Simon Hackett, an Australian technology entrepreneur, who co-founded Internode in 1991, and after growing it to 450 staff, with 190,000 customers and an annual turnover of $180million, he sold it to iiNet for $105million in December 2011. 

Simon also has done some other amazing things in his life, such as: 

• He was part of a conglomerate of universities that bought the internet into Australia! Side note, for those who remember it, Simon explains that noise that the modem used to make every time we logged into the internet! And informed us it wasn’t even required! 
• In 1990 he Co-created the world’s first internet toaster, yep you heard that correctly, they cooked a piece of toast from the other side of the world. This has been touted as arguably the world’s first IOT Gadget 
• He is a huge advocate for electric vehicles, and as such he imported the first Tesla Roadster into Australia and documented the process of driving it 501 km on a single charge during the Global Green Challenge in Australia in 2009. This was reported to be a new world range record for a production electric car at the time. He went on to spend some time with Elon Musk and subsequently appeared in a testimonial for Tesla. 
• He has also started The Hackett Foundation undertakes targeted philanthropy work in support of community endeavours– most notably he is the main sponsor of the world-famous festival WOMADelaide.  
• He has invested in multiple companies and is a significant investor in Redflow Limited, an ASX-listed company that is doing amazing things in battery manufacturing, renewables and environmental industries. 

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