxford Templeton (UK) and Harvard (Australia).

Pete is a serial entrepreneur, speaker, volunteer, mentor, investor, lecturer, consultant and amateur father of two, he lives in Sydney Australia.

Pete has a personal interest in creating disruptive innovation through technology entrepreneurship as a future scenario for the Australian economy (by applying principles described originally by Prof. Clayton Christensen c1999) and their proven impact on wealth creation, social innovation and enduring total stakeholder value creation.

Peter J Cooper is often associated with the following organisations and industries –

  1. Australian Securities Exchange ASX (where he was on the small original teams in 1987-1989 to build SEATS and OATS which run the exchange for the next 19+ years); more
  2. SydStart (which he founded in 2009 and sold in late 2014 to Freelancer.com after growing it as a community event for the professional tech startup ecosystem and the largest of that kind in Australia). SydStart subsequently was renamed StartCon and extended to Melbourne in 2015 for the 2016 season; more
  3. The Start Society (an independent grass roots industry body helping tech startup entrepreneurs and their ecosystem, as founder); more
  4. iCentralCo (a tech startup coworking community in a huge shared space near Sydney Town Hall, as founder and curator); more
  5. Fishburners (since early 2010 (or was it 2011?) for most of the next 4.5 years, this charity supporting tech startup entrepreneurs was incorporated 5-6 months later in August that year); more
  6. UTS particularly the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology (where he has held two Director roles (Director Innovation and Director Advanced Analytics) and also where completed his B’App Sc (Computer Science) and the Faculty of Business where he did a sub-major in Organisational Change around the introduction of technology); more
  7. Standard Chartered Bank – where he ran technology globally for Wealth Management, Private Banking, Channels, Unsecured Lending and was involved in senior roles in various major programs; more
  8. Macquarie Bank (1996-2000) co-founder establishing two divisions – margin lending / equities lending (tech lead) and eDivision (programme director) which invested in tech startups to address the disruptive innovation threat/opportunity which includes Australia’s first online bank account aggregation engine Financial Enrichment, online video for investors AnnounceTV, SpectrumDesk a spectrum rights trading experiment, and number of other deals – including evaluating buying into PayPal – and other bank investments);
  9. CCYNet (a online video media experiment for advocating for the tech startup ecosystem, as co-founder);
  10. Saasu.com (an award winning major SME online accounting software-as-a-service SaaS provider competing with the likes of Xero and MYOB, as CEO) 2007-2008;  more
  11. Cameron FIX (real-time financial markets trading communications software as CEO);
  12. Smarts Group (real-time insider trading detection as COO/acting CEO);
  13. Freelancer.com (global services marketplace, as Regional Director ANZ) for the SydStart handover 2014-2015; more
  14. Rothschild (funds management and merchant banking as senior manager responsible for all registry and retail technology) from 1989 to 1996;
  15. Cooper & Co (aka Cooper Sydney which consults to governments, institutions and startups, as Director) with a focus on large financial institutions, health, government, trading, large high volume real time technology and high growth tech startups; more
  16. Pete was also an early supporter and vocal advocate for Fishburners.org(see above), StartupAus* (a PR vehicle sponsored by Google promoting the tech startup industry, as one of the ‘first fifty’), TiE Sydney (The Indus Entrepreneur Association, as Charter Member), Muru-D (Telstra tech startup accelerator, as first mentor), Founder Institute Sydney (a global accelerator for entrepreneurs, as mentor since first cohort), Sydney Angels (an angel investing collective, as a very early member), Heads Over Heels (women entrepreneur advocates) and more.

Pete continues to be a volunteer and advocate for a number of these organisations (he no longer supports those marked *) plus a range of other institutions and charities.

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