Startup & Entrepreneurship

Unlike most award programs recognising the achievements of Australia's most successful entrepreneurs, we didn't want the 5over50 to simply provide another round of accolades for the same small set of already well-known industry leaders. Our inaugural 50ver50 winners are five inspiring people who have uprooted their lives to pursue entrepreneurial ventures, out of both passion and necessity.

Gary Berman's ubid4rooms.com allows people to bid for deeply discounted rooms at hotels across Australia and in New Zealand. More than 1,000 properties are listed on the site -- from B&Bs to resorts and everything in between. Who says that dotcoms are a Gen Y game?

Breed Lewis' entrepreneurial rebirth happened after she was retrenched in 2009. She took advantage of her over-55 status and started drawing her superannuation while firing up her new business. "Others may have felt like a victim being retrenched at that age, but I felt it was my lucky break," she says.

Rebound Discs, launched in 2009, is far from a side job for 60-year-old John Maher. It was borne of necessity. Unable to work regularly since 1993, when he was severely injured in a fatal vehicle accident, Maher says, "Entrepreneurship was my only option." His business is now endorsed by Kelvin Kerkow, Australian lawn bowl gold medalist at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, and recently secured a deal to manage the worldwide distribution of his product.

Sally Arnold feels the music. It flows around her and through her, syncopating the tempo of her life. So, as she entered the homestretch of her fifth decade on this planet, Arnold decided to form a company that would combine her business and arts backgrounds in a unique way.

Starting any company in deep in the midst of the global financial nosedive is no mean feat. Spawning a business that employs 18 people and pulls in $200,000 in monthly revenue after only 17 months of existence is a jaw-dropper. Fellow Anthillians, meet 61-year old entrepreneur Peter Murphy and his first ever entrepreneurial venture, Stonebridge Systems.

Five young entrepreneurs walk into a room. None of them have ever met before. They have 24 hours to brainstorm, design, program and implement a unique web application or business – and then introduce it to the world. It’s no joke. It’s the formula that defined the latest Sydney StartupCamp. Not much sleep was had, but in the end each group’s perseverance paid off: the ten participating teams now represent ten brand new businesses.

Ben Neumann prefers to measure his company's progress by the glass. When the business started in 2005, he was fortunate to book two functions a week and serve about 200 cocktails a month. Today, his bartenders are pouring up to 5,000 cocktails a week and more than 250,000 a year.

Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin launched a blog and announced on it that he would create a fully formed business in seven days with only $500. Then he did it. The result was AutoCarLog. Yet, Sebastien doesn't even consider the one-business-in-seven-days caper his best buzz builder. No, that would be when he traveled to six countries in 12 days to launch a global brand, in a bid to be listed in the Guinness record book as the "smallest multinational."

"I dare to be different," says Vanessa Cullen, owner of commercial interior design firm Forward Thinking Design. "I've been a new business owner, just like my clients, and so I service them from the standpoint of acute understanding, honesty and empathy."

Betty Boustani was only 26 when she started her law firm in 2007. Over time, Boustani realised her interests were leaning toward advising corporate clients. She reshaped the firm's mission, becoming Emprise Legal & Corporate Advisory.

Mark Ross-Smith describes SMSfun is the first Australia-based social network. The service, which offers a multitude of text-messaging plans while providing a home for chat rooms, user profiles and addictive contests, now has more than 1.2 million members linked by mobile and web.

Andrew McKnight's MIA is an evolution from two previous McKnight ventures -- Limeworks, a website content developer and manager, and Shazam, an app that recognises the song playing on a mobile device and tells the user how to share it and buy it. When MIA finally did "emerge," it was the continent's leader in the mobile tech niche, he says, generating more than $15 million in annual revenue.

Since starting Project Rockit in 2007, the Thomases have worked with more than 150,000 Melbourne-area students. The website quadrupled its daily hits over two years. Most importantly, in post-event evaluations, 96% of students saw a decline in bullying at their school.

Naturally, McKibbin has a keen and enthusiastic eye for fashion trends. But she wouldn't be where she is today without a fearless ability to take a leap. When she first started ddgdaily.com, she didn't know the first thing about building a website. She Googled and taught herself. When the time required to run the site reached critical mass, she quit her regular job and took out a loan.

Dean J. Ramler's Milan Direct has sold more than 370,000 pieces of furniture to more than 100,000 customers. It enjoyed a turnover of $3.6 million in 2008-09, landing the company on BRW magazine's Fast Starters list. Turnover for 2009-10 was close to $5 million. The company expanded into the UK a year ago, and is already a multimillion-pound business there.

This week’s podcast features a chat with Travis Williams, a real estate entrepreneur who’s also the founder and managing director of Box+Dice Software. Williams developed Box+Dice to help real estate agents build relationships with their clients and manage their personal information. In this interview, he reveals why it takes love and obsession to start a business... and a little naivete to persevere.

Ruslan Kogan, who has run more than 20 businesses since age 12, employs a canny marketing approach that attracts news media attention and plays up the David / Goliath aura. in 2008, he tweaked the government's nose by putting out a "Kevin 37" television and selling it for $900 -- the amount offered to each Australian household under PM Kevin Rudd's stimulus plan. Earlier this year, he stoked the fires of a verbal spat with Gerry Harvey, head of traditional electronics retailer Harvey Norman.

Don McKenzie's Stream Group is one of the biggest employers on this year's 30under30 list, with a staff of about 110. McKenzie estimates the company will manage 25,000 home insurance claims this year, up from 2,000 in 2008, and total revenue is likely to exceed $80 million. Did we mention that he's only 27?

Andrew Craig's company, Computer Empire, was started in his mother's garage at age 18. Today, it runs out of a store in Brisbane's central business district. Craig says turnover has surpassed $2 million per year. The biggest customer for his computers is the Vodaphone network in Papua New Guinea.