Domenic Carosa

Early life and education

Carosa was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1974. At an early age, Carosa bought and sold postcards outside of his parents' home, eventually moving onto train sets and video games. Carosa and his family ran a video game store in Camberwell, Victoria for a year in the 90's when he was still in high school. It was here that he first sold the Super Nintendo UFO, a mod that allowed gamers to use pirate copies of Nintendo games. Domenic was one of the first people in Melbourne to download cracked copies of games from bulletin boards and sell them. When the video game store closed Domenic continued to sell pirate games from his bedroom while still at high school. It was this entrepreneurial spirit and easy money that allowed him to start Sprint. He did not attend college after high school due to his business ventures. He did eventually attend the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship where he earned a Master of Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Career

Carosa began his career while he was a teenager by co-founding the media and entertainment company Destra with his sister in 1993. The company was originally called Sprint and owned entertainment websites in Australia. He was 25 years old when Destra was first publicly listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, making him the youngest CEO in Australian history. Carosa officially launched the Destra Corporation brand in 2004, and in 2005 announced first year revenue of over $15 million. In 2004, Destra Corporation announced a large deal with Yahoo! to integrate a new suite of services with OzHosting.com's Web hosting service.

Destra reverse-listed on the exchange just prior to the dot-com crash in 2000. Carosa diversified the company into a web hosting company following the crash, and later led it to become a $100 million company and the second largest web hosting company in Australia.

Carosa's company was greatly affected by the collapse of Opes Prime in 2008. After the collapse, Carosa had his stake reduced in the company to less than 1%, at which point he shifted from Managing Director to the role of a consultant for the company.

In 2009, Carosa launched Crowd Mobile, a mobile company where users pay experts to answer their questions, each billed at a set amount. Around the same time, he founded Future Capital Development Fund, which focused primarily on early stage startups. Within the first two years, the Future Capital Development Fund raised more than $3 million for acquisitions, through an initial offering of shares. By late 2010, Carosa expected "to raise between $10m and $20m from a public float of FCDF later this year or early next year, depending on market conditions."

By the end of 2012, FCDF had acquired 3 large stakes in three online companies, Our Wishing Well, Domain Folio 1 and SMS Central Australia. By 2014, Carosa's Future Capital Development Fund's team had been involved in funding over 100 startups, which had received over $150 million AUD in investment.

Carosa launched the Future Capital Bitcoin Fund in 2014, a $30 million investment fund focused on investing in companies that trade and exchange bitcoins. The bitcoin-based fund is considered the first dedicated bitcoin investment fund in Australia.

In 2015, Carosa's Crowd Mobile announced that it would be acquiring the Dutch firm, Track Holdings for $35 million AUD. During the same year, the company also raised an additional $2 million in a round of funding and also acquired Any Questions Answered (AQA Mobile) for $165,000.

Crowd Mobile again featured in the media in early 2016, after it reached monthly revenues of $4.1 million. The questions and answers website at that stage had reached over 1,000 experts answering questions in over 30 different languages.