Adrian Di Marco

Di Marco founded TechnologyOne from inside a demountable office in the car park at JL Mactaggart Industries' hide processing plant in Hemmant, Brisbane, in 1987.^[7][8][9] The company initially received with a small amount of capital^[10] from JL Mactaggart Industries.^[11]

The company began providing financial software,^[12] building its products around relational databases.^[13] It has since developed enterprise resource planning software^[14] for sectors including local government, universities,^[4][15] and hospitals.^[16]

In 1998, when Oracle launched a competitor product and revoked TechnologyOne's licenses, Di Marco made the company's products database independent, building its own sales, marketing, and implementation divisions.^[17][10][18] In December 1999, Di Marco led the company into its listing on the ASX making it one of the most successful floats of the DotCom era.^[19] In 2001, he was appointed chairman of TechnologyOne.^[20]

Di Marco was member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and was Deputy Chair of the Australian Information Industry Association from 2002 to 2004.^[21] He was the Director of the Royal Children's Hospital Foundation Board from 2004 to 2012.^[22]

In 2004 Di Marco won the Pearcey Award for innovative and pioneering achievement and contribution to research and development in IT.^[23] He was awarded Fellow of the Australian Computer Society in 2010.^[24] When he stepped down as CEO in May 2017, Di Marco was one of the longest-serving chief executives of an ASX-listed company.^[25][26]

As CEO, Di Marco established the philanthropic TechnologyOne Foundation,^[27] which has made donations to Opportunity International Australia,^[28] the School of St Jude in Tanzania, The Fred Hollows Foundation, and others.^[29] He also advocated against a business model run by professional managers, which caused the company difficulties in the early 2000s.^[5][25] He has argued that a focus on corporate governance weakens companies and that subject matter experts are more important to have on a board than independent directors.^[25][30]

In May 2017, Di Marco stepped down as CEO from the company but remained its Executive Chairman and Chief Innovation Officer.^[31][17][32] As of 2019, Di Marco's 8.6 per cent stake in the company was worth more than $240m, and with his other investments in property, his net worth is reportedly more than $300m.^[33][34]

In 2017, Di Marco invested in accounting software start-up Practice Ignition.^[31] In 2018, Di Marco made a $3.2 million investment in sports tech firm Fusion Sport.^[35] In 2019, Di Marco made a $500,000 investment with Snackwise.^[36]

Di Marco is a founding member of Software Queensland, a group promoting the Queensland software industry.^[37][38] In February 2022, he announced he would be stepping down as TechnologyOne's executive chairman after 35 years with the company,^[39] with his resignation effective on 30 June.^[40]

Di Marco was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in the 2025 Australia Day Honours for "service to information technology, and to the community".^[41]