Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame and State Library of Queensland is proud to present Alex Dreiling, CEO and Co-Founder of Clipchamp.

"Don’t get comfortable in your comfort zone. The world around you will change – learn to feel comfortable outside your comfort zone."

Alex Dreiling, CEO and co-founder Clipchamp

Alex will be in a conversation with Professor Marek Kowalkiewicz, Founding Director of Centre for the Digital Economy at QUT, that is guaranteed to be inspirational, candid and thought-provoking.

Learn from Queensland’s leading entrepreneurs in business, technology and the creative industries at Game Changers.

Game Changers is a Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame initiative presented by State Library of Queensland, QUT Business School and the Queensland Library Foundation.

About the speaker

At 14 years of age Alex Dreiling was a competitive swimmer in East Germany with plans to compete in the Olympics. The Berlin Wall came down, and with that Alex's trajectory altered dramatically, much to the benefit of the Queensland business landscape.

After some valuable lessons living in New York, Alex moved to Australia to work for a large tech company where he discovered that true innovation happens at the fringes. He became a university associate professor and started working on his tech startup, Clipchamp, on the side.

The startup launched in 2017 and quickly revolutionised video editing. Today Clipchamp is described as "Canva for video", a powerful online video editing platform that empowers anyone to make videos quickly and easily. The platform has an 800 000 asset strong stock library and hundreds of editable video templates. It is used by over 17 million everyday editors across the world, doubling it's user numbers in just 18 months.

In September 2021 US tech giant Microsoft acquired Clipchamp for an undisclosed figure. Alex Dreiling and his co-founders see this acquisition as an exit from the startup industry and the beginning of a new journey with Microsoft.

Investor Steve Baxter said, "The fact that the likes of Microsoft, a $2.2 trillion company, has acquired Clipchamp – a company with the majority of their team based in Brisbane – is amazing to show what’s achievable from our home ground of Australia."

Image: Mark Cranitch, supplied by Clipchamp

About our facilitator

Professor Marek Kowalkiewicz is an academic and industry leader with extensive experience in conducting research, co-innovating with industry and university partners, and delivering innovative products to the market.

Currently, as founding director of Centre for the Digital Economy, he leads QUT’s research agenda to inform and influence a robust digital economy in Australia. He joined QUT from Silicon Valley, where he led innovation teams of one of the largest enterprise software vendors in the world. Before Silicon Valley, Marek worked in Singapore, Australia and China.

Accessibility

If you require wheelchair seating area allocation please call 3842 9827 or email slqevents@slq.qld.gov.au Auslan interpretation has been planned for this event.

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