Internode founder Simon Hackett buys 40% stake in UltraServe

Internode founder and former iiNet director Simon Hackett has made a multi-million dollar investment in cloud-based ecomerce services provider UltraServe, taking a 40% stake in the company.

Under the deal, former Internode and iiNet chief technology officer John Lindsay will take a seat on the company’s board of directors.

Hackett’s new investment in the venture comes after selling Internode to iiNet in December 2011 in a $105 million deal, with Hackett standing aside from executive duties in May 2012.

The deal also comes one month after Hackett launched another venture, called EV Race Systems, which aims to develop and build a high-performance electric race car for international exhibition and racing in Europe and Asia.

UltraServe was founded in 2000 by its current chief executive, Samuel Yeats, who appeared in SmartCompany’s Hot 30 Under 30 in 2012.

The company offers cloud-based managed services for ecommerce companies, counting Catch of the Day, Deals Direct, Appliances Online, General Pants and Radio Rentals among its customers.

In a statement, Yeats said Hackett’s investment will help the company expand into Europe and Asia.

“UltraServe has built a Cloud infrastructure orchestration system called Lighthouse, with some very unique features, that lets us offer a managed services layer across Amazon, VMware and other clouds, which equips us to keep our vendors honest,” he said.

“We are now commercialising Lighthouse for use in the telco and managed service provider and are working closely with some very large organisations.”