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.
Joshua Winterton, WA (b. 1992)
Name: Joshua Winterton
Age: 22 (Born: April 1992)
Gender: Male
State: WA
Known for: Tiinkk
“I am fascinated at the challenge of turning an idea into a living and breathing reality,” says Joshua Winterton, the brains behind Tiinkk, an app that lets users give and receive opinions from friends anywhere in the world in real-time.
“I created Tiinkk because through my own personal experiences – I have experienced the need to receive social validation in my choices from my friends, followers and even strangers,” he shared, about his motivation to build this app.
“I think it’s very important to allow people an avenue to share their consumer choices with their friends to receive the validation they need to feel confident.”
Joshua created the original concept for Tiinkk in 2012 at the age of 20, began developing the idea and formed the company Tiinkk Ltd in April 2013.
By August, he had successfully completed a $300,000 funding round (mainly from Perth angel investors) and went on to pull off a soft launch into the AppStore by October.
The app has since been downloaded in 65 countries worldwide.
However, Joshua’s journey with Tiinkk, which is his first business, hasn’t been hurdle-free.
He revealed to Anthill that early on, he didn’t get much support from his friends and family. He says most of them gave him comments like “What would you know about apps, or running a company?” or “You don’t know what you’re doing!”
However, Joshua managed to block out the negativity around him and stayed focused.
That wasn’t all though. Raising the initial capital for the venture wasn’t easy either.
As a non-university degree ex-tennis coach with no technical computer skills, it wasn’t easy to convince investors to invest $300,000 into his opinion sharing social network.
Thankfully, it wasn’t all gloom — Joshua got a lucky break at the start that kept him going.
“At the very beginning of this journey I was a tennis coach at a local tennis club in Perth, and one of the parents of the child I was coaching randomly approached me to ask me a question about apps as I was young and ‘hip’,” he shared.
“We exchanged numbers and he requested to see Tiinkk’s information. I sent it to him and 4 days later he wrote me a cheque for $40,000. He was my first investor.”
Joshua also combined his personal 40kg weight loss story to build his own profile while at the same time creating quite a buzz for his brainchild, Tiinkk in the media.
He has appeared on Channel 7’s Today Tonight, Nova, The Sunday Times, Perth Now, ABC, The Australian, Business News, StartUp News and has also been featured several times by the global tech blog The Next Web.
The University of Western Australia also conducted a 6 week marketing project on Tiinkk where Joshua educated the 3rd year marketing students on social media marketing.
Anthill asks: Joshua Winterton, what’s your super power?
My super-power is persistence. Through my experience being incredibly obese and the back breaking amount of exercise to lose the weight followed by skin removal surgery to become ‘normal’. I believe I have that rare ability to be so incredibly persistent even when it seems insane to keep going.
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