Lloyd is the founder of TechInvestment.com, an Australian investor in NASDAQ, NYSE and TSE listed technology companies with a focus on artificial intelligence, GPU chips, quantum computing, and robotics.
🔺 Lloyd Bunting trading on NASDAQ and NYSE at 3am AEST
Lloyd is also a Limited Partner in the Sydney Angels Sidecar Fund, an AUD 10 million Early Stage Venture Capital Limited Partnership (ESVCLP) administered by Artesian.
Lloyd had previously founded eGrants.com whose first client was the Australian Federal Government. eGrants supported the management of several Federal Government programs with combined funding of just under AUD 1 billion.
Lloyd Bunting began his career learning to fly in the RAAF. But as a teenager he enjoyed the flying part of the job (especially solo aerobatics) more than officer training.
🔺 Basic Flying Training School (1BFTS) Point Cook 1966-1967. One of 62 Winjeels: 12 (20%) crashed 🔺
✈ Lloyd's flying instructor Flt Lt Bill Clarke and Army trainee pilot 2Lt James Mayhew were killed at Port Arlington in 1968 when low flying in strong wind conditions. The starboard wing failed under an estimated +10G loading, either due to the severe turbulence from strong winds at low level or the result of a low level rolling pullup that exceeded the aircraft's structural G limits. The aircraft was 12 years old. The maximum G loadings for a Winjeel are +5.0 to -2.4. The maximum G loading for an F-16 or F-15E jet fighter at sea level is +9, and the pilots for those aircraft wear a G-suit.
🔺 A reunion of some members of 1BFTS 64 Course: every one a genuine hero.
Lloyd volunteered to spend the rest of his 2 years of National Service as an air dispatcher and 🪂 parachutist in 1 Army Air Supply Organisation (1AASO) (176 Air Dispatch Squadron now part of the 9th Force Support Battalion (9FSB)). [Air dispatch in action]. 176 ADPL also provides civilian support - - even to Antarctica or even resupply of submarines at sea!.
Australian Army: Air Dispatch, Parachute Training (DHC-4 Caribou, C-130 Hercules) 1969
🔺 176 AD PL - parachuting from C-17. Yes, accidents can happen:
The son of Australia's former Defence minister was killed in a parachuting accident at Richmond AFB in Mar 2024 [More].
Lloyd earned his Diploma in Computer Programming Technology at the Control Data Institute, established by Control Data Corporation, a leading supercomputer manufacturer, to increase the availability of technically capable system developers. Lloyd attended the first of these courses. In 1988 the Institute was acquired by Computer Power Group, which went on to form the Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute (AAII).
🤔 Lloyd has been in information technology since 1970 (54 years ago) - the early days of electronic computing in Australia (CDC3200: 8-bit CPU with 4-wire iron core memory array - machine (MSOS), assembler (COMPASS), and compiler languages: FORTRAN and COBOL).
🔺 CDC 3200 computer operator panel (all binary and octal)
The CDC 3200 was used by the US government (eg IRS), Defense (eg Vandenberg ICBM launch control) and universities. It was also used by Canada's Defence Research Communications Establishment, Ottawa.
At that time Lloyd was also writing code for the IBM System/360, a (hexadecimal) commercial mainframe.
🤔 Lloyd's machine language experience was applied to the first microcomputers (Zilog Z80 in the Cromemco Z-1, Intel 8080, and Motorola 6502 in the Apple II). In addition to maths and administrative applications, Lloyd built some interactive computer games for technology demonstration purposes to RAAF and Navy officers (eg at the RAN Staff College).
🤔 As more languages became available, Lloyd was programming in BASIC and FORTRAN in Hewlett Packard and Prime minicomputers, service bureaus, NSWIT/UTS ICL 1904 mainframe to statistical and modeling products and the internet. At that time BASIC had no apparent limit on the number of dimensions in an array, which was great for his development of Mathematrix (academic use only: eg transport model optimization).
🔺 The first Defence Systems Management Course: Run by Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) for Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel equivalent officers. The course was about development of defence strategy and capability requirements amongst other issues. Lloyd was selected to attend the first of these courses.
