Recently BRW magazine announced Freelancer.com founder and CEO, Matt Barrie, its winner of the 2011 BRW Entrepreneur of the Year.

In its inaugural year, the BRW Entrepreneur of the Year competition recognises Australia’s most outstanding business entrepreneur. Selection is based on criteria including innovation, market share, revenue and profit generation for their business or product.

The selection panel comprised of BRW representatives, including the magazine’s Editor, Kate Mills, as well as some of Australia’s leading entrepreneurs, including Boost Juice founder, Janine Allis and The Apprentice judge and founder of Wizard Home Loans, Mark Bouris.

“Entrepreneurship is at the heart of BRW magazine. For this reason, we decided to run a national competition that celebrates business innovators who have shown the ambition and drive to successfully create a business venture of their own,” Ms. Mills said. “Matt stood out amongst the rest for the sheer scale of his vision - a global outsourcing platform - along with his ability to move from the big picture of the global labour market, to the micro-details of his business. These are the kind of attributes that mark out the modern-day entrepreneur.”

BRW Entrepreneur of the Year, Matt Barrie, said: “I am very honoured to take out the inaugural BRW Entrepreneur of the Year award.”

“Creating the world’s largest outsourcing platform has been a tremendous experience. The growth we've experienced has been phenomenal. We're now in the top 250 websites worldwide, and we’ve proven to the world that Australia can be a major technology player. “What's great about Freelancer.com is that it delivers serendipity on both sides of the equation. We empower western small businesses and individuals with a high quality, low cost workforce to get just about anything done- at the same time as delivering jobs to the developing world where they are desperately needed, at great rates of pay,” Mr. Barrie said.

Finalists of the 2011 Entrepreneur of the Year Awards included (in no particular order):

Adrian Di Marco – Founder and Executive Chairman, TechnologyOne (software provider)

Naomi Simson – Founder and CEO, RedBalloon (online gift retailer)

Matt Bullock – Founder and CEO, eWAY (online payments system)

Lorenzo Coppa – Founder and CEO, eStore.com.au (online retailer)

James Myatt – Founder and CEO, Australian Power & Gas (power reseller)

Ruslan Kogan – Founder and CEO, Kogan and Co-Founder, Milan Direct (online retailer)