NextNow Member Blog

Now 42, Randal Leeb du Toit’s first career was as a lawyer, initially in South Africa and later in Australia where he moved in the mid 1990s. He recognised however that the real action was in technology and the opportunities afforded by social networking.

Two years after arriving in Australia Mr Leeb du Toit set up an early stage venture capital firm Tribalweave Capital that focussed on then still nascent social media. He was instrumental in the establishment of First Tuesday, an entrepreneur’s social network that rapidly expanded into over 40 countries. He was also instrumental in introducing— a major publishing house to the future of media by creating intrapreneurial projects and joint ventures. Besides a strong focus on social media he also has an interest in the convergence of info, bio and nanotech and has served as chairman of mobile, bio and nanotech companies.

Then followed a stint as chief executive of Australian Distributed Incubator, part of the BITS innovation capital scheme, which he ran as an early stage venture firm. He was instrumental in selling off its portfolio in Australia’s first secondary portfolio play.

In April 2004 Mr Leeb du Toit joined then start up National ICT Australia (NICTA) to set up its commercialisation operations. At the time it had 20 staff and one laboratory. When he left NICTA earlier this year it had approximately 600 staff,— five labs and a number of spin out companies, some of which had secured venture funding and multinational customers. One of his initiatives at NICTA was to establish an entrepreneur in residence programme which attracted seasoned entrepreneurs from around the world to work with NICTA researchers on ways to commercialise research.

In a move he describes as “eating your own dog food”— he stepped out from being Director of Business Development of NICTA earlier this year and became an entrepreneur in residence himself. Being something of a hyper entrepreneur, he left NICTA at the end of June to focus on a number of start ups and established companies in parallel so as to leverage synergies between them.

“The social media space is alive with opportunities and I want to maximise my impact as much as possible by infusing my knowledge, pattern recognition capabilities and global network into a portfolio of activities,”…

Hello NextNow members,

My name is Joe.— I joined NextNow to meet positive and creative people.— I’m interested in forming new friendships and sharing ideas and inspiration.

My biggest joy this past year has been my 11-month old daughter, my new spiritual companion, who has helped me to experience unconditional love at a profound level and who inspires me to engage each moment of the day with unrestrained curiosity.

After about ten years of exploring improvisational acting and several years of practicing a martial art called Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu, I’ve been working on applying principles of improvisation to various areas of my life.— More recent applications include parenting, playing the piano, learning Mandarin, and swing trading.

Professionally, for the past eleven years, I’ve enjoyed helping innovative people patent their inventions.— I’ve worked with technologies ranging from computer architecture and networking to nanotechnology to consumer products.

I look forward to meeting you at future NextNow events.

Joe

I am starting to ask NextNow people (a couple at a time) to send me a little or “medium-little” blurb about themselves.——— This can be any of the following or combinations of or something else that will let the community know a little bit more about you.— I am thinking something about your personal life, passion(s), interests, something about your talents, something about what you are looking for now or in the long run.— I am going to try to post a couple per week…this should then take enough time that by the end it will be time to update everyone.—— Again, this is just to let one another know more about you…helping all of us to become “extension chords in time and space” for one another.— BTW, if we post something and you later want it edited…let me know.— OK…on with the show…

–Bill