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What is 30under30?
30under30 is an Anthill initiative that was launched in early 2008 to encourage and promote entrepreneurship among young Australians. Each year, we invite our readers to nominate young Australian entrepreneurs deserving of recognition for their outstanding entrepreneurial endeavours. Anthill’s editorial team then trawls through hundreds of applications and identifies and profiles the top 30 Australian entrepreneurs under the age of 30. The process culminates in an event held in Melbourne where the 30 winners will network and celebrate. We’ll be releasing this year’s Anthill 30under30 winners over the next couple of weeks via our Twitter account – youngest to oldest.
Name: Ross Hill
Age: 22 (1987)
State: VIC
Industry: Social Media
Companies: The Hive, Yabble, CoverHunt, Rentoid, Deloitte
Ross Hill doesn’t turn 30 for another eight years, but he’s crammed more entrepreneurial activity into his 22 years than many people twice his age.
Hill is a young gun of the social media space, having developed several prominent websites and blogs. His album cover site CoverHunt.com receives 1.4m page views per month (100k unique). His entrepreneurs’ networking community, The Hive, has reached over 2,000 members. He works part time in social media communications for Deloitte Digital and Deloitte Innovation and splits the rest of his time tending to his user-generated review site Yabble, renting marketplace Rentoid, an emerging public speaking career and, presumably, sleeping.
He has a series of awards to his name, including the RMIT Jacques Nasser Scholarship (two consecutive years), second place in the 2008 RMIT Business Plan Competition and the City of Melbourne Creative Industries prize.
Hill believes his greatest entrepreneurial accomplishment has been co-founding and developing The Hive. The entrepreneurs’ networking community is one of the fastest growing in Australia, with over 150 people now attending monthly Melbourne events, 100 at the recent Brisbane event and an imminent expansion to Sydney.
He certainly is a busy bee, and a thoroughly Anthillian recipient of 30under30 honours in 2009.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND WEALTH ACCORDING TO ROSS:
I don’t need much cash to support myself and prefer to focus on flexibility of working arrangements, location (remote work is great), and being able to create massive impact with small resources and simple structures.
Right now I’m getting better at saying no to new opportunities, to avoid overload. If anything, my commercial failure has been the opportunity cost of trying things – if I spent the time I spend learning and doing things working for the man full time for the last few years, I would have plenty more material wealth.
MULTIMEDIA
Anthill contributor Jennifer Kiely recently sat down with Ross Hill and recorded their conversation about his life and philosophy as a young entrepreneur.
Listen to the podcast.
Play on iTunes.
