30 hot entrepreneurs aged 30 and under
Tuesday, 20 May 2008
Last Updated: Monday, 26 May 2008
By Brad Howarth
They are young, smart and come from industries as diverse as IT, fashion and agriculture. We profile 30 hot young entrepreneurs aged 30 years and under
As the Australian economy starts to slow, many pundits are wondering how the latest generation of entrepreneurs will cope in the unfamiliar territory of an economic downturn.
It’s a tough question, but we wouldn’t mind betting they’ll survive and even thrive.
We’ve scoured the country to find 30 entrepreneurs aged 30 or less, and found an extremely talented bunch emerging from a broad range of market sectors, from beauty products and fashion to high technology and marketing services.
They have a wealth of ideas and many have very interesting personal backgrounds. But what they all have in common is energy and passion to back their ideas.
1 Robert Beerworth, 28 – Wiliam
Robert Beerworth was just 18 when he founded the web design, development and strategy business Wiliam (single “l”) in 1997. The business survived the dot-com crash of 2000 that saw many competitors fade from business, and revenue leapt 241% in the 2006-07 financial year. This year Beerworth hopes to expand his team from 65 to 80 people. Wiliam’s client list includes Yahoo!, Toshiba, Travelex, Channel 10, Singtel Optus and AAP, and the company has also branched out into Web 2.0 technologies.
2 Shaughla Ahmad, 29 – Swap My Style
Growing up with two sisters, Shaughla Ahmad learned to appreciate having a wide variety of clothes to choose from each day. That heritage was the foundation for Swap My Style, a business that brings women together to swap fashion items. The first event was held in Sydney in February this year, and from that small beginning Ahmad has built a base of 4000 members. She is planning an event in Melbourne at the end of May, with Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide to come.
3 Mike Cannon-Brookes, 28 & Scott Farquhar, 28 – Atlassian
Two superstars of the latest internet technology boom, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar’s company Atlassian has ridden the global wave of interest in technologies that help businesses better collaborate. By successfully using an online sales model, today more than 10,500 customers in 101 companies collaborate using Atlassian technology. The two founders picked up the Ernst & Young Australian Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2006.
4 Natalie Aroyan, 27 – Pink Hibiscus
Natalie Aroyan got her start as an entrepreneur making skincare products based on essential oils in her mother’s kitchen, and selling through her website and eBay. Early success enabled her to open her first tanning studio last year, and her products are now appearing on the shelves of Australian retailers. With her mobile tanning studio she’s earned the reputation of being Sydney’s “tanner to the stars”. Her client base expanded by 500% in the past year, and she has expanded the business into publicity services.
5 Sarah Sammon, 29 – Simply Rose Petals
Sarah Sammon spotted a niche market in supplying premium dried rose petals to the bridal industry. It’s proven to be a big niche. In this financial year the company has supplied products including innovative hand-held rose petal cannons to more than 1500 Australian brides, along with other celebrations. Simply Rose Petals is now exporting to 11 countries, and expects to grow its revenue by over 150% this year.
6 Brett Birkett, 28 – Interlex Solutions
Brett Birkett founded his business in 2005 to provide services and maintenance to small and medium business owners. Since then the company has been doubling its growth every year, and taken on larger clients including Nissan Australia, Benq and Micador. Birkett has bigger ambitions yet, and in 2007 co-founded another new business that aims to rival YouTube and social network sites such as Facebook.
7 Simon Blyth, 26 – LX Innovations
Simon Blyth’s business is better described as an idea factory. Among its inventions is a device that enables visually impaired people to detect objects in a similar way to how a bat does, while another monitors vehicles for signs of driver fatigue. A participant in the NSW Enterprise Workshop scheme, Blyth and his team have won awards from the Institute for Engineering and Technology and the Premier’s Award of Excellence.
8 Belinda Cordina, 28 – myinvites
Cordina’s business myinvites was born of the frustration that she experienced every time she wanted to plan an event and send out invitations. With a successful professional coaching business already under her belt, Cordina spent almost three years in planning and production before launching myinvites in October 2007. The site features 700 free invitation designs covering 50 occasions, along with full RSVP functions, reminders and thank-yous, and integration with Google Maps.
9 Jared Franks, 30 – Ioteq
Franks started his working life packing soft medical goods for his family business. Starting at the bottom gave him the perspective to start a consulting business writing business plans for entrepreneurs. In 2002, he became the first employee of the water disinfection technology company Ioteq, and by 2007 had risen to the role of CEO. He has since restructured the company and taken it into markets including Japan and the US.