University of Technology Sydney (NSWIT) Lloyd attended the first UTS (NSWIT) MBA course:
Lloyd has worked on major high technology projects for the Federal government, the Australian Defence Force, aviation and the banking sector.
🤔 While in the Office of the Public Service Board, Lloyd was asked by the Deputy Chief of Naval Staff (RADM Neil Ralph) to participate in a study led by an external consultant and CDRE Mal Savage with other senior naval officers, of Navy Office's capability to support the simultaneous introduction into service of new destroyers and Collins Class submarines. DCNS' concern is relevant to the proposed acquisition of different types of submarine under the AUKUS Alliance.
🔺 A Collins Class submarine in Port Philip Bay, Melbourne
🤔 Other projects conducted while in the PSB included:
🤔 While working in Defence, Lloyd developed the application of Monte Carlo simulation for risk identification, assessment and management of multiple potential critical paths in major defence acquisition project networks (with CMDR John P. Jenner [Seahawk pilot, and the Navy's first Director of Naval Integrated Logistic Systems Management] and WGCDR Terry O'Brien). Prime Computer provided their Canberra laboratory and Execucom provided their IFPS software. The MCPM demonstration project was the construction of a fleet of mine hunters.
✅ Lloyd, John and Terry presented MCPM to RADM Barrie West (Chief of Naval Materiel) and his project managers, and also to a large MTE public seminar in Sydney.
✅ MCPM simulation was supported in a 1986 report: Joint Committee of Public Accounts (JCPA) Review of Defence Project Management (243) - Recommendations 15 and 16 (paragraphs 4.21-4.23). The recommendation was accepted by Defence.
✅ MCPM is now incorporated into some advanced project management systems and is recommended by the Project Management Institute [📰 PMI Article: 2001].
😇 Acknowledgement: "The application of Monte Carlo simulation to risk analysis in project networks was developed by David G. Malcolm and his colleagues. This method, often associated with the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT), was introduced in the late 1950s. Malcolm, along with John W. Roseboom, Charles E. Clark, and William Fazar, published their seminal work on this topic in the early 1960s" [ChatGPT].
Lloyd comments: We developed a network dependence coding structure and demonstrated the use of computer simulation for running large numbers of iterations on each activity in a large, complex project network. Our work identified all potential critical paths and assessed their probability of determining which were most likely to represent the ultimate critical path.
⚙️ Issue: Simulation, machine learning and artificial intelligence require a lot of processor power. Fortunately quantum computing and GPU stacks are now capable of supporting that demand. Techinvestment.com is an investor in both quantum computing and Nvidia GPU stacks.
🤔 In the Australian Federal government's Office of the Public Service Board Lloyd worked in areas of performance improvement for government departments and programs, strategy development and implementation (machinery of government), and service-wide implementation of IT strategic planning and program performance improvement.
🤔 In the Federal Department of Finance Lloyd worked on service-wide implementation of program budgeting (recommended in the 1976 Report of the Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration).
Australian Army: 1 Army Air Supply Organisation (1AASO): Air Dispatcher, 🪂 Parachutist (36 AD PL: now 176 AD PL, a sub unit of 9th Force Support Battalion).
Cost Accountant, Finance and Planning Division, Garden Island Dockyard (Sydney Harbor) - Department of the Navy. As the Dockyard's Cost Accountant, Lloyd established the costs for all dockyard work and services which were applied to all dockyard work orders, for reporting to Navy Office and cost recovery from US Navy and civilian ships using the dockyard during the Vietnam war.
At this time the Dockyard was modifying HMAS Melbourne to provide an angled flight deck for aircraft operations. It was also supporting the introduction of Perth-Class guided missile destroyers. The work was supported by a primitive but effective costing system (DYCOST) with data sent to Canberra as punched tape for processing on Honeywell H800 mainframes and hard copy reports sent back every week.
Lloyd also monitored dockyard statistics including wages staff levels and the cost of disastrous levels of industrial demarcation disputes and stoppages during the Whitlam years - the loss of work and income during stoppages caused many wages staff to leave, and dockyard production capacity crashed.
