CEO at Piclinq
San Francisco Bay Area
- Current
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- CEO at Piclinq
- Founder at Metarand.com
- Past
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- Corporate Adviser at Fox Interactive Media
- Chairman at Creative Enclave
- Director, Business Development at NICTA Limited
- Chairman at Tigerspike
- Chief Executive Officer at Australian Distributed Incubator
- Executive Chairman at Tribalweave Capital
- Corporate Counsel at Email Limited
- Education
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- University of Cape Town
- University of Natal
- Rhodes University
- Selborne
- University of Cape Town
- Recommended
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11 people have recommended Randal - Connections
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311
connections
- Industry
- Online Media
- Websites
Randal Leeb-du Toit’s Summary
Randal is an experienced business/brand/community builder. He is currently CEO of Piclinq, a Silicon Valley-headquartered company operating in the 'connected photography' arena with offices in Los Angeles, St Petersburg and Galway.
He has most recently acted as Corporate Advisor to Fox Interactive Media (MySpace, IGN etc - a News Corporation company), Massive Interactive (Australia's most awarded web development agency, owned by STW) and as Chairman of Creative Enclave, a social games developer. He is also the founder of Metarand.com, a social media analyst and blog covering this space globally.
He was Director, Business Development for a major Australian Research Center of Excellence in Information & Communications Technology.
In this role, he spun out three venture backed companies.
Previously he was CEO of the Australian Distributed Incubator where he invested into 18 early stage high tech companies.
Randal's entrepreneurial experience includes:
- At First Tuesday he grew this business networking start up to 500,000 members in 110 cities, facilitating over $150 million in capital raisings (acquired by Yazam).
- As New Ventures Manager at global publishing house Wolters Kluwer, he created joint ventures and spin outs in the online arena. He built ComStrata, an online management, ecommerce and financial system for the strata industry (acquired by InSite), as well as LawStream, a specialist legal portal, which attracted a million page views in its first month (in 1998!)
Earlier in his career, as corporate counsel at listed conglomerate Email Limited, he worked on acquisitions and divestments and ecommerce activities.
He has been writing and commenting on the Internet, digital and social media arenas for over a decade and is an accomplished professional writer, publisher and editor.
Randal Leeb-du Toit’s Specialties:
virtual worlds, social media, pattern recognition, leadership, evangelist, entrepreneur, deal maker, branding and identity, publisher, law, mergers & acquisitions, private equity, venture capital, director, chairman, ceo, technology transfer, IP management, capital raising, portfolio management, coaching, corporate development, strategy, incubation.
Randal Leeb-du Toit’s Experience
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CEO
Piclinq
(Photography industry)
August 2008 — Present (2 months)
Piclinq is an exciting 'connected photography' company headquartered in Burlingame, California.
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Founder
Metarand.com
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)
July 2007 — Present (1 year 3 months)
Metarand provides commentary and insights into the social media arena.
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Corporate Adviser
Fox Interactive Media
(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; NWS; Internet industry)
March 2008 — August 2008 (6 months)
Advised FIM with respect to various aspects of their portfolio, including acting as an evangelist for the MySpace Developer Platform and spearheaded the Platform's launch in Australia through a series of devJams.
In addition, conducted corporate development activities with respect to various acquisition and investment opportunities -
Chairman
Creative Enclave
(Venture Capital & Private Equity industry)
December 2007 — July 2008 (8 months)
Creative Enclave builds social media applications. Our flagship product is Imperial Galaxy, a social media science fiction MMOG. You can check out the public beta on Facebook from 17th December 2007.
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Director, Business Development
NICTA Limited
(Non-Profit; 501-1000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)
April 2004 — April 2007 (3 years 1 month)
Randal was Director, Business Development for NICTA, an Australian ICT centre of excellence.
He oversaw the technology transfer activities of the company, including its investments and licensing programs. He advised on key technology trends, market analysis and business drivers.
