Michelle Deaker describes herself as a serial entrepreneur. The investment firm OneVentures is among the several businesses she has founded. The first was a tertiary tutoring college, back in her early days at university. “I was always very entrepreneurial, and that taught me the first things about business and making sure you were profitable.”
The second business was Networks Beyond 2000, an online computer retailer. Later, another idea sparked after her mother-in-law was given a gift voucher and Deaker’s partner suggested that selling vouchers online could be a good idea. “I went home and bought all the domain names around gift vouchers, and we created what became one of Australia’s first fintechs,” she recalls. “I sold that to a UK-listed company and started investing my own money.”
Not surprisingly, start-ups became her sole focus.
