Matt Barrie, Founder and CEO of Freelancer.com, was this week crowned the winner of the 2011 BRW Entrepreneur of the Year.
His global online outsourcing business, Freelancer.com, has so far provided work for over 2.4 million people worldwide, earning more than $US85 million in the process. He successfully beat out close to 100 other applicants to take the BRW title. In July last year, Dynamic Business Magazine also named him one of its top 10 entrepreneurs of 2010.
In its inaugural year, the BRW Entrepreneur of the Year competition recognises Australia’s most outstanding business entrepreneur, based on criteria such as innovation, market share, revenue and profit generated for their business or product. Barrie was selected by a panel of leading entrepreneurs, including Boost Juice founder, Janine Allis, The Apprentice judge Mark Bouris and Anthony Bell of Bell Partners, all former Dynamic Business Magazine cover stars.
“Entrepreneurship is at the heart of BRW magazine,” said editor Kate Mills. “For this reason, we decided to run a national competition that celebrates business innovators who have shown the ambition and drive to successfully create a business venture of their own. Matt stood out amongst the rest for the sheer scale of his vision – a global outsourcing platform – along with his ability to move from the big picture of the global labour market, to the micro-details of his business. These are the kind of attributes that mark out the modern day entrepreneur.”
Barrie said: “I am very honoured to take out the inaugural BRW Entrepreneur of the Year award. Creating the world’s largest outsourcing platform has been a tremendous experience. The growth we’ve experienced has been phenomenal. We’re now in the top 250 websites worldwide, and we’ve proven to the world that Australia can be a major technology player.”
Finalists of the 2011 Entrepreneur of the Year Awards included (in no particular order):
- Adrian Di Marco of TechnologyOne
- Naomi Simson of RedBalloon
- Matt Bullock of eWAY
- Lorenzo Coppa of eStore.com.au
- James Myatt of Australian Power & Gas
- Ruslan Kogan of Kogan and Milan Direct.