Startup & Entrepreneurship

Laurence Escalante, who suffered a crushing financial and personal blow with an earlier business, has a phoenix by the tailfeathers with his latest venture. Virtual Gaming Worlds might still be an early stage startup, but its concept of combining online games with online gambling has attracted some serious venture capital.

Want to work in construction or serve some cold ones from behind a bar? Well, you need certification for that. And Sergei Sergienko is here to help. His company, Edway Training, offers the courses necessary for people get work in the construction and hospitality industries.

Armed with a corporate background, Jan Vydra leaped into the herb industry with determination to build a better basil. By any measurement, he has been wildly successful with his 3-year-old company, Australian Fresh Leaf Herbs. Recently, the national government named him Young Farmer of the Year.

Dean Ramler probably can't wait for the end of the 2012 London Olympics. Because when the flame is snuffed out, things will really start to heat up for his company, Milan Direct, which is contracted to sell 800,000 pieces of furniture used during the Games.

Onur Kece left a cushy job in advertising to co-create Found Organic Juices, which boasts selling the world's first carbon-neutral juice. That's just one facet of a relentless, imaginative marketing push to make Found stand out in a crowded market.

There's something liberating about being a self-described nerd. Chris Baxter is comfortable with the label, especially since it falls easily alongside his bigger, more powerful moniker -- international patent law attorney. Baxter says he started his patent-law firm, Baxter IP, because he wanted SMEs and entrepreneurs to have the same access to protection of intellectual property that big R&D companies do.

Brisbane's street food scene just got a lot more picante. Jordan Birchall found the idea for Tuckeria Fresh Mexican while living in California. Although the Financial Crisis slammed the lid on his real estate venture, he found the Mexican cuisine culture there to be a whole new opportunity to take home with him. "I started Tuckeria to prove that not all fast food is bad for you," he says.

Melissa Loughnan doesn't just make publicity out of art; she makes an art of publicity. Owner and curator of Utopian Slumps gallery in Melbourne, Loughnan has become an undeniable player on the stage of contemporary art in Australia. She's given artists a reason to believe and reinvigourated an enterprise steered largely by collectors and philanthropists twice her age. And she has developed a durable model to handle the business behind the artwork.

The stealth startup, with the promise of making patent searches easier, better and more affordable, has been named among the five finalists of the University of Queensland Business School’s $100,000 Enterprize competition. “We're at an early stage of development. We have working prototypes, but do not yet have a publicly available working solution – although we hope to change that in the near future,” HaystackHQ told Anthill.

Sean Richards was doing his own web development business and collaborating with a couple of friends and their entrepreneurial, online endeavours. A couple of years ago, he convinced them to put everyone under one roof. The result is Alaress, a multiservice digital agency.

In 2009, Marcela Christy was planning her own wedding. At the same time, she needed an outlet for her desire to write. The two things came together, forming a wedding blog that today is a full-blown, nuptial-laden website called One Stylish Bride.

Aileen Bautista is the founder and CEO of DinoRoar Interactive, which creates games for mobile phones and social media. Founded in 2010, the company recently nailed down seed money from the NSW government that will allow it to roar even louder in 2011-12.

Some people will read this headline and think, 'What the fffff-heck! Of course entrepreneurship is about wealth creation. It's about building companies and industries, isn't it! You're speaking rubbish!' After interviewing hundreds of entrepreneurs, over eight years, Anthill's James Tuckerman thinks otherwise. So, what actually drives entrepreneurship?

After a spate of natural disasters, Queensland residents are no strangers to the insurance claims process. "I saw how much time and labour was wasted and thought, 'There's got to be a better way to do this,'" says Don McKenzie, 28, who started up the Stream Group in 2006 after a series of storms in Southeast Queensland.

"I believe in creating business models that are buzz-worthy in their own right," says Ben Johnston, the big man behind Josephmark.com.au, a brand management and design company. After we singled him out as an Emerging Digital Doyen last year, Johnston has roared to the surface, proving that one doesn't need to sacrifice cool or conscience for profitability. (Warning: contains highly addictive video content.)

The burgeoning world of online retail is steadily finding support companies that speak the same language. One of the most hard-charging examples is eStore Logistics, a warehousing and shipping company founded in 2009 by Leigh Williams.

Some things in life need to be spelled out very simply before they have any impact. Like learning how to say the name of new business ‘Qumpit,’ a digital startup that aims to provide a physical queuing experience online.

Robert Kiyosaki is an American investor, businessman, self-help author and motivational speaker, who has written 15 books, with combined sales of over 26 million copies. In this Q&A interview with Alex Pirouz, Mr. Kiyosaki discusses what it takes to be successful in business, the No 1 skill every entrepreneur should learn and the five qualities required by every entrepreneur in order to become successful.

In 2009, Michael Mironowicz brought a background in retail sales into a partnership with longtime friend Andrew Yang, who was running an online consumer-goods seller called The Storehouse. Mironowicz's sales savvy was just the tonic The Storehouse needed -- and The Storehouse gave him the vehicle to reach out to charitable causes.

For Chad Yesilova, it's been one heck of a journey -- from being a stockbroker wiped out by the global financial downturn to becoming the co-founder of Innovative Beverage, which sells an "anti-energy drink" called Esc. Not bad for a guy with no previous experience in the beverage game.