Stevan Premutico

Stevan Premutico is one of Australia's best-known hospitality-technology entrepreneurs. He conceived his first company, Dimmi, an online restaurant-reservations platform, during the global financial crisis around 2007–2009 — famously sketched on the back of a napkin — and built it into the dominant Australian restaurant booking and reviews service. Dimmi was acquired by TripAdvisor in 2015 (later rebranded as TheFork Australia), giving Premutico his first major exit. He grew up in a family that ran its own restaurant, and hospitality has been a through-line of every venture he has built.

In 2019 he founded me&u, a QR-code-based "order and pay" platform for pubs, bars and restaurants — an idea he says he conceived while walking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in Spain. Under his leadership me&u scaled to roughly 6,000 venue partners across three continents (Australia, the UK and the US), around $2 billion in annual transaction volume, ~$39M in annual revenue and about 200 employees. The company raised more than $100M in total capital, including a $30M round led by ASX-listed Acorn Capital in December 2022. In September 2023 me&u merged with rival Mr Yum, and Premutico stepped away from the board in mid-2024, describing his intention to take "a much-needed sabbatical and Dad time" before returning to the restaurant space.

He returned quickly. His third venture, Hey Buddy, is a voice-AI platform that answers restaurants' missed phone calls, bookings and orders — addressing the roughly one-third of restaurant calls that go unanswered. Within its early launch phase Hey Buddy had signed more than 1,000 Australian venues (including Australian Venue Co, Hunter St. Hospitality, House Made Hospitality and Sand Hill Road), and much of the original me&u team rejoined him to build it.

Alongside operating, Premutico is described across his speaker and alumni profiles as a passionate technology investor who sits on the boards of other Australian startups. He is a Monash University alumnus and a sought-after keynote speaker on entrepreneurship, disruption and founder-led leadership, advocating that people "act a bit more like founders and a bit less like CEOs."

• Invests and advises primarily in hospitality and restaurant technology — the sector where he has spent his entire operating career (Dimmi, me&u, Hey Buddy).
• Backs early-stage / seed Australian startups, typically as an angel and/or board member rather than through an institutional fund.
• Brings an operator's lens: he looks for founders solving real, painful problems in dining and venue operations (booking, order-and-pay, missed calls) — the same "napkin-sketch" pattern behind his own companies.
• Stated philosophy: *"life's short and … we should do stuff that we love and stuff that makes a difference,"* and that businesses do better when run with a founder's mindset.