I was born in Palmerston North in 1976, and moved to Auckland's North Shore when I was four years old (and have never left!)
After attending primary school for a very short time, I was home schooled for about 5 years.
At the age of 11 (in 1987), the share market crashed, and because of the losses and hardship that my parents and other people suffered, this sparked in me a life-long interest in business, that remains to this day.
Most of my schooling occurred at Glenfield College, and in these 5 years I went from being an average student to almost top of the school.
During my schooling, because of my desire to make money, at one stage I had two north shore times advertiser paper runs, as well as three NZ Herald paper runs simultaneously.
I also participated in the Young Enterprise Scheme, and was glad for the grounding in basic business principles that this gave me.
After leaving high school, I attending Auckland University and started a Bachelor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
After failing my second year of university, I had heard about the Internet, and that it was apparently doubling in size every few months in the USA, which I figured would make it a great opportunity.
On the 10th of September 1997 I signed up my first customer for Internet services, to the company that would later become Orcon Internet.
Over the next 10 years, I built Orcon into the 4th largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) in New Zealand, with no external funding, and no borrowing.
During my time at Orcon, we won numerous awards including NZ's Best ISP, HiGrowth company of the year, North Shore Business of the year, and were the 4th fastest growing company in NZ with revenues over $10M.
Personally, I was the Ernst & Young, Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and HitTech Young Achiever of the year in 2004, along with winning a number of other personal awards.
In 2007, me and my business sold Orcon for $24.3M, which netted me $19.44 Million.
While I was running Orcon, I also started a number of other ventures, including a Radio station, owning Crow Bar (one of Auckland's longest running bars) and owning a Barter Exchange with our own private currency.
Since selling Orcon, I have invested in commercial property in Auckland, and also have a number of residential properties.
My latest venture is called Green Carbon, and is a business that helps companies to measure, manage, and offset their carbon footprint.