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.
Christina Chun, NSW (b. 1991)
Name: Christina Chun
Age: 26
Known for: 1Scope
Christina is driven by a desire to create a level playing field for all students. Her startup, 1Scope is a data‑driven platform that connects students aged 12‑25 to character and skill‑building opportunities offered by universities, companies and not for profits. “I want to, as best as I can, level the playing field to make it easier for students who are struggling to see a way out, and to fight.”
“We’re all born into ‘set’ segments from ethnicity, to SES, gender, postcode and more. From day one, some of us are already born ahead of others,” she told Anthill, “Despite growing up in a challenging family environment (domestic violence, raised by a single mum with financial struggles), I grew to seek out opportunities daily and those opportunities have significantly contributed to my success to date.”
“Every day, we’re teaching students the reward in taking up more opportunities which can open doors. An incident that raised our profile was pairing up with the Layne Beachley Foundation,” Christina said, about their efforts so far.
“A few female high school students wanted to attend a Julia Gillard event (cost: $1300). I decided to call and ask for free tickets and because our values aligned, the CEO offered 36 free tickets.
“By combining our goals, we helped promote and secure 250+ applications across 100 schools within a week. Successful applicants had a private Q&A with Julia Gillard and a 2‑course meal at Shangri‑La.”
1Scope was established in May 2016, the MVP launched in November 2016, they raised $1 million in February 2017, and since then, over 9000 students across 200 schools are using the platform.
On reeling in such an investment from a global billion dollar company in less than a year after establishing the platform, Christina says, “The process took 9 months and was gruelling from pulling together a solid business plan, financial forecasts, constant validation of the platform to the details of each clause in our contracts. This investment marks the beginning of our journey, and was very important in telling us that we might be onto something, something that could change the education space.”
The team consists of 7 employees and 3 contractors ‑ majority under the age of 25. Since February 2017, they have secured 9000 students on the platform from across 200+ high schools. Over 66% have applied for, and gone through a program. Over 20% have provided evaluations to programs. 1Scope has a number of partnerships with universities (such as UNSW and Macquarie University) and companies (ADOBE, Microsoft, Salesforce, Bendelta, AIE, Skilling Australia Foundation, HaymarketHQ and many more).
Christina believes forming army of supporters is her super power.
“Starting from scratch with no corporate experience, within a year, I managed to pull together an advisory board of supporters‑ from Herbert Smith Freehills, Atlassian, IAG, Department of Education, EY, UNSW, Morgan McKinley, and many more.
“From parents, students to schools‑ we’re looking at hundreds willing to support 1Scope even in its primary stages. When I believe in something strong enough, I have the ability to share this feeling with others to join the movement.”
Anthill asks: Have you ever been lucky, punk?
Two days after coming back from the U.S., Joshua Flannery from UNSW Innovations offered me a place to pitch a tech idea for FounderLab UNSW. By winning, we would get a lead developer for free for 3 months. An all‑nighter later, we managed to pull together an idea and pitch deck and won. And that was the beginning of 1Scope 🙂
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