2014 Vic Award
The 2014 Victorian Pearcey Entrepreneur Award was presented to Bevan Clark and Guy King as part of the Victorian iAwards ceremony held on Wednesday 4th June in the Telstra Theatrette, Melbourne.
The Award was presented by The Hon Gordon Rich Phillips MLC, Minister for Technology and and Aviation and Assistant Treasurer of Victoria.
In announcing the award, Rick Harvey, Victorian Charirman of the Pearcey Foundation, noted that though Bevan and Guy had made a difference on the world stage they preferred a low profile. None-the-less, they were significant contributors behind the scenes to the Victorian innovation industry.
Bevan Clark and Guy King
Bevan and Guy founded Retailmenot - a retail coupon marketplace. Born from a Melbourne tech startup, Stateless Systems. A VC vehicle called WhaleShark Media, owned by VC Austin Ventures acquired RetailMeNot for of $130 million cash, $10 million Promissory Note and $20 million preferred stock in 2010, did a few more acquisitions ($34.4m, $13.4m, $1.2m and $2.6m), rebranded itself RetailNeNot and then IPO’d on NASDAQ in July 2013. It’s now worth US$1.6bn. Bloomberg Bevan and Guy are active angel investors, supporting start-up ventures, such as online democracy project, the Open Australia Foundation, and travel planner site rome2rio. BRW VPA ZDnet
Since their exit from RetailMeNot, Guy and Bevan had invested heavily back into the Victorian startup ecosystem - eg. Melbourne's AngelCube accelerator and helping many small startups. They're also the primary funders behind Lifx.co, which is a huge, high-risk, high-return venture.
