Striking Twice: Aconex and Firmable co-founder Leigh Jasper Receives 2026 Pearcey Victorian Entrepreneur Award

The Pearcey Foundation today announced Leigh Jasper, the co-founder and former CEO of Aconex, co-founder and co-CEO of Firmable, co-founder and chair of SecondQuarter Ventures and chair of Glitch Capital, as the recipient of the 2026 Pearcey Victorian Entrepreneur Award. The award was presented at a dinner in Melbourne by Professor Ed Hovy, executive director of Melbourne Connect. The event also featured the 2026 Pearcey Oration, which was delivered by Aidan Tudehope, co-founder of Macquarie Technology Group and joint 2023 Pearcey Medallist, on why Australia needs to create sovereign AI capability.

In 2000, Jasper co-founded Aconex (acquired by Oracle for $1.6 billion in 2017), a collaboration platform that connects owners, builders and other teams, providing complete visibility and management of data, documents and costs across all stages of a construction project lifecycle. In 2023, he co-founded Firmable, an AI-native sales platform that gives sales teams accurate company and contact data, AI-powered buying signals, and agentic CRM enrichment.

"This year the Pearcey Foundation recognises a Victorian entrepreneur who spent almost two decades convincing the world that an unglamorous problem - construction paperwork - was worth putting on the Internet, then, just to prove it wasn't luck, Leigh is back building again with Firmable," said Jordan Green AM, Chair, Pearcey Foundation.

"Firmable is showing that we can be leaders in AI from here in Melbourne. This award recognises so many great people at Aconex and our growing team at Firmable. We've got an exciting AI opportunity ahead and have already started building out our global teams in Singapore and San Fransico. I feel very honoured to receive this award in a state and country with so many incredible technology founders and leaders," said Jasper.

Leigh Jasper

Leigh grew up in the small country town of Rutherglen, where his family ran the local car business and service station. His first job was, quite literally, pumping petrol.

At 14 he was sent to boarding school at Scotch College in Melbourne. He has described the experience simply: "It was pretty rough, but I learnt to fend for myself." There he met the boy who, two decades later, would become his co-founder at Aconex.

After Year 12 Leigh spent a year on exchange in Switzerland, before completing a first-class honours degree in mechanical and manufacturing engineering, a BSc in mathematics and a diploma in French - all from the University of Melbourne.

After a stint as a business analyst at McKinsey & Company, he resigned in the middle of the dot-com crash in 2000 to set up a new business with his old school friend Rob Phillpot. They had spent months batting an idea around over regular squash games: what if the Internet could fix the chaos of a construction site, where thousands of plans fly among hundreds of contractors, tracked entirely on paper.

They raised $1.6m from family and friends, armed with a black-and-white pitch deck and, by Leigh's own cheerful admission, considerable naïveté. He has since argued that naïveté is underrated. Most first-time founders would call this terrifying.

Aconex took its name from "Australian Construction Exchange" with the original plan being an online exchange for construction procurement. That flopped. Customers told Leigh, bluntly, that what they actually needed was somewhere to manage drawings and correspondence. So, the plan changed into cloud software delivered as a service - years before AWS existed or anyone had coined the term SaaS.

After years of international growth, in 2014 Aconex listed on the ASX - which Leigh later described as "brutal" - floating at $1.90 a share, with one investment banker joking that it was "the largest loss-making company to list in Australian history".

By the time Oracle made its $1.6b bid in December 2017, Aconex was managing more than a trillion dollars of construction projects, on every continent on earth - including Antarctica - with around 900 staff across 50 cities. Oracle offered $7.80 a share, a 47% premium: at the time, the largest technology acquisition in Australia. Leigh has called the sale "bittersweet" - a great outcome for shareholders who had backed him for two decades, and the end of an era that had defined his entire adult life.

Here is where most people would call it a day. Buy a boat. Take up golf. Leigh didn't.

He built SecondQuarter Ventures, one of Australia's first dedicated venture secondaries funds, because he remembered what it felt like to have his wealth tied up in one company with no way to de-risk. He chaired Victoria's own startup agency for almost six years, sat on the boards of some of the state's most significant companies, and quietly set up a family philanthropic foundation.

Then, in 2023 Leigh started another company from scratch - Firmable. He has openly admitted the first six months were, "the toughest six months professionally ... in my career, just trying to work out how to sell." By March 2026, Firmable reached a valuation of almost $100 million after closing a major funding round, raising about $14 million from investors.