10 Michael Rosenbaum, 25 – Deals Direct
Michael Rosenbaum has a modest goal – to make his company Deals Direct the number one Australian online retailer. By many accounts he is already there. Founded in October 2004, the company is reporting revenue of $24 million and more than 500,000 customers on its database, well on the way to Rosenbaum’s goal of one million customers by next year.
11 Tony Geagea, 28 – 24/7 Distribution
In his first year of high school Tony Geagea ran an informal schoolyard IT business. Fifteen years later he runs a technology businesses, with 240 people employed throughout the Ethan Group. Now his businesses cover everything from IT products distribution, training and services, and enjoys a partnership with the giant US technology outsourcer CSC.
12 Chris Kettle, 29 – my247.com.au
Chris Kettle got his start as an entrepreneur back in his high school days in Britain, importing episodes of Neighbours and selling them to addicted mums. He is still helping folk find entertainment today. He founded my247.com.au back in 1999 when he saw a need for a reliable entertainment guide that could be used online. Earlier this year he took that company global, adding more than 750,000 listings for restaurants, bars and entertainment venues across Britain and the United States.
13 Ruslan Kogan, 25 – Kogan Technologies
Fed up with the high margins that retailers charge for high-definition televisions and other electronics, Kogan began designing his own and importing them from China. Starting with a bunch of pre-sale orders, last year Kogan Technologies reported revenue of $3 million – this year he expects to double that. Sales are through the company website and no-reserve auctions, and he has since invested in another company, Milan Direct, that uses the same model for selling luxury furniture.
14 Ido Leffler 30 – Yes To Carrots
Carrots might not seem like the most natural basis for a skin and hair-care range, but Ido Leffler has been building a successful business off the back of their cleansing and detoxifying properties. Leffler and business partner Lance Kalish discovered the products in Israel in 2007, and were so impressed they bought the company. Today, Yes To Carrots is stocked in over 10,000 retail outlets in 15 countries, including pharmacies, Priceline, Target, and Big W stores around Australia.
15 Amy Lowe, 28 and Chrissy Hammond, 30 – Marsu Homme
It was in 2004 that friends Lowe and Hammond decided to combine their skills in the legal industry and hand-making shoes to create the men’s footwear brand Marsu Homme. Each shoe is made from high-quality kangaroo leather and is hand-finished in Italy to create shoes that are both stylish and hard-wearing. Two successful showings at Australian Fashion Week have led to recent deals with Australian department stores, and interest is also coming in from the US.
16 Troy Grogan, 30 – Greatest Asset
Since 2002, Troy Grogan has built a series of businesses around workplace health, safety and productivity, servicing clients such as Xstrata Coal, RailCorp, EnergyAustralia and Rio Tinto. His latest venture, Lifestyle Medicine, will feature a health and wellbeing website designed to help doctors treat lifestyle illnesses such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease, while providing information to sufferers.
17 Onur Kece, 27 and Mark De Luca, 26 – Found
Australians’ quest to lead healthier, more environmentally-friendly lifestyles is creating opportunities for entrepreneurs in a range of fields. For Onur Kece and Mark De Luca that opportunity is in pomegranate juice, with a product that claims more anti-oxidants than green tea, red wine or berries. The product is also certified as Australia’s first carbon-neutral juice product.
18 Andrew Mackinnon, 28 – The Taboo Group
At the age of 19, Andrew Mackinnon found himself in London handing out coupons to get by. It was a tough living, but gave him the impetus to start his own business when he returned to Melbourne in 2000. Humble beginnings have evolved into The Taboo Group, a multi-skilled marketing business whose ethos is that current advertising methods have lost their bite. Clients include the National Australia Bank, iRiver MP3 players and Foster’s, for which The Taboo Group is designing a new beer variety.
19 Christine Matta, 29 – Perfume Empire
Christine Matta and husband Richard Matta have been on the fast track to success when it comes to growing their chain of pharmacies and Perfume Empire stores. The company is now in the process of expanding into New Zealand and the USA, in addition to its growth across Australia, and was reported by BRW as turning over combined revenue of more than $80 million at 40% annual growth.
