Airtasker co-founders Tim Fung and Jonathan Lui win the 2017 NSW Pearcey Tech Entrepreneur of the Year Award
Announcement posted by Pearcey Foundation 27 Oct 2017
The Pearcey Foundation today announced Airtasker co-founders Tim Fung and Jonathan Lui as the joint winners of the 2017 NSW Pearcey Tech Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Airtasker is an Australian services marketplace allowing people to outsource chores and errands to people in their local neighbourhood community. Fung and Lui are also co-founders of Sydney-based Tank Stream Labs, Australia's largest co-working space for tech start-ups.
The Pearcey award was presented by Chairman of Jobs for NSW and Chair of CSIRO David Thodey at an event this week at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum.
The NSW Pearcey Awards, run in close collaboration with ACS NSW, also featured presentations by the NSW winners of the 2017 Young ICT Explorers (YICTE), which included Callum Predavec’s Please Fix app, and a pitching competition from start-up companies in NSW university incubators, which was won by a team of robotics engineers based at iAccelerate in Wollongong for RoboMotion.
“It was a great night and wonderful to see the quality of the entrepreneurs and next generation coming through. The Pearcey Foundation and the ACS need to be congratulated for the incredible work they have done over many years to promote and celebrate great innovation and entrepreneurship in our Australian ICT industry,” said Mr Thodey after presenting the awards.
Tim Fung and Jonathan Lui’s latest accolade comes on the heels of Airtasker’s successful $33m capital raising and plans to launch the service in London. Airtasker was launched in 2012 from an idea that Fung and Lui say was inspired when they asked a friend who had a truck to help them move house. Now, Airtasker boasts over 120 full-time employees and sales of over $85 million. The Airtasker site has over 1.7 million community members Australia-wide, with more than 800,000 community-verified reviews.
“We’re super happy to have received the Pearcey Tech Entrepreneur of the Year Award and to be recognised in the company of some really inspiring Australian entrepreneurs. We’re really grateful for the opportunity that we’ve got ahead of us to make a positive impact on the future of work,” said Tim Fung, Co-Founder and CEO, Airtasker.
The Pearcey Foundation also recognised the achievements of other NSW technology entrepreneurs at the event: Jonathan Barouch, founder of Local Measure; Beau Bertoli and Greg Moshal, joint CEOs at Prospa; Jane Cay, owner of Birdsnest; Brandon Evertz, co-founder and CEO of BigReviewTV, and director of BIG Un Limited; Danny Gilligan and Paul McCarney of Data Republic; and Marta Higuera and Zoe Pointon, co-founders of OpenAgent.
The NSW Pearcey Award judging committee was chaired by Simon Foster, founder of Squirrel Street and featured other previous winners of the NSW award.
“The judging committee had a very hard time separating this year’s finalists. There have been some incredible achievements in this group. We had a 23-year-old who turned a $500 loan from his father to start what is now an ASX-listed company with a market cap of $329 million, and the creators of a web-based platform that has been described as the ‘TripAdvisor’ of the real estate business, helping helped over 10,000 people through the property selling process and transacting over $5b in sales,” said Mr Foster.
For more information about the 2017 NSW Tech Entrepreneur of the Year Award, go to https://pearcey.org.au/nsw.
Other State Awards
All the State Awards have now been announced. The other 2017 winners were:
ACT: the joint winners were Mark Riley, co-founder and CTO of ContentKeeper and Phillip Williamson, co-founder and Chief Innovator at Intelledox.
VIC: the winners were husband and wife team Collis and Cyan Ta'eed, co-founders, owners and managers of Envato, a major global marketplace for creative assets and creative people based in Melbourne.
WA: WA’s inaugural Pearcey State Award was presented to ICT startup mentor and leader Matthew Macfarlane.
SA: the award was presented to Kloud founder and Business SA director Geoff Rohrsheim.
QLD: the 2017 winner was Jenine Beekhuyzen, founder of Adroit Research and the Tech Girls Movement.