He orchestrated a number of spin out companies from NICTA, including Open Kernel Labs, an embedded systems microkernel developer with a who's who list of multinationals as clients and a pioneer in the open source arena, Audinate, a developer of digital audio network technologies and 7-IP, a remote portable office developer in the satnav and wimax arenas.
He took up an Entrepreneur in Residence role with a view to spinning out a social media virtual world play (Yoick), and quickly achieved hottest start up in Silicon Valley status. -
Chairman
Tigerspike
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Telecommunications industry)
January 2004 — August 2006 (2 years 8 months)
Tigerspike is a mobile entertainment company, based in Sydney. The team is pioneering the aggregation, publication and delivery of next generation mobile content.
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Chief Executive Officer
Australian Distributed Incubator
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Venture Capital & Private Equity industry)
November 2000 — March 2004 (3 years 5 months)
ADI was an early stage venture capital company that made investments into high technology companies across Australia. The portfolio included Genetraks, 5th Finger (acquired by NineMSN), Cogstate (ASX- listed) and many others. The initial portfolio was sold in Australia's first secondary portfolio play.
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Executive Chairman
Tribalweave Capital
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Venture Capital & Private Equity industry)
January 1998 — October 2002 (4 years 10 months)
Randal was the Executive Chairman of corporate advisory and venture firm, Tribalweave Capital, CEO of the global business networking phenomenon, First Tuesday, in Australia and CEO of early stage venture capital and advisory group Australian Distributed Incubator.
He has board experience with numerous high technology companies, including roles as Chairman of Genetraks, a leading Australian bioinformatics company and Chairman of nABACUS, a Hong Kong based nanotechnology company.
In the 90's Randal led a strategic initiative to bring business publishing house, CCH and its parent Wolters Kluwer, into the new media age. He focused on developing alliances and partnerships and conceptualising, financing and managing new ventures, for example, he initiated the establishment of ComStrata, an online strata management and financial system for the strata title industry, which was sold to Insite. -
Corporate Counsel
Email Limited
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing industry)
January 1996 — December 1997 (2 years)
He ran his own legal practice in South Africa in the early 90's and then worked in Sydney, Australia as corporate counsel for Email Limited, a multinational diversified manufacturing and distribution company, which had over 100 subsidiaries around the world and more than 10,000 staff. At Email he focused on intellectual property and mergers & acquisitions and was involved in numerous transactions including the acquisition of Atlas Steels for $150 million.
Randal Leeb-du Toit’s Education
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University of Cape Town
BA, LLB, Law, 1988 — 1992
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University of Natal
1984 — 1984
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Rhodes University
1983 — 1984
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Selborne
1978 — 1982
- Activities and Societies:
- Rugby 1st XV
South African Junior Lifesaving Champion in 3 disciplines.
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University of Cape Town
Bachelor of Arts, English, Law (Accelerated Program)
Additional Information
Randal Leeb-du Toit’s Websites:
Randal Leeb-du Toit’s Interests:
Life Media,Social Media, Web 2.0, Immersion, Presence, Entrepreneurship, Virtual Worlds, Mobile, Life Sciences, Mountain Biking, Surfing, Art, Painting, Photography, Video.
Randal Leeb-du Toit’s Groups:
Founder at Innovation Bay: www.innovationbay.com
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Private Equity and Venture Capital Group -
Semantic Web
Randal Leeb-du Toit’s Honors:
South African Surf Lifesaving Champion across 4 disciplines.
Social media research materials incorporated into 2008 Stanford Graduate School of Business MBA course on strategy and management.
Recently published articles:
* http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/mobile-from-the-word-goh/2008/05/05/1209839551673.html
* http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/facebook-gets-on-with-business/2007/10/09/1191695837750.html
* http://metarand.com/2008/02/05/at-facebook-value-can-an-app-developer-ipo-north-of-2-billion/
* http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/attention-economy-needs-data-portability/2008/03/11/1205125864120.html
Randal Leeb-du Toit’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- expertise requests
- business deals
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