Most recently, he has teamed up with his original Aconex co-founder and two of Australia's other unicorn founders to launch Glitch Capital, a fund built specifically to back the next generation of Australian founders - a $50m bet that the best people to support founders are the people who have already succeeded as founders.

Leigh has said the thing he loved most about Aconex was the purpose his team built it around: "connecting teams to build the world". And he still tells young founders - and, by his own account, his own children - that technology is the best place a young person can build a career, because "you really can change the world".

2026 Pearcey Victorian Entrepreneur Award

The Pearcey Foundation chooses its Victorian Entrepreneur Award recipient against three simple questions: has this person taken genuine entrepreneurial risk; are they making a real difference; and are they an inspiration to others?

On risk: Leigh quit a blue-chip job in the middle of a market crash to bet on an idea about paperwork. Twice, in fact, if you count walking straight back into the sales trenches after a billion-dollar exit.

On difference: Leigh took an entire global industry, one that was still run largely on paper, and dragged it, project by project, city by city, into the digital age - then used the proceeds to help fund the next generation of Australian founders, he worked to guide the evolution of the Victorian start-up ecosystem, and took leadership roles in social and philanthropic endeavours.

On inspiration: Leigh was nominated by people who know him, have worked alongside him for years, and see first-hand how he inspires others. He describes his own younger self as "naïve." He speaks of "near-death experiences" he does not care to dwell on. Leigh is, by his own account, still learning how to sell, two decades into his career. Together with Pearcey's 2025 Victorian and National Entrepreneur award recipient, Sam Kroonenburg, he has started a podcast specifically to share the honest stories of experience and inspire those building their companies for the first time.

As the Victorian Pearcey Award recipient, Leigh Jasper will represent the state in the Pearcey National Awards to be held 2 December 2026 in Canberra.

For more information about Leigh and previous Victorian Pearcey Entrepreneur Award recipients, go to https://www.pearcey.org.au/awards/state/vic.

The 2026 Pearcey Oration

The 2026 Pearcey Oration was delivered by Aidan Tudehope, co-founder of Macquarie Technology Group and joint 2023 Pearcey Medallist, on why Australia needs to create sovereign AI capability.

Tudehope co-founded the Macquarie Technology Group with his brother David and has served on its board since 16 July 1992. As Managing Director of the Hosting Group (Cloud Services & Government and Data Centres), Tudehope drives growth, operational excellence, cyber security leadership and an uncompromising standard of customer satisfaction. He heads the Government business unit, where Macquarie's Secure Government Cloud and Cyber Security offerings have set the benchmark for protecting the nation's most sensitive data.

In his Oration, Tudehope shared his perspective on why Australia is uniquely positioned to be a leader in the AI era, and why sovereign capability matters not only for economic growth, but for Australia's long-term prosperity, resilience and national success. The Oration transcript is available on request.

Other State Awards

Australia Capital Territory Awards: the awards will be presented at an event in Canberra on a date to be confirmed.

NSW Awards: nominations are still open with the awards to be presented at an event on 22 October 2026 at Macquarie Technology Theatre in Sydney. Nominations close on 26 September at 5pm AEST and can be submitted at https://www.pearcey.org.au/awards/nominations/state-nomination-form.

Queensland Awards: the Pearcey CICTA Queensland Awards Dinner will be held on Tuesday, 6 October 2026 at The Beetson Hotel, Petrie Terrace. Tickets are available now.

South Australian Awards: nominations can be submitted at https://www.pearcey.org.au/awards/nominations/state-nomination-form. 

Tasmanian Awards: Nominations can be submitted at https://www.pearcey.org.au/awards/nominations/state-nomination-form.

Western Australian Awards: Professor Girish Dwivedi, cardiologist, academic leader and health technology entrepreneur, was the recipient of the 2026 Western Australian Pearcey Entrepreneur of the Year Award. The award was presented as part of the 35th annual WAITTA INCITE Awards, Western Australia's longest running tech awards program. More details on PRWire here.

--

About the Pearcey Foundation
The Pearcey Foundation Inc. is a non-profit organisation established in 1998 to raise the profile of the Australian Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry and profession. It was created in the memory of one of the greatest pioneers of the Australian ICT industry, Dr Trevor Pearcey. By celebrating the heroes in our industry, past present and future, the Foundation is looking to attract and encourage young Australians into this most exciting of global high technology sectors of our nation.

Web: www.pearcey.org.au

X: @Pearcey_org #PearceyAwards

LinkedIn: Pearcey Foundation #PearceyAwards