Greg Luck
Leveraging two decades of startup experience, I provide mentoring and advice to technology companies ranging from Advisor/Mentor appointments to Advisory Boards and serving as Independent Director and performing Product Assessments for Corp Dev.
About Me
I am an experienced technologist with 20 years of startup experience.
I have been CTO and CEO and have worked in 5 startups over that time, three with successful exits and two that are still independent businesses.
I have a Masters Degree in Information Technology, a Bachelor of Commerce and am a Chartered Accountant and a Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
I live in South East Queensland, Australia.
Types of Appointments
Tech Startup Advisory & Mentoring/Advisory Boards
I have been in Tech Startups for nearly 20 years. Two of these were Silicon Valley based startups, one Chicago based and two Australian startups.
I have pitched to VCs and Private Equity Investors more than 50 times.
For two of the startups I have been involved in I joined when the companies were early stage with tens of staff and saw them grow out to thousands of staff and turnovers in the billions which became public companies.
I have also been in more niche tech startups which grew to around the 100 employee mark before being acquired by a larger company.
As an experienced and successful CTO and CEO, I can advise Tech Entrepreneurs at all stages of their growth.
What this looks like depends on the startup and the CEO. It can be acting as a sounding board, participating in strategic decisions, helping with funding, helping with execution around product, pricing, marketing or sales.
It can also take the form of being on an Advisory Board, along with others.
Independent Director
I have served on Executive Committees for many years and have been Chairman and CEO and also a Director for the Common Stockholders.
With my expertise in Enterprise Software as an Independent Director I come with industry knowledge, tech knowledge, experience as a successful operator and international experience with boards.
I am also a Chartered Accountant and Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
The Independent Director has the least skin in the game, when compared to the founders and the investors who make up the rest of the board seats. This perspective allows for rational decision making and helpful advice to be proffered dispassionately.
Independent Product Assessment
I have done many assessments of products as part of potential investments by VCs or acquisitions from Corporate Development departments.
My expertise is in Enterprise Software.
When performing an assessment I will conduct one or more meetings with the CEO and the CTO and/or other technical staff.
I focus on understanding the market, the competitive situation, and particularly the technology. I like to drill in to the technology until I understand it together with any secret sauce or points of difference it has to competitors.
Usually VCs will seek out independent experts from their network or their portfolio companies. And Corporate Development will often utilise experts from within their companies. I can give my own independent opinion which can then be compared to those from other sources.
I write up a report with my findings and meet to discuss these and do whatever follow up is requested.
Skills
CEO
4 years experience as CEO of Hazelcast, Inc, based in Palo Alto, California. Grew the company from 30 to 160 customers, revenue 15X, staff from 15 to 95 and went to cash flow positive. Completed 3 rounds of funding and international expansion.
CTO
Multiple CTO roles in E-Commerce and Product Companies. Turned Hazelcast into the leading In-Memory Data Grid culminating in the release of Hazelcast 4. Built and managed product management and Engineering teams.
Engineering Management
Have run agile engineering teams for the last 20 years.
At Hazelcast grew from a few engineers to a 60 strong pan-European engineering team.
Built a rigorous, quality focused team.
In-Memory Data Management
18 years of in-memory experience. Creator of Ehcache, still the most popular in-process cache back in 2003. Co-spec lead of JCache, the Java Caching Standard. CTO of Terracotta and Hazelcast.
Stream Processing
Created Hazelcast Jet, the world’s fastest stream processing engine, and led its development at Hazelcast from inception to Jet 3.0.
Enterprise Software
Long experience as a user of Enterprise software with a long stint at ThoughtWorks. Developed Enterprise software for Ehcache, Terracotta, Software AG and Hazelcast.
Java
22 years Java experience. Served in two stints on the Java Community Process, once for Terracotta and later for Hazelcast. JavaOne Rockstar award recipient.
Cloud
Created and led the program to move Hazelcast and Hazelcast Jet to the cloud in AWS, Azure and Google.
AI/ML
Led the AI initiative at Hazelcast to add high performance, multi-language, multi-library ML inference to Jet.
Contact
PO Box 3474 Newmarket QLD 4051Australia