About the Pearcey Foundation
The Pearcey Foundation Inc. is a non-profit organisation established in 1998 to raise the profile of the Australian Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry and profession. It was created in the memory of one of the greatest pioneers of the Australian ICT industry, Dr Trevor Pearcey. By celebrating the heroes in our industry, past present and future, the Foundation is looking to attract and encourage young Australians into this most exciting of global high technology sectors of our nation.
Web: www.pearcey.org.au and on Twitter: @Pearcey_org
The Pearcey award was presented by Chairman of Jobs for NSW and Chair of CSIRO David Thodey at an event this week at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum.
The NSW Pearcey Awards, run in close collaboration with ACS NSW, also featured presentations by the NSW winners of the 2017 Young ICT Explorers (YICTE), which included Callum Predavec’s Please Fix app, and a pitching competition from start-up companies in NSW university incubators, which was won by a team of robotics engineers based at iAccelerate in Wollongong for RoboMotion.
“It was a great night and wonderful to see the quality of the entrepreneurs and next generation coming through. The Pearcey Foundation and the ACS need to be congratulated for the incredible work they have done over many years to promote and celebrate great innovation and entrepreneurship in our Australian ICT industry,” said Mr Thodey after presenting the awards.
Tim Fung and Jonathan Lui’s latest accolade comes on the heels of Airtasker’s successful $33m capital raising and plans to launch the service in London. Airtasker was launched in 2012 from an idea that Fung and Lui say was inspired when they asked a friend who had a truck to help them move house. Now, Airtasker boasts over 120 full-time employees and sales of over $85 million. The Airtasker site has over 1.7 million community members Australia-wide, with more than 800,000 community-verified reviews.
“We’re super happy to have received the Pearcey Tech Entrepreneur of the Year Award and to be recognised in the company of some really inspiring Australian entrepreneurs. We’re really grateful for the opportunity that we’ve got ahead of us to make a positive impact on the future of work,” said Tim Fung, Co-Founder and CEO, Airtasker.
The Pearcey Foundation also recognised the achievements of other NSW technology entrepreneurs at the event: Jonathan Barouch, founder of Local Measure; Beau Bertoli and Greg Moshal, joint CEOs at Prospa; Jane Cay, owner of Birdsnest; Brandon Evertz, co-founder and CEO of BigReviewTV, and director of BIG Un Limited; Danny Gilligan and Paul McCarney of Data Republic; and Marta Higuera and Zoe Pointon, co-founders of OpenAgent.
The NSW Pearcey Award judging committee was chaired by Simon Foster, founder of Squirrel Street and featured other previous winners of the NSW award.
“The judging committee had a very hard time separating this year’s finalists. There have been some incredible achievements in this group. We had a 23-year-old who turned a $500 loan from his father to start what is now an ASX-listed company with a market cap of $329 million, and the creators of a web-based platform that has been described as the ‘TripAdvisor’ of the real estate business, helping helped over 10,000 people through the property selling process and transacting over $5b in sales,” said Mr Foster.
For more information about the 2017 NSW Tech Entrepreneur of the Year Award, go to https://pearcey.org.au/nsw.
Other State Awards
All the State Awards have now been announced. The other 2017 winners were:
ACT: the joint winners were Mark Riley, co-founder and CTO of ContentKeeper and Phillip Williamson, co-founder and Chief Innovator at Intelledox.
VIC: the winners were husband and wife team Collis and Cyan Ta'eed, co-founders, owners and managers of Envato, a major global marketplace for creative assets and creative people based in Melbourne.
WA: WA’s inaugural Pearcey State Award was presented to ICT startup mentor and leader Matthew Macfarlane.
SA: the award was presented to Kloud founder and Business SA director Geoff Rohrsheim.
QLD: the 2017 winner was Jenine Beekhuyzen, founder of Adroit Research and the Tech Girls Movement.
About the Pearcey Foundation
The Pearcey Foundation Inc. is a non-profit organisation established in 1998 to raise the profile of the Australian Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry and profession. It was created in the memory of one of the greatest pioneers of the Australian ICT industry, Dr Trevor Pearcey. By celebrating the heroes in our industry, past present and future, the Foundation is looking to attract and encourage young Australians into this most exciting of global high technology sectors of our nation.
Web: www.pearcey.org.au and on Twitter: @Pearcey_org