Dr Tom McKaskill

Global serial entrepreneur, consultant, educator and author, Dr McKaskill has established a reputation for providing insights into how entrepreneurs start, develop and harvest their ventures. Acknowledged as the world's leading authority on exit strategies for high growth enterprises, Dr. McKaskill provides both real world experience with a professional educator's talent for explaining complex management problems that confront entrepreneurs. His talent for teaching executives and his pragmatic approach to management education has gained him a reputation as a popular speaker at conferences, workshops and seminars. His approaches to building sustainable profitable ventures and to selling business at a significant premium, has gained him considerable respect with the entrepreneurial community.

Upon completing his doctorate at London Business School, Dr McKaskill worked as a management consultant, later co-founding Pioneer Computer Systems in Northampton, UK. After being its President for 13 years it was sold to Ross Systems Inc. During his tenure at Pioneer, the company grew from 3 to 160 people with offices in England, New Zealand and USA, raised venture capital, undertook two acquisitions and acquired over 2,000 customers. Following the sale of Pioneer to Ross Systems, Dr McKaskill stayed with Ross for three years and then left to form another company, Distinction Software Inc. In 1997 Atlanta based Distinction raised $US 2 million in venture capital and after five years, with a staff of 30, a subsidiary in New Zealand and distributors in five countries, was sold to Peoplesoft Inc. In 1994 Dr McKaskill stated a consulting business in Kansas which was successfully sold in the following year.

After a year as visiting Professor of International Business at Georgia State University, Dr McKaskill was appointed Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship (AGSE) in June 2001. Professor McKaskill was the Director of the Master of Entrepreneurship and Innovation program at AGSE for the following 5 years. In 2006 Dr. McKaskill was appointed the Richard Pratt Chair in Entrepreneurship at AGSE. Dr McKaskill retired from Swinburne University in February 2008.

Dr. McKaskill is the author of eight books for entrepreneurs covering such topics as new venture growth, raising venture capital, selling a business, acquisitions strategy and angel investing. He conducts workshops and seminars on these topics for entrepreneurs around the world. He has conducted workshops and seminars for educational institutions, associations, private firms and public corporations, including KPMG, St George Bank, AMP, AICD and PWC. His private strategic exit workshops for senior management teams, Directors and external investors is highly valued by venture capital firms. Dr. McKaskill is a successful columunist and writer for popular business magazines and entrepreneur portals.