🔺 Lloyd and Ken Nazaroff (a really excellent guy) at Garden Island Dockyard, Sydney
The ship is ⏯️ HMAS Sydney (former aircraft carrier) ⏯️ About Australia's aircraft carriers
Lloyd spent a weekend on HMAS Melbourne as it did post-maintenance engine trials near Nowra. HMAS Melbourne was famous for ramming and sinking 2 allied destroyers: HMAS Voyager (82 personnel killed) and USS Frank E Evans (74 personnel killed). Neither collision was the fault of HMAS Melbourne. ⏯️ Real Top Guns
Work Study and Systems Design: Commissioned reviews of issues in civilian support to the Navy, including Navy Supply Depots, RAN Torpedo and Maintenance Establishment (RANTME), and RAN Missile Maintenance Establishment (RANMME) - in particular the management and maintenance of tail fins for Ikara missiles.
State Branch Accountant, Transport and Storage Division. Lloyd realised that his work to this point had no front-line experience in operational management. So this job filled that gap, with operational experience in "corporate" management, with secondments as manager of government passenger transport and manager of heavy transport (including dispute negotiation with unions).
Continuing projects - mainly opportunities for productive use of IT within Defence, Navy and RAAF.
Service-wide, departmental, program and strategic projects and assignments. The PSB was closed around 1987.
Presiding Officers' Coordination and Planning Advisory Group [page 3]: Advisor to the President of the Senate, Speaker of the House of Representatives and Parliamentary Departments.
Principal Finance Officer. Lloyd worked on the introduction of program budgeting in Federal Government departments.
In October 1987 Lloyd was at a week-long residential meeting of Department of Finance executives at UNSW's Graduate Management School at Little Bay. He had been following USA's twin budget and trade deficits and the behaviour of stock markets. On the Thursday he publicly predicted that a crash would happen within days. The following Monday, 19 Oct 1987, the US stock market crashed with widespread economic effects: ⏯️ USA's 1987 "twin deficits" crash. Lloyd and a DoF colleague then correctly predicted the date and value of the bottom of the ASX index.
The Defence Inspector-General's Office was especially concerned about cost overruns occurring, and likely to occur on the Collins Class submarine construction project. When the submarines finally entered the water, there were concerns about breakdowns and excessive noise. On 1 Nov 2024 only one of Australia's six Collins Class submarines was fully operational.
🔺 A Collins Class submarine escorted by a tug boat to Port Melbourne
Civil Aviation Authority (now AirServices Australia): cost/schedule control using the US Defense Systems Management College's C/SCSC for the Radar Sensor Procurement Project (RASPP: 26 enroute and major airport sites around Australia) which was a component of The Australian Advanced Air Traffic System (TAAATS).
🔺 Radar Sensor Procurement Project management team. The model is of a PSR+SSR radar station
A key schedule problem for RASPP was that its French supplier of radar systems Australian subsidiary, Thomson
Radar Australia Corporation Pty Limited (TRAC), was overcommitted because it was also supplying radar systems to the Australian Navy's destroyer program. I asked the RADM in charge of that project how he was getting the TRAC resources he needed for his destroyers - his response: "we paid for the A-Team". Lesson: you get what you pay for!
Telstra/Marconi tender for Phase 3 of the $1 billion Jindalee Over the Horizon Radar Network project. Lloyd's contribution to the Telstra/Marconi bid was project risk management (using Lockheed Missiles and Space methodology) - earning top score in this area of the tender evaluation. A key problem for Phase 3 was the unavailability of a sufficient number of programmers experienced in the software involved - this was identified in the risk assessment. Telstra was unsuccessful in Phase 3 for this reason. Underestimating cost, schedule and capability requirements for a high tech project is a common risk in projects like this.
Defence Supply Systems Redevelopment [SDSS] project: Business case specialist in the prime systems integration team. Lloyd's work included building a capacity planning model to determine sizing and costs of all viable alternative network design configurations for Defence supply management and all ADF supply depots. A key problem for this project was overcommitment of the Prime Systems Integrator: a fixed price contract - same problem as experienced in the above projects. However Lloyd's subproject, a costed business case requiring capacity estimation and optimisation for the whole Defence stores supply system, was delivered on schedule.
