The 10 wealthiest young Aussie tech heads

Being young and working in the technology sector might give you a better chance at becoming rich, if BRW's Young Rich list is anything to go by, with a large proportion of the 100 most wealthy individuals under the age of 40 making their money from tech.

Caption (Rock on Atlassian! image by Lachlan Hardy, CC BY 2.0)

On this year's list of 100 rich youngsters, there were 26 from the technology sector, the most of any sector. Retail and financial services were in second and third place, only having 14 and 12 young rich people, respectively.

The top 10 young rich people in the technology sector are outlined below.

Software entrepreneurs Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar made it to the fourth and fifth ranks. The two owners of software company Atlassian have a combined wealth of $360 million, up from $314 million last year. The company recently bought into software as a service (SaaS) businesses Cloud9 and Bitbucket.org, underpinned by a US$60 million investment from Accel Partners in July last year.

Angel investor Simon Clausen, known for selling his security company PC Tools to Symantec, was in 8th position, worth $207 million. Apart from buying property with his spoils, one of his investments includes Freelancer.com, which is run by Australian entrepreneur Matt Barrie.

Perth-based mobile phone technology developer Eugeni Tsvetnenko made 13th place, being worth $115 million, while NextDC CEO Bevan Slattery, whose newest venture focuses on building datacentres, took out the slot below, worth $103 million. Slattery recently snapped up two more datacentre sites in Canberra and Perth after he floated the company on the Australian Securities Exchange last year. Slattery made his fortune from the sale of Pipe Networks to TPG in March last year.

Hezi Leibovich, who co-founded Catch of the Day, came in at 22nd place, with $80 million. James Packer, who received a significant windfall from his investment in, and Clausen's subsequent sale of, PC Tools, recently picked up a large stake in Catch of the Day and its sister site Scoopon.

Ranking just below Leibovich are Bevan Clark and Guy King, who operate a little web start-up out of Melbourne called Stateless Systems. The two are responsible for sites like RetailMeNot.com, which sold for $90 million, and TheWall.com. Clark and King are worth $77 million combined.

Andrew Barlow and Adrian Giles round out the top 10 young rich people in tech. The pair generated their wealth from the US$240 million sale of the search marketing consultancy that they founded, Hitwise. Combined, they are worth $69 million, and they take up the 29th and 30th spots on BRW's list. They assumed executive roles at online marketing company Webfirm in April last year. Webfirm CEO David Burden stepped down last month due to health reasons, and Giles has taken his place while the company looks for a replacement.