30under30 2016

With eyes set on giving back to his community, Robert Gillies created Conscious Creative Limited, a charity that manages a number of social enterprises. Robert says his charity has three goals: “make caring cool, make giving easy and receiving dignified.”

Cyber security is quite a complex topic, so much so that many may not understand it in the slightest. Sam Crowther feels just the opposite. He’s built a cyber security company from the ground up and it seems to keep on growing. “I wanted to commercialize two ideas: eliminating passwords and improving website security,” Sam says, which is exactly what he's done.

High school dropout turned successful businessman — this is just one way to describe Jeremy Hansen and his entrepreneurial success. In 2011, at the age of 16, Jeremy founded GlowBored, a forward thinking public relations firm, which now manages a wide variety of clients across Australia.

Noticing a lack of service being provided by other companies during the mining boom, Cory Byers founded KBSS Engineering, a specialist mechanical company. KBSS Engineering provides a range of onsite services, such as laser aligning of turbines and conveyor drives and building specific machines for required jobs. Cory’s company also provides other mechanical and electrical services to varying companies.

Jacqui Pretty, 30, started Grammar Factory in 2013, by chance. At the time she was doing a business-coaching program for another business idea and part of the program involved writing a book. She got up in front of the group of 50 people and pitched them on her editing skills. “That led to my first couple of clients and the rest, as they, is history!” Grammar Factory helps entrepreneurs write awesome books by working with 100+ authors across the fields of business, finance, health, property, personal development and more.

Bradley Clair is a man of many passions, one of which is combining this great number of passions to create a unique social enterprise — AMPLFY. “The business aims to provide an alternative to mass manufactured portable speakers, which typically look the same, sound the same, offer no benefit to society and ultimately end up as landfill,” says Clair about his company.

Briella Brown, 22, is an innovative young entrepreneur, who launched Your Closet in 2014. Your Closet is an online service that allows women to rent high end designer dresses for a fraction of the purchase price.

Rechelle Coombes, 29, founded Socielle in 2016 with the intention of creating a central place for retail consumers to purchase socially conscious goods. Socielle sources artisans from around the globe who provide handmade, ethical, ecofriendly, and/or socially responsible items to help the consumer shop consciously.

A first of its kind in the Australian market, Coder Factory has taught over 500 students through a U.S. style accredited coding bootcamp. Dan Siepen gave life to this idea as well as arranged a network of professional partners who support the company’s growth in order to “supply more qualified, work-ready developers into the market,” he says.

Rochelle Rich, 30, created Financier in 2009 with the help of family and friends she was able to embark on her entrepreneurial endeavour. Though she started her entrepreneur journey at the age of 18, refining her idea throughout university and strived to outperform any competitors. Financier is an Australia-wide online loans company that provides the simplest and easiest way for people to apply for and receive a personal loan. Applications take no more than five minutes to complete and the loan is sent straight to that persons account if approved during business hours. Offering fast and secure transfer options, Financier helps people invest.

Isobel Crumblin, 26, started Fly By Fun in 2008 at the age of 19 with a vision of becoming Australia’s most loved children’s entertainment company. As a company, Fly By Fun is well on their way to fulfilling that vision, with over 8,500 parties and events to date. Crumblin and her team have put smiles on tens of thousands of children’s faces, with over 80 people working out of five capital cities across Australia, Crumblin’s vision of making people happy has come to fruition.

Though sitting at a desk may seem to be an extremely low-risk form of work, desk jobs come with more health risks than what meet the eye. Ryan Ebert has dedicated his life to ensuring workplaces know how to make their employees’ environment healthy and productive.

With the help of Will Strange and Sports Performance Tracking, anyone can feel as if they’re training at the quality of a professional athlete. SPT provides sporting players with wearable cloud based software analytics technology. This enables athletes across the globe to have access to sports science and tracking technology.

Lauren Davenport, 27, started LACD (pronounced ‘laced’) in 2013. An Australian active apparel brand that delivers technical features for performance, style through flattering silhouettes and colour, and comfort through fit and fabric. LACD provides new, innovative collections twice yearly. Each seasonal range is technical, complete and designed for all weather elements. LACD can be found in more than 75 stores Australia-wide and is the clothing of choice at Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz’s luxury Fijian resort – Laucala Island along with several of the world’s top 100 golf courses (Cape Wickham, Victoria Golf Club, Royal Melbourne Golf Club).

Angelica Nohra is co-owner of Star Beverages and Direct Wine Cellars, a wine importing company that focuses on giving Australian consumers a taste of different cultures from around the world. Nohra launched the company in 2009, at the age of 21, with business partner and co-owner, Scott Wilson. A self-proclaimed ‘jack of all trades’, Nohra was inspired by her love of Italian wine and years of travelling abroad to fill a gap in the industry.

Imagine a jigsaw puzzle that comes to life when you snap in the last piece — this is what Taj Paberi has created through Fiftysix Creations. Fiftysix Creations provides children, both privileged and underprivileged, with a kit that allows them to build their very own electronic tablet.

Imagine being a social media professional, meaning all hours spent managing followers and uploading photos deemed a paycheck. This is what Harley Mitaros does for a living. Pryzm began when Harley realised businesses weren't taking advantage of all social media has to offer. He had always hoped to embark on an entrepreneurial journey, but didn't force the idea. When Harley came to this realisation, a lightbulb went off and it “just felt right,” he says. He ran with the opportunity and turned down three post graduate studies offers to start the business.

Sheng Yeo and Alex Sharp have taken cloud technology to new heights. Orion VM is a revolutionary cloud infrastructure, “enabling the delivery of high-performing, highly reliable cloud solutions at market-leading price-to-performance ratios,” Sheng and Alex say. This platform, which consists of virtual storage, compute, orchestration and virtual networking, is built for either internal consumption or resale, Sheng and Alex say.

Customer centric construction — Belfort Homes, founded by Yassir Sheriff, prides themselves on embodying this motto. Having worked in the industry for a number of years, Yassir decided to create his own company when he noticed a lack of credible residential builders in the area.

Megan Gale, 29, launched her own business, Your Law Australia – one of Australia’s first wholly virtual law firms, in 2015. Almost immediately Gale began facing the perennial problem lawyers face – late or non-paying clients. The traditional solution is a trust account, to take payment upfront. This solution, however, brought with it onerous reporting and administrative obligations and costs, to the point that it was not a viable solution to Gale’s problem.