Joe Linney-Barber

"Yarra taught me independence and to be willing to try something different."

Since he graduated from Yarra Valley Grammar forty years ago, Joe Linney-Barber’s life has taken some intriguing turns.

Propelled by his passion for challenge, for pushing boundaries, and for making the most of any potential opportunity, Joe has owned a number of businesses. He launched his first business selling computers when he was still at university.

Since then, he’s launched a series of start-up technology businesses in London, New York, Silicon Valley and Malaysia.

“While I was at Yarra, I remember a Maths teacher telling me that ‘if it is to be, it’s up to me’. I was struggling to solve a Maths issue at the time but that phrase has stuck with me. I don’t look to others to make my success and from my later years at School I had a drive to try things and to not create barriers,” he says.

Joe joined Yarra in Prep – as Jonathan Linney-Barber. Struggling to spell his lengthy name, a teacher began calling him ‘Joe’ – and it stuck. He says about 60 per cent of the School’s current buildings didn’t exist when he enrolled – a sign of the School’s focus on improving and evolving.
School sports and spending time on the ovals were a key part of Joe’s life at Yarra.

“I played cricket and football and, for me, the main oval was always aspirational – like going to Lords. It was my goal to play on there one day,” he says.
“I still have a very strong passion for Yarra. The school immersed students in so many diverse areas and experiences – sports, academia, the arts...you could sample everything life could give you.”

In the classroom, Joe excelled in IT and Science and studied Applied Science at university. He combined his technological know-how and entrepreneurial flair to found a series of start-up businesses, mostly centred on technology, web design, communications and internet provision.

Along the way, he has worked in different countries and learned from the people around him, even when businesses didn’t go according to plan.

“I’ve had some failures and in business you can go from highs to lows in the same day. You have to learn to deal with that logically and emotionally and, in adversity, you have to look for opportunity,” he says.

“Ideas of what success is change over time. At the start success was about being financially independent. I married young and my wife and I did a lot of travelling with our children – we worked to travel. Now success is a happy family and looking after the people around me.”