Simon Anderson
ANU gave me a way of thinking and global perspective to be confidently curious about the world, and seek new challenges and problems to solve. In entrepreneurial endeavours, the best way forward is rarely apparent.
Simon Anderson has been innovating in open source software and cloud computing for nearly two decades. He has played a major part in funding and leading companies that have helped entrepreneurs create new web applications that have transformed our lives.
Simon is currently Chairman of Akanda, a cloud networking software start-up he co-founded to simplify and automate networking for open source cloud platforms. Akanda has raised US$2 million seed capital and secured early enterprise customers in the US.
As Chief Executive Officer at DreamHost, Simon led a team of software engineers that contributed significant code to the OpenStack cloud platform, the software founded by NASA and Rackspace in 2010. During Simon's tenure, DreamHost grew to support 400,000 customers and 1.5 million websites, blogs and apps hosted on the platform.
While at DreamHost, Simon co-founded Inktank in 2012 to develop and support the Ceph open source distributed storage software. Simon chaired the Board of Inktank and raised US$13 million in funding from investors.
Simon believes the best work is done by teams that have freedom to innovate through open collaboration and decision making. In a world first, he was elected by company-wide vote to his role as Chief Executive Officer of DreamHost.
While undertaking his Bachelor of Science at ANU, Simon also completed an ANU law degree, specialising in international and environmental law. He then worked with two leading law firms in Sydney, before joining venture capital firm Allen & Buckeridge and moving to Silicon Valley in 2000.
Simon remains very well connected to ANU - his parents still live in Canberra - and has contributed to a range of international alumni events.
In 2014, he hosted a dinner in support of the Giant Magellan Telescope in Los Angeles, at which new ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Brian Schmidt attended. He is also a Director of the ANU Foundation USA.
