Matt Barrie
Chief Executive, Freelancer.com
Matt Barrie is an award winning entrepreneur, technologist and lecturer. He is Chief Executive of Freelancer.com, the world's largest outsourcing marketplace connecting over 3.0 million professionals from around the globe, and in the top 250 websites globally.
Freelancer.com primarily connects small businesses and individuals from the western world with freelancers in the developing world, empowering entrepreneurs on both sides of the globe. To date, over 1.3 million projects have been outsourced through Freelancer.com.
The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences awarded Freelancer.com the "Internet's highest honour" in the 15th Annual Webby Awards as best Employment Site of the Year, as well as the Webby People's Choice Award for the same category - from a field of 10,000 entrants from 60 countries.Matt is serial entrepreneur, previously as founder and CEO of Sensory Networks Inc., a vendor of high performance network security processors. Prior to this he founded a telecommunications hardware company. Matt has raised over $40M USD in financing from venture capital, strategic investors and through government grants while running or assisting technology companies.
For the last ten years has been an external lecturer at the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of Sydney, teaching Network Security, and starting in 2010, Technology Venture Creation. He is the co-author of over 20 US patent applications.Matt is a prolific speaker and has spoken at or featured in the Summit Series, the New York Times, Bloomberg TV, The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, The Atlantic, Switzer, BRW and The Economist. In 2012 he was selected out of a field of 600 presenters to be one of 20 featured speakers at South by South West in Austin, Texas (SXSW), which is one of the world's largest interactive, music, film and technology festivals.
In 2006, he was awarded the State Pearcey Award for contribution to the IT&T industry. In 2010 he was named Alumnus of the Year for the Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Sydney. In 2011, Smart Company named him in the 10 most influential Australians in IT. In 2011 he was named inaugural BRW Entrepreneur of the Year, by Australia's most prestigious business publication. He is also a national finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.