The founder of Sausage Software was one of New Zealand's youngest dotcom pioneers when in 1996 he took the company public. He was just 23 at the time and netted $A51 million from the deal. Sausage Software’s hugely popular HotDog Web Editor developed in the early days of the internet was adopted by customers in more than 200 countries.
He repeated this success in 2014 with the ASX listing of Urbanise, which was Australia's fourth-fastest growing tech company in 2015. It hit an early peak of $A1.50 a share but was recently trading at just 29Ac after reaching a 12-month high of 94Ac.
Ottrim spent more than 20 years in Silicon Valley doing angel and early investing in more than 50 startups before returning to New Zealand last year with a new blockchain venture, zMint.co. It provides software for digital tokens, alt-coins and cryptocurrency that it says will enable tech entrepreneurs to avoid the traditional venture capital fundraising path.
He has spent several years writing a book series looking behind the scenes of the tech world. Other creative endeavours include the blog Burners.Me to discuss the Burning Man culture and attracted more than 200,000 followers.
Born and educated in Wellington, the 45-year-old created an “energy group” at his former school, Wellington College, called eKoSchool and founded ekoLiving to produce software sensitive to environmental changes.