ABOUT TONY SIMMONS
The record
Full Circle Group
Founder and chief executive
Built the business from the ground up and took it to a listing on the Australian Securities Exchange, then through to acquisition by JCurve Solutions.
JCurve Solutions
Board director, ASX listed
Joined the board of the acquiring company and saw governance from the inside, after having been the founder on the other side of the deal.
Sonnant
Founder, go-to-market and M&A
Built the go-to-market motion, then ran the process that ended in a strategic sale to SoundStack for customer access and market reach rather than headline price.
Marketplace Ventures
Founder, incubator
My own incubator. Where I backed early companies, then built and grew them rather than watching from a shareholder register.
Lithodomos
First investor, then chief executive
Backed it first, brought it into my incubator, raised the capital, then took the chief executive role at the investors’ request and ran it into 17 countries.
Detector Inspector
Investment readiness and capital
Prepared the business for institutional scrutiny and supported its first capital raise from a fund.
SEAOAK
Growth, go-to-market, commercialisation
Advised on growth and commercialisation, turning capability into a repeatable commercial offer.
Australian law firm
Growth advisory
Took a professional services firm through the growth pain barrier, the point where founder capacity stops being the engine and starts being the ceiling.
Defence systems business
Structure, go-to-market and capital
Right-sized the business, rebuilt go-to-market and supported the growth and capital agenda in a sector where procurement cycles punish the impatient.
Immersive technology · Investor to chief executive · 17 countries
Lithodomos: from first cheque to chief executive
The situation
I was the first investor, and the company came into Marketplace Ventures, my incubator. The technology was genuinely rare. The commercial model was not there yet, and the market that wanted it was not in Australia.
I was given a clear mandate: build it, grow it, and raise the capital to do both.
What I did
Rebuilt the go-to-market around the operator who would actually pay, ran the seed raise, and moved the product from demonstrations into paid installations on site.
After the raises closed, I took the chief executive role for the operating experience and global reach.
The outcome
$5 million seed round, and the product deployed on site with tour operators across 17 countries, along with new data and technology for the tourism sector.
Property services · Australia · Institutional raise
Detector Inspector: getting a good business ready to be looked at properly
The situation
A strong operating business that was not ready for due diligence in any respect. Technology, intellectual property, financials and process: none of it would have survived a fund’s scrutiny in the state it was in. It is just expensive when you find out during the raise rather than before it.
What I did
Worked through every one of those areas until each was clear and defensible, then took the business to market with a story a fund could price rather than a set of risks it had to discount.
The outcome
First institutional capital raised, from a large Australian fund, on a strong deal structure and valuation.
Media technology and AI · Australia to United States · 2025
Sonnant: a sale built on reach, not on the headline number
The situation
An AI media platform with real technology and an addressable market that sat largely offshore. The question was never whether to sell. It was who the right buyer was, and what we were actually optimising for.
What I did
Built the go-to-market motion, then ran the M&A process. We chose a strategic buyer in the United States on the basis of customer access and market reach rather than the biggest number on the page.
The choice
The alternative was to keep selling the way we had been, hand to hand, deal by deal. The other path was one to many, from inside a bigger global incumbent that already had the customers we were spending years trying to reach.
The outcome
Acquired by SoundStack in 2025. A strategic sale chosen for distribution, not for the headline number.
How I work with companies
A certified chair running a board that earns its keep. Clear mandate, real cadence, and decisions that get made rather than revisited every month.
Working directly with a founder or chief executive through a specific inflection. Growth that has stalled, a commercial motion that will not scale, or a business that has outgrown the way it is run.
Investment readiness, capital raising, and preparing for a sale properly rather than reactively. I have been the seller, the buyer’s representative, the board and the M&A lawyer, which means I know where the value quietly leaks.
Tony Simmons
I once watched a due diligence process come apart over a single question: who owns XYZ Pty Ltd. Not a valuation dispute, not a customer concentration problem. An ownership question nobody had thought to answer properly years earlier.
I have also watched a business go from a twenty million dollar valuation to nothing, because the owner could not stop reaching for more. Both of those are avoidable. Neither is avoided by strategy decks.
That is what I bring to a board or a founder. Not theory about what usually happens, but a fairly specific memory of what went wrong last time and how much it cost.
