If you’d like to start your own company, have an amazing idea or product that you’d like to launch, or want to work on the cutting edge of tech and business, entrepreneurship is a field like no other.
Entrepreneurs need resilience, initiative, determination, and confidence
The mindset you bring will dictate where you end up, because in this field there are less rules and less clear paths to determine your success.
In this area, you will find livestock veterinarians working on ground-breