Former chief entrepreneur’s tech business goes belly up owing $10m

The Brisbane-based blockchain firm founded by former Queensland chief entrepreneur Leanne Kemp has gone into administration owing more than $10m.

The Brisbane-based tech company founded by former Queensland chief entrepreneur Leanne Kemp has collapsed owing creditors more than $10m.

Everledger, started by Ms Kemp in 2015 to track supply chains using blockchain, appointed administrator Steven Staatz, of Vincents, last month after the company’s 14 staff were laid off.

The failure of the firm came despite attracting $54.7 million from investors, including $3 million from the government’s blockchain pilot grants program and Chinese internet giant Tencent, which owns social media program WeChat.

Mr Staatz in a report this week lodged with ASIC said the company, which had about $15,000 in its bank account, owed the Australian Taxation Office more than $368,000. More than $9m is owed to a related company called Forever Ltd.

Ms Kemp, who was inspired by Leonardo DiCaprio’s movie Blood Diamond to start the business, had attracted high profile clients including luxury fashion brand Alexander McQueen and car manufacturer Ford.

But the company faltered after a second round of funding wasn’t received. Mr Staatz said he had instructed an accountant to submit a research and development claim on behalf of creditors that could be worth between $565,550 and $1.13m. “The company’s interest in intellectual property is being further investigated,” Mr Staatz said.

Leanne Kemp was Queensland’s former chief entrepreneur.

Ms Kemp, who is now based in the United Kingdom but remains a director of Everledger, served two terms as Queensland’s chief entrepreneur from 2018-2020 and in 20121 won the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering’s Clunies Ross award for Entrepreneur of the Year.

Everledger claimed to be have created an independent platform to provide a secure and permanent digital record of an object’s origin, characteristics and ownership.

That included everything from diamonds and gemstones to wines, apparel, art and even electric car batteries using blockchain technology that was able to identify individual components of an object.

“All employees were terminated prior to the administrator’s appointment,” Mr Staatz. “The company has outstanding employee entitlements totalling approximately $215,000 in respect of redundancy and payments in lieu of notice.”

Ms Kemp declined to comment on the reasons for the company’s collapse noting “this is quite an old story. Why now? It’s such old old news.”

According to her Linkedin profile, Ms Kemp now serves on the London-based Prince of Wales’ Sustainable Markets Initiative that “aims to lead and accelerate the world’s transition to a sustainable future by putting nature, people and planet at the heart of global value creation.”

Everledger, which has an office in London, in 2019 completed a $30m funding round with the backing of Tencent, Graphene Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Rakuten, Fidelity and Vickers Venture Partners. In his report to ASIC, Mr Staatz said the status of the UK company would not have an impact on the realisation of assets and the payout of a dividend to creditors.

Originally published as Former chief entrepreneur’s tech business goes belly up owing $10m