Read through the list of this year’s entrants in Women’s Agenda sister publication SmartCompany’s Hot 30 under 30 and it’s hard not to be impressed by what they’ve achieved at such a young age.
They’re bold, optimistic and not afraid to put themselves out there.
It’s inspiring stuff and there are many lessons from this year’s Hot 30 even for those with vastly more business experience.
Some may seem counterintuitive, but here are six lessons that can be drawn from the Hot 30 of 2013.
- It’s not all about technology
Think of a young entrepreneur and you probably think of a tech genius.
This year, out of SmartCompany’s 30 young guns, half have founded businesses that operate predominantly online. There are good reasons for this – plenty of industries have yet to see established online players, hence the barriers to entry can be lower. It’s easy to scale an online business up or down as demand fluctuates, and as people become more comfortable spending money online, there’s huge growth potential for the entrepreneurs selling to them.
But this isn’t the only story in the Hot 30.
While almost all the businesses on the list make heavy use of the internet, plenty are predominantly brick-and-mortar enterprises.
For example, Wealth Enhancers has found a niche in the financial advice marketplace and in the three years since it launched is already managing $150 million in funds for its young clients.
Even manufacturing provided an opportunity for Nu-Tank, founded by Kaylee and Wesley Boccalatte along with Kaylee’s brother Stephen Trails, which makes heavy-duty, reliable water tanks. Finding a way to avoid the brass fittings prone to cracking and splitting in traditional water tanks, the trio grew their business to turn over $4 million a year in revenue.
Dane Cornish’s Activate Group provides sporting programs to schools across Australia, while Richard Chua’s Talent100 is a tutoring company specialising in personalised study plans.
This all shows there’s no blueprint to being a successful young entrepreneurs – there are niches to exploit in every market.
- You can never be too young
Everyone on the list is 30 years old or under, which makes them young to begin with, but some of our Hot 30 this year are scarily young.
There’s Nick D’Aloisio of Summly who can’t even vote yet at 17, but can – and did – create an app he sold to Yahoo! for $30 million.
And don’t forget 19-year-old fellow app maker Brandon Cowan from Crazy Dog Apps, Taylah Hasaballah of Tiger Temple, who’s also 19, and Ash Davies of Tablo Publishing, who’s only 20.
Cowan’s approach to business is typical of these super young guns – they look for a problem and then set about solving it.
“My app ideas come from real-world problems with poor or no solutions already available,” he said.
“First I identify a problem and then I come up with an app idea that solves the problem.”
- Spot a trend
Being an entrepreneur is as much about spotting trends as it is about solving problems. Entrepreneurs notice the world around them and convert emerging trends into business opportunities. Lorraine Murphy from The Remarkables Group came up with her idea while working in public relations.
Murphy, who had worked in the PR industry for eight years, noticed the increasing number of bloggers and realised the opportunity for brands and bloggers to work together. This realisation inspired her to create the first talent agency for bloggers. Now with clients such as Woolworths, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Telstra, she’s on track to turnover $1 million in her first year of business – quite a feat.
Similar to Murphy, Hugh Stephens’ business came about because of the prevalence of social media in everyday life and its increasing importance to businesses. Capitalising on this trend, Stephens set out in 2011 to help businesses with their social media strategies through his company Dialogue Consulting. Stephens continues to innovate and he’s currently developing software to allow businesses to quantitatively measure their social media presence.
“It’s a pet project. The initial market is sporting teams so they can measure how much an athlete is worth in terms of their social media presence,” Stephens told SmartCompany.
- Think big, don’t limit yourself to Australia
Australia is great, but sometimes greener pastures lie overseas. Many of the entrepreneurs in this year’s Hot 30 list have spread their talents and expanded their businesses internationally.
Expo Centric, a business providing integrated communication structures for trade shows, speciality retail spaces and museums, has recently expanded to New Zealand. This is just the next step in the business’s growth, with it doubling in size each year. Last year its revenue hit $4.5 million.
Like Expo Centric, Jane Lu’s Show Pony, an online fashion retailer, is receiving interest from overseas. Lu is receiving orders from the United States and as its market grows Lu intends to develop country specific web pages and start sourcing directly from China.
Young millionaire Nick D’Aloisio (Summly) and Anthony Goldbloom (Kaggle) also took their businesses overseas with great success. Kaggle, originally a Melbourne-based start-up, is now based in the United States and has attracted clients such as NASA, Mastercard and Facebook. D’Aloisio, who created an app which summarised news stories, sourced funding from international investors such as Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing and celebrities such as Yoko Ono and Stephen Fry. Not only can entrepreneurs sell their product or service overseas, they can also look for funding.
- Solve a problem for businesses
Ned Dwyer didn’t have to look far to come up with a business idea.
His company, Tweaky, is aimed at helping small business owners make small changes to their website instead of huge, sweeping redesigns.
“I’m building an innovative business in a competitive market that generates real value for small businesses. I like to think that’s important,” Dwyer told SmartCompany.
Mitchell Harper was similarly inspired when starting up Bigcommerce.
After setting up an online store for selling computer hardware, he discovered there was no service to help small retailers set up an online store.
Bigcommerce has recently secured $35 million in venture capital funding and as of March this year has helped 30,000 small businesses in 65 countries.
Dwyer and Mitchell’s stories show inspiration for innovation can be very close to home.
- Be willing to adapt
The entrepreneurs on the list are willing to throw out a good idea in favour of a great one.
For example, Jonathan Barouch transformed his consumer-focused app Roamz to the B2B-focused Local Measure after feedback from businesses.
The original idea for Roamz was to have an app that pulled in public data from social networks like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, which customers could look at to see what people are saying about a particular restaurant.
Soon, Barouch was approached by businesses, who he assumed wanted to advertise on Roamz. Instead, they just wanted to know what people were saying about them.
“Our app was really valuable to them,” Barouch says. “As such, a little over two months ago we relaunched the same technology with a business-facing website and we’ve had really great tractions, securing both SMB clients and larger regional multi-store outlets”.
When the Hot 30 entrepreneurs spot a niche, they pivot their focus, or form a new company entirely.
SponsoredLinx CEO Ben Bradshaw says remaining agile is the major challenge in his industry.
“Unless you embrace change and can adapt, the industry will have evolved before you’ve even started,” he says.
That’s why SponsoredLinx has so many brands. It allows him to shut down, expand or pivot them as he needs, and so provides a crucial risk-mitigation strategy in the notoriously fast-moving world of SEO.
Click here to meet the seven young female entrepreneurs who landed a place on SmartCompany’s Hot 30 under 30 list.