Ever since I could press a button, I've been passionate about technology. I was one of those kids who taught themselves to program at a young age (for me, it was Basic on an Apple II C). I was fortunate enough that my dad was interested in computers as well, so by the time I was finishing primary school, we had a 486 and a 9.6k modem, and I got to spend a bunch of time on BBSes. Later on in the mid-90s, we got the internet (when OzEmail started offering net access) and, in addition to the time I spent hanging out on Kali playing Warcraft II, I figured out how to build websites with a combination of HTML and Perl CGI scripts. I really liked building stuff, and started my blog in 1998, which I administered for a time with a content management system I wrote.

I love science fiction and thinking about big "what if" scenarios. I grew up on a regular diet of Star Trek episodes and movies.

I studied a business IT degree at university, writing my honors thesis on financial fraud detection systems for e-commerce systems. I've also spent time working as a network ops technician, web developer, and business intelligence analyst at various large companies. During my university days, I picked up Java, Haskell, Perl, and PHP. Most recently I've been learning JavaScript and Python.

Most of my professional life has been spent as a lawyer, working primarily in the areas of law relating to the internet and technology. I have spent a lot of time creating and negotiating all sorts of technology-related contracts and policies, and delving into many interesting legal issues that arise from working in an industry that moves and innovates so quickly.

I was an early employee at SurveyMonkey, having started its legal department, and before that worked in a major international corporate law firm in Sydney as a technology and finance lawyer. I'm qualified to practice law in California.

I have two law degrees - one from the University of New South Wales, and a master's from Stanford Law School, where I focused on Law, Science & Technology.

Finance and investing has always been an interesting area to me. Just like law and technology, it's an intensely analytical area with a lot of inputs, but it also has a fascinating human aspect to it. I enjoy reading popular behavioral economics books and I'll read anything that authors like Michael Lewis and Malcolm Gladwell write.

More formally, I hold a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and have worked in the credit approval department of Macquarie Bank. I've also worked as a banking & finance lawyer (including a very short stint in securitization in 2007).

Having had the fortune of being an early employee at a successful internet company, I found that there was nothing quite like the fulfillment and excitement of building something new and watching it grow - whether it's a process, product, or business. I'm also fortunate to live in Silicon Valley (or perhaps unfortunate if you look at the cost of living here!) because it's such a hotbed of entrepreneurialism, and there's no shortage of interesting people and innovative ideas that flow through the area.

I dabble in angel investing in startups, and am always interested in hearing about opportunities to work with startups.