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'Under-employed' Aconex co-founder Leigh Jasper gets set to invest
By Emma Koehn
Aconex co-founder Leigh Jasper might currently be "happily underemployed", though he's got little free time as he searches for Australia's next big thing.
"What I’d love to do is either help or get involved with companies that are on the journey we went through," Mr Jasper told The Age and Sydney Morning Herald from the sidelines of the Credit Suisse tech forum in Melbourne this week.
Aconex co-founder Leigh Jasper believes Australia allows startups to chase "winner takes most" market share and this prepares companies well for global markets. Credit: Vince Caligiuri
Aconex, a cloud software offer for the construction sector co-founded by school friends Mr Jasper and Rob Phillpot, was sold to Oracle in a $1.6 billion deal last year. Mr Jasper stayed on with the startup when it moved to Oracle ownership but then departed the business in August, tweeting that Aconex was left in "good hands".
The transition means he's freed up to pursue a number of investment opportunities in the construction tech space and beyond, as well as "playing with a few ideas" for potential future ventures, he said. Mr Jasper is also considering future board roles and is a currently a non-executive director at job ads giant Seek.
His startup investments so far include AmazingCo, a booking platform for experiences like pub crawls, family photos and home cooking, which entered the US market this year.
Mr Jasper is optimistic Australia's startup space can create more success stories in a world where market share is key and there is trend of "winner takes all".
"We underestimate how good Australia is to build a technology business, particularly to trial businesses that have network effects," he said in a Credit Suisse panel discussion with Seek co-founder and Square Peg Capital chief Paul Bassat and Culture Amp chief financial officer Jacqueline Purcell.
"I think for Australian businesses, Australia is a great size to build networks and build oligopolies if you will. It's the right-sized market," he said.
Aconex attributed much of its success to building a network of users in the construction sector over close to two decades, until it approached a point where it was the dominant software product for project management across the local market.
Mr Jasper said the settings for startup growth were broadly right in Australia, though developing technology talent within schools was still a barrier.
"I think that’s still a big challenge, and I don’t know if governments [alone] can fix it," he said.
"The reality is there’s not enough people learning computer science at school."
This shortage can have flow-on effects, he said.