What is the 30under30?
30under30 is an Anthill initiative 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. More.
Aaron Weller, NSW (b. 1985)
Name: Aaron Weller
Age: 27 (Born: July 1985)
Gender: Male
State: NSW
Known for: Crucial Cloud Computing
Aaron Weller believes every business has the right to succeed online. He also believes the process of this success should be nothing like passing a camel through the proverbial eye of a needle.
“While I want to succeed in everything I do, what really drives me is making a difference in people’s lives and helping them in some way,” Weller declares.
So back in 2003 when he was just starting university, he founded his first business, Crucial Cloud Hosting out of his own savings.
“I noticed businesses were struggling to get online, and identified a gap in the market in providing an easy way to do so,” Weller says.
He started out building websites for his customers, and quickly moved into hosting – finding an even bigger gap in the market. Many hosting companies were too technical and yet people just wanted an easy online experience with web hosting.
Crucial now provides a full range of cloud hosting solutions, hosting over 50,000 websites globally and offering 4,000 businesses daily the easy and reliable services they need to succeed, which is exactly what Weller set out to do.
Weller and his talented team of over a dozen have dedicated themselves to being as customer-centric as can be, and with their recent 50% annual growth, it is certainly paying off.
“Unlike many of our competitors who have bought and consolidated many companies over the years to grow, we have grown purely organically – largely due to word of mouth referrals,” notes Weller.
However, it has not always been smooth sailing for Weller. In 2007, Crucial lost its top 3 hosting customers in just a few months.
One, a social network, was being sued by Facebook and the other two were suing each other. Crucial lost 80% of its overnight. Weller learnt never to put all his eggs in one basket.
However, with his favourite quote by Vince Lombardi “Winners never quit and quitters never win” in mind, Weller and his team managed to keep Crucial afloat by releasing their Australian brand.
And this is when Weller seized an unexpected opportunity, delivering a virtual server product that no one else in the market could deliver at that time. Talk about clouds and silver linings!
“We were lucky to be the first company in Australia to do this – others for some time had been using an outdated and much more expensive model for their customers. So we managed to secure a head start in terms of market share and continue to be among the leaders in cloud hosting,” says Weller.
Crucial Cloud Computing has since featured in the Smart Company Smart50 Fasted Growing Companies 2012, CRN Fast 50, City of Sydney Business Awards 2012 and our very own Anthill Smart100.
Anthill asks: Aaron Weller, what motivates you as an entrepreneur?
I am driven to succeed. While some may be driven by money, I’m driven by the desire to succeed. I’m motivated by seeing more and more customers every day benefiting from our products – making their lives easier, which is why I’m driven everyday to innovate and improve them.
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