Marcus Dawe Joins SWOOP Board
Marcus Dawe with SWOOP Co-Founder Cai Kjaer
We are thrilled to announce that Marcus Dawe has joined our SWOOP board. Here we have an exclusive interview with Marcus where he explains what attracted him to SWOOP and how he balances it all as a serial tech entrepreneur.
Marcus, great to connect. Firstly congratulations on joining the SWOOP board. As a serial tech entrepreneur who’s been successful with many ventures, what attracted you to SWOOP?
Thanks. Well, I’m a data scientist at heart and have always got some data projects going on. I’ve developed and worked on some of the largest data systems in Australia. We are now firmly in the age of data, where new products, service insights, market advantages, productivity advancements can all be derived from the way we manage information. SWOOP has an awesome team with the two co-founders whom I worked with at CSC, so it was a really easy decision to join them. I had been mentoring them through the startup phase and their passion and enthusiasm is the essential ingredient to this great venture.
Why is SWOOP different to other tech start-ups?
SWOOP is the best example of how a startup can be formed within a year, a product developed and major customers such as banks using it within 12 months to improve their collaboration and productivity. It was able to achieve this through strong focus, a great technical capability and most importantly 20 years of deep domain knowledge that has been coded into the product. I’m convinced that SWOOP now is the leader in the field of social collaboration analytics – deep insights into organisations.
You and SWOOP Co-founder Cai Kjaer recently met Scott Farquhar, the co-founder of Atlassian recently, how was that?
Scott was very generous with his time. We met him at his office and he opened with “What can I do for you?” What followed was a strategy session to help us with SWOOP and our go-to-market model, pricing and lessons from his experience in cloud software sales. We also identified that we could help Atlassian as well with SWOOP. Scott is a great asset to the global software scene.
On the subject of inspiring leaders, SWOOP recently published a three part blog series interviewing David Thodey about his time at Telstra and use of entreprise social network Yammer. What can we learn from David’s approach?
David is a real leader. Recognised globally as a top leader and able to drive results by building teams and empowering them. David identified that he needed to improve communications in his organisation and implemented Yammer to achieve this. For us it is the logical next step that the analysis and feedback of that data is what drives insights and helps rapid change by informing from the employees up and the CEO down.
Wearing multiple hats including as CEO of Mineral Carbonation International and Health Horizon how do you balance it all?
If I were a CEO of a multi-national I would be managing multiple businesses/projects. However, I choose to run multiple startups as a kind of Group CEO. I’ve always managed multiple projects by having great teams and co-founders and my best talent is strategy.
Anything else you’d like to share?
Our roadmap is looking good for SWOOP. We’ve established our credentials in Yammer and are moving to all the other social channels within enterprises. Watch out for us.
Thanks for your time Marcus and all the best with your ventures.
More about Marcus Dawe
Marcus is a serial tech entrepreneur and has had success with his many of his ventures. Most notably eDIME Internet Agency which he founded and sold to Computer Sciences Corp (CSC) in 2000. At which time was the largest provider of Internet strategy and sites to Federal Government with 25 departments and agencies outsourced including Prime Minister, AEC, Defence, ASIO, ATSIC, DVA and many others.
He is the CEO of a carbon storage and utilisation company Mineral Carbonation International which is proving the viability of large scale, safe and permanent storage of CO2 in carbonates. Those carbonates can be used in building products such as cements, bricks and plasterboards. This is funded by NSW Govt, Commonwealth and Orica Ltd for 4 years.
Marcus is the co-founder and CEO of Health Horizon, a global showcase for health innovation launched in 2015 and is now the largest database of heath innovation globally.
His board experience is balanced - sitting on government committees, business boards of startups, scientific & non-for profit public and private organisation boards & committees. He is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD).
Contact him at: marcus.dawe@swoopanalytics.com