The Joint Committee of Public Accounts Report 317 (June 1992) was titled "A champagne appetite but only a beer income - Defence's Supply Systems Redevelopment Project". The greatest risk in very large projects is (deliberate) underestimation of the cost and schedule (duration) of projects: by the sponsor - in order to get approval, and by the contractor - in order to win a project. The same problem often occurs in the private sector.
Lloyd lobbied the JCPA project secretary to include cost-schedule control system (CS2) capability in Defence projects (recommendations 30-32) which were accepted in full or in part. CS2 is a standard requirement in major US Defense projects.
Lloyd joined ANZ Bank as a Senior Manager, promoted to Chief Manager, in capital expenditure (strategy implementation, systems development, acquisitions, property and equipment leases etc). Reporting directly to the Group Chief Financial Officer/Board Secretary: Lloyd provided independent advice to the Executive Committee and Board on approval and performance of about 500 major (>$1m) capital expenditure projects in Australia and globally. More often than not, project sponsors on the Executive Committee made the same mistakes as sponsors and bidders for the technology projects described above.
After 5 years as a senior corporate executive Lloyd went back to project work with a major US technology company: EDS [Electronic Data Systems]: Aug 1998 - Mar 2001. For one of his projects (business process re-engineering) Lloyd developed a risk management assessment database (based on analysis of 500 BPR projects) - this was used each week for an assessment of risk issues in his BPR project. He also developed a project team management database for team timesheet (cost) and schedule (progress) management. His project was completed on schedule for 30% of its budget and accepted by the client.
This was a very difficult time, as technical staff became hard to get, and became more expensive (trashing project budgets and schedule targets):
There comes a time for building and running a business rather than continuing a life of contracting or employment in someone else's business. For some time Lloyd had been a contractor specialising in project management followed by 5 years as a senior executive at ANZ Bank, and then more contract work on an Australian Customs Service business process re-engineering (BPR) project.
In 2005 Lloyd identified an opportunity to build an IT services business: eGrants.com: a software as a service (SaaS) company.
🔺 eGrants.com design, development, maintenance and operation
Egrants was a successful Software as a Service (SaaS) company (eGrants.com/eGov.com.au). egrants supported programs distributing about $1 billion in funds to state and local governments and other entities, with "clean" assessments from the ANAO. At the time there were no government security standards for SaaS, so our system was certified against PCI/DSS and audited for exposures and new threats daily by Symantec. Symantec's MSSP team would daily search for weaknesses in egrants security, and would require any weakness to be fixed within 72 hours.
✅ eGrants.com achieved a 99.5% user compliance rate and a 95% satisfied or very satisfied CSAT rating by users, and the grant program (our client) received a Minister's achievement award. eGrants.com was also used to accelerate the investment of grant funding into local government infrastructure projects at the depth of the Global Financial Crisis. Every schedule target was met: "if it's not impossible we're not being ambitious enough". This contract was a first for us (as eGov: our first $1 million contract) and the government (its first SaaS contract).
TechInvestment.com is Lloyd's current focus. It manages a portfolio of technology stocks (mainly artificial intelligence, GPU, quantum computing, and robotics) listed on NASDAQ and NYSE exchanges.
TechInvestment.com is an independent business: other than its initial investment in 2010, the company has no external equity or debt, and no premises or employees, minimising operating expenses.
The company's growth is the result of capital appreciation in its investment portfolio and reinvestment of dividends. In mid December 2024 TechInvestment's portfolio was valued at AUD 30 million, but has since dropped 33.5% to AUD 20 million during the US President's daily changes to tariff and other policies.
Operating expenses are confined to external costs of running the business:
Research for identification and evaluation of investment opportunities and performance is undertaken mainly with AI.
These memberships were retired when Lloyd was unable to participate in CPD activities while building businesses and working long hours on interstate projects and international investment:
✋ Lloyd Bunting does not offer investment advice or investment services to the public.
✋ TechInvestment.com does not offer investment advice or investment services to the public.