Marc Degli’s story doesn’t begin with privilege or connections. Raised by a single mum after his father left before he was born, life growing up was anything but easy. Money was tight. Stability came in short supply. And school – for Marc – was a place that never quite fit.
Diagnosed with dyslexia and shifting between schools throughout his teens, he struggled to feel like he belonged. “I felt like an academic failure, honestly,” he says. “Classrooms weren’t built for how I think, and I couldn’t see a path forward in that environment.”
Instead, Marc found his rhythm in work. A week after finishing high school, he was working full-time at a startup, waiting tables six nights a week, and doing landscaping on weekends. He didn’t have a roadmap – just a strong sense that staying busy was better than standing still.
That work ethic carried him into the tech world, landing a role at Dell and later putting himself through TAFE to study Leadership and Management. He enrolled in a university degree in Applied Cloud Technology at La Trobe, but eventually stepped away as work and travel demands ramped up. “It wasn’t dropping out,” he says. “It was making space for what I was learning in the real world.”
Marc went on to hold roles across a range of technology companies, building experience in sales, product, and strategy. Eventually, he founded Blackhawk Alert, a business he built from scratch and now serves on the board of.
Since then, he’s taken a hands-on role mentoring startups, investing in early-stage ventures, and quietly building a portfolio that includes equity across several businesses. His personal net worth now sits between $4–5 million, but a reminder that it’s possible to make something from nothing.
Still, he says his proudest moment wasn’t a deal or title. It was buying his mum a unit – a moment that marked just how far things had come.
Today, Marc Degli balances commercial work with creative expression. Under the name art_by_dmar, he produces artworks and exhibitions that explore identity, resilience, and personal freedom. It’s a creative outlet that complements his business life — and helps keep him grounded.
“I never set out to be impressive,” he says. “I just wanted to build a life on my terms. And I think once you find that kind of freedom, you’ve got to pay it forward.”
