Marty Gauvin is an entrepreneur who has established a range of high technology companies. He has founded seven businesses to date with the most recent being Virtual Ark, a cloud computing integrator, consultant and managed services provider focused on advancing capabilities ‘above the cloud’ through rolling out transformational solutions using its own and others IP. Mr Gauvin is also a co-founder of Virtual Voices which has developed unique IP allowing the human voice to be modified and corrected which has applications as diverse as aged care and cybersecurity.
Previously Marty was the Managing Director of Hostworks, a provider of critical application management services to a range of large media and online clients that became the largest Internet hosting provider in Australia. He has 30 years’ experience in IT services, system design and innovation across a wide range of sectors and has assisted clients in Australia, Europe and Asia with complex cloud and mobile based projects for the past six years. Companies that Mr Gauvin has lead have successfully raised over $20M in early stage funding and the largest, Hostworks, sold in 2008 to a Macquarie Bank subsidiary for $69M.
Marty has also had a significant career as an innovator. He invented a device to assist visually impaired people to use computers which lead to him being named Young Australian of the Year in 1987 to more recently when he has been listed as an inventor on three patents in the last three years.
Marty has been involved in the assessment and structure of a range of Commonwealth Government innovation programs as well as serving on the Council of Flinders University and Chairing ReachOut, a charity focussed upon online tools to assist young people’s mental health.
He is currently the Chair of the Innovation Investment Committee of Innovation Australia which governs the programs under which Venture Capital and Private Equity funds operate. He has been closely involved in the growth of the sector in Australia from 2008 during which time PE has grown tenfold and VC thirty-fold.
In relation to R&D Tax Incentive (RDTI) he has:
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Led, on behalf of RDIC and together with many departmental staff, the analysis and review of four of the largest and most complex reviews into the activities claimed by four RDTI applicants (2017).
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Substantially assisted in the development of Taxpayer Alerts for various sectors and for software development (TA 2017/5) in particular. (2016/17).
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Substantially assisted in, and was a significant author of, the new Software Development Guidance completed in April 2018 and which was released in February 2019.
Together with RDTI colleagues, assessed and reviewed applicants to RDTI through almost all types of finding and review under the IR&D Act including ss 27B, 27J, 28A, 28C, 28E and, in most cases, internal reviews of these. Research domains covered by these decisions include mining, agriculture, manufacturing, services, software development, hardware development, pharmaceuticals, other forms of therapeutics, wearable technology, structural and heavy engineering and chemical engineering.
Marty’s history with the program goes back to its very beginning when he worked onthe Innovation Australia Board’s submission on the New Research and Development Tax Incentive inOctober 2009 with departmental staff. In particular, he contributed to the removal of the ‘multiple sales test’ which had existed in the Concession but which had unfairly disadvantaged the software development sector under that program.