20 Alan Meyerson, 28 – Danoz Direct
Alan Meyerson joined the telesales company Danoz Direct in 2004 as a production assistant. He showed so much promise that by 2006 he had been appointed chief executive. Meyerson has overcome a number of business challenges to build the Danoz Direct brand, reducing the range it sells and personally testing every product. Last year the company reported sales of $27 million, and Meyerson has been rewarded with a minority shareholding in Danoz Direct’s parent company, Thane International.
21 Dean McEvoy, 30 – Booking Angel
Dean McEvoy wanted to be an inventor since childhood, but he had to work his way through the family business (a pub), then an advertising agency, then a web developer and another bar before he launched Booking Angel. Thankfully that business, which draws from all that experience, has successfully developed into a service that enables restaurants to easily take bookings over the internet. Booking Angel is now expanding internationally, and was recently voted one of the top 100 private companies by a group of Silicon Valley executives.
22 Antony McGregor Dey, 27 – QMCodes
QMCodes bridges the gap between the mobile internet and print advertising. Advertisers place a small coded symbol (called a smartcode) within their print advertisement, and when photographed using a mobile phone camera, the user is immediately linked to mobile content related to the ad. Working in conjunction with Hitwise founder Andrew Barlow, McGregor Dey says he is receiving strong interest from advertisers that want greater interactivity with consumers.
23 Josh MacKenzie, 28 – Development Beyond Learning
At the age of just 28, MacKenzie has trained over 3000 young people in personal leadership and professional development. As a partner in Development Beyond Learning, he specialises in training Generation-Y staff, managers and potential leaders in skills such as advanced self-leadership, networking, personal planning and team work and confidence building.
24 William Scott, 29 – CommQuest
William Scott formed the marketing services business Smart Advertising in 2000, and in 2007 rolled that into CommQuest, which was listed that company on the Australian Stock Exchange. CommQuest has secured a $44 million facility to begin consolidating other marketing services businesses, and Scott has stated a goal to make CommQuest a $500 million business by the end of the decade.
25 Joshua Nicholls, 28 – Platinum Electrical Contractors
Joshua Nicholls was just 22 and had been only three years working as an electrician when he founded his electrical trade group, Platinum Electrical Contractors. Now, aged 28, his business employs more than 30 staff and has a turnover of more than $3 million a year. Nicholls’ company has begun franchising its business, with a vision of creating 50 new franchises in the next five years operating a fleet of 150 vans.
26 Holly Owen, 30 – Champagne for the Ladies
Appalled at the lack of computer games titles designed for young women, Holly Owen created her own. Coolest Girl in School is billed as the world’s first mobile phone-based role-play game for girls, requiring players to lie, bitch or flirt their way to become just what the game’s title says (it also attracted a call for a ban from the Australian Family Association). Owen was also instrumental in the development of the innovative music education company Starplay (formerly In The Chair), and is now creating a women’s mobile entertainment portal.
27 Peter Sheahan, 27 – petersheahan.com.au
Peter Sheahan has built a career out of educating the world about people like himself – the elusive Generation-Y. The author of the successful book Flip! and a regular on the speaking circuit, Sheahan has consulted to many of the world’s leading brands including Loreal, BMW, Coca-Cola, and News Corporation, and is currently negotiating a regular show on a US television network.
28 Damien Smart, 30 – Smart Group
Entrepreneurship is not often associated with farming, but with water an ongoing concern, Victor Harbour farmer Damien Smart was able to use a 2006 Nuffield Australian Farming Scholarship from Landmark to visit some of the world’s best-practice regions for irrigation. He is now applying that expertise to his family 3400ha farm near the town of Keith, which is moving from the older method of flood irrigation to new forms such as pivot and drip irrigation, to make better use of its 500mm of annual rainfall.
29 Sam White, 28 – The People’s Republic of Animation
Sam White has wrangled a group of young, talented digital media and animation artists into a professional animation studio that has created internationally award-winning work for short films, television, mobile phones and computer games. The PRA is now looking at annual turnover of $1 million, and somewhat fittingly is working with the Chinese Government-owned Shanghai Animation Film Studio to develop feature projects, while negotiating with major US studios.
30 Zoe Warne, 27 – August
Zoe Warne started her own business when she was just 18, creating a design group, Boardwalk Enterprises, for her stepfather’s consultancy. Now with partner Daniel Banik she manages August, a digital media agency that is reporting 400% growth, and has taken on clients including Foster’s, Dairy Australia Snowgum and Sustainability Victoria. Warne’s career has also seen her step into the media, co-presenting a Melbourne ABC radio program with Jon Faine.
See here for more stories about Australia's top entrepreneurs.
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