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What is 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.

Cameron Rambert, VIC (b. 1987)

Name: Cameron Rambert
Age: 23 (Born: November 1987)
Gender: Male
State: VIC

Ask four people to describe Geniaus, Cameron Rambert’s latest project, and you’ll get four different answers.

“A shared workspace for entrepreneurs to engage and evaluate ideas.”

“A six-step program to develop business ventures from ideas into profitability.”

“The makeshift headquarters of a half-dozen Melbourne startups.”

“A frat house for innovation.”

Geniaus is all of these things, and striving to be more than the sum of its descriptives — that last of which comes straight from Rambert himself.

“My greatest endeavour, by far, was to build a place where every entrepreneurial question I will ever have can be answered,” he says, “and that every idea I ever have can be explored and assessed for its viability. I feel I have achieved that.”

He calls the Geniaus experience “gamified entrepreneurship,” and if you know his CV, you know how important gaming has been for his career. Even in his coming-of-age anecdotes (and there are many), Rambert reveals how his business plans always come with fun and games mixed in.

“I was in the sixth grade,” he recalls. “The same day I learned the concept of probability from my cousin was the same day the new footy season started.” He seized on these coinciding events and launched a sports-betting consortium at his school, winning $30 in two weeks. But in the end, says Rambert, “I felt guilty and decided to spend my winnings on ice cream for everyone.” In this view of gaming, shared experiences win out over individual triumphs.

In 2004, the then 17-year-old Rambert started Anexias Media, a digital media firm that promotes artistic talents to the gaming industry. He followed that up two years later with Gamerthon, a seven-day videogame culture exhibit that drew in 20,000 visitors, with an extra 17,000 spectators livestreaming the event online. Among the hit attractions was Riff Wars (see the video below), which melded the theatrics of the Guitar Hero franchise with the communal participation and heightened suspense from the Next Top Model franchise.

“I influence by relating to people and their personal perspectives and engaging them very openly,” says Rambert. “Being able to influence helps me lead and being able to relate to others keeps me humble.”

The numbers behind Geniaus, though, do their own bragging: based on resource and skills sharing, he values the company’s total created value over six months at $200,000. And the group’s specialty services — including consulting, digital media, software development and events planning — will only further diversify as newer ventures are jump-started under Geniaus’ roof. Declares Rambert, “We have essentially gamified entrepreneurship and co-working.”

As they say in gaming: w00t!

Cameron Rambert’s favourite saying:

Leonardo Da Vinci said there are four essential things that everybody must learn:

1. Study the art of science.
2. Study the science of art.
3. Develop your senses.
4. Understand that everything in some way relates to everything else.

This is essentially what I live by.

Gamerthon: Riff Wars

How Geniaus operates: six stages of development

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To check out the full list of Anthill’s 30under30 winners, click here.