Efraim Pettersson
Founder in Europe, Thailand, Singapore, Israel, USA
Efraim - originally from the Southwest US & Sweden - started out professionally by hacking games at the age of 12. He dropped out of highschool and started university at 16.
As a techpreneur - Efraim has been the technology-lead behind many successful startups such as:
PMA Systems, Morpheus™, Day of Defeat, Natural Selection, Beowulf Cluster Project, StickyDrive, AnchorFree & eKita.
Two of these startups exited for over $3bn - the others were also successful to varying degrees. Efraim attributes this success to the amazing people and teams he was able to work with and learn from throughout his career; and an early adoption of leanstartup practices which was a significant contributor.
As an academic - Efraim attained his first university degree at age 19 in software engineering. Since then he has continued in academics throughout his life - attaining a multitude of degrees and academic papers.
Efraim calls himself a "failed academic" in that he has 3 masters degrees - in 3 different subjects (compsci, polsci/sociology, physics/math) - and never completed doctorate in either. He also began teaching after 6 years as a student, though as stated was never a full professor - only an associate. To-date, he has spent 16 years in higher educational institutions around the world; which led him to his current venture: eKita - solving education technology.
Efraim is also an active persona in the global hi-tech startup industry. He firmly believes in paying it back by helping the next wave of techpreneurs.
In this capacity - Efraim volunteers and invests as international director of 3 Day Startup - the worlds #1 University entrepreneurship program; General Partner of TechGrind Incubator - the 1st private tech incubator in Southeast-Asia; and the overall TechGrind umbrella which runs 7x monthly and 4x yearly events/workshops & conferences for startups - always free for startups. He is also an advisor to multiple governments and embassies in the EU, Israel and Thailand on innovation policy & entrepreneurship.