Startup & Entrepreneurship

Abigail Forsyth is the founder of KeepCup, a company that sells reusable plastic coffee mugs as eco-friendly alternatives to paper cups. In this podcast, she talks to Garry and Leon about winning the endorsements of baristas, selling to corporates around the world, and how to sell the message behind the product itself.

In the fast-paced Internet world, three years can feel like fifty. It was way back in 2008 that Jamie Xuereb, then still a teenager, first earned acclaim for his digital printing business, Mediapoint. Well, in 2011, Mediapoint is still profitable, with over 2,000 clients, and Xuereb, far from being washed up at 22, would like you to know he isn't finished yet.

If the proposition "A robot in every home" sounds like a fantasy, a touch dystopian even, then you haven't met Marita Cheng, Mechatronics Engineering student at Melbourne University and serial entrepreneur, at the tender age of 22.

The Early Warning Network, an emergency service first started in 1995, has won the Ninefold Cloud Computing Prize at the Tech23 awards. The network uses...

Adam Pope has fed relentless energy and quick decision-making into his five-year-old company, Fabulous Catering. A venture that started with $100 in the bank now employs more than 60 people and provides finger food for more than 60 functions a week.

Mix a bit of geekiness with a passion for fashion and you've got Wikifashion, the co-creation of Madeline Veenstra. The site is designed to be no less than the one place to go to find historical fashion collections, information on new brands, and everything in between.

The journey for Sydney entrepreneur Mark Pracy, now owner of Australia’s largest Jet Ride experience, all started in the Hunter Valley where he provided his services to international superstars, such as Eric Clapton, Alicia Keys, John Mellencamp, Cheryl Crow and many more. From there, he seized his opportunity and capitalised on a gap in the marketplace by making it affordable for average day Australians to experience a ride in a Jet Fighter. In this Q&A interview with Alex Pirouz, Pracy discusses the importance of customer service, how marketing has shifted as a result of social media and the information age and why working with the right staff is absolutely critical to the success of any business.

Video and high-tech media wunderkind Michael Woods appears to be as comfortable in front of a camera as he is behind it. Four years before founding Media Saints, a video production / game development company, he was the force behind B1G LEAGUE, which produced live webcasts of video-game tournaments -- 'casts for which he served as the emcee.

In the application for this august competition, people are asked to dream up an award category. Jack Delosa suggested "30under30 Veteran." Sold. Nice to see you again, Jack.

This year, more than 70,000 students in New South Wales will sit their Higher School Certificate exams, which can be daunting to those students who have university ambition, but don't know what to expect from the exams themselves. Thanks to the Art of Smart Education, the tutoring business founded by Rowan Kunz, they have greater resources at their disposal to succeed.

"I want to retire at 25," says Adelaide's David Zanker, founder of Off the Chain Marketing. "It's been my goal since I was 17 and I'm pretty much on track." Don't pity him too much: at 24, he already considers himself semi-retired as he adheres to a one-day work week. "And it's only getting easier," he adds.

Financial markets are in turmoil again. But it would be dumber still for entrepreneurs not to keep their eyes open to emerging new opportunities. Remember, some of today’s best companies – think Google, for one – were built during a recession. So, for those who will not be swayed by the doom-sayers, here are seven steps to turn adversity into, perhaps, an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Ask four people to describe Geniaus, Cameron Rambert's latest project, and you'll get four different answers. A collaborative workspace for entrepreneurs to engage and evaluate ideas. A six-step program to develop business ventures from ideation to profitability. The makeshift headquarters of half a dozen Melbourne startups. A frat house for innovation. Geniaus is all of these things, and it's always striving to be more than the sum of its descriptives.

Costabir was in the middle of an honours degree in psychology when she took the first leap towards what would become The Lingerie Boutique, an online store that allows both women and men (we'll explain) to shop for high-quality lingerie in Australia. That leap landed her on a plane to, of all prized destinations, Paris.

Becoming a business owner for the first time in 1977, Bruce Doyle has now owned and operated 27 businesses, 18 of which were developed from conception. He has been ranked Global Coach of the Year, Victorian Coach Of the Year and Action Coach’s most prestigious award, Entrepreneur Coach of the Year. In this Q&A interview with Alex Pirouz, Doyle shares why it’s important to do a business plan, what is required for a business plan to be successful and the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when writing a business plan.

One of the pitfalls of being a small business owner is the strange belief that you've got to do everything, from scrubbing the floor...

UTS students Tia Saunders and Ahmed Haider found their entrepreneurial breakthrough when they discovered the hidden cost of education: textbooks, besides being heavy to lug around, were steeply priced. In 2010, Haider and Saunders launched Zookal, an online textbook rental service billing itself as "by uni students and for uni students." The site received 18,000 hits within its first two weeks and Zookal rented out all books in stock in its first semester of operations.

It's often said that there has never been a better time to be a young entrepreneur in Australia. We have the economic stability, a soaring...

Mick Spencer has been short-sighted for a long time. That is to say, he started wearing glasses as a toddler. But when it comes to the young man's sports product and marketing company, OnTheGo, Spencer's vision stretches for miles and miles.

Mayibuye is a Zulu word that means "bringing back what was lost." For young Australian Zoe Condliffe, it also means "giving back to her childhood." She spent her early years in Cambodia, where her father worked for the United Nations. Today, Condliffe, 21, is going back to the Asian nation with a goal to raise the hopes of impoverished Cambodian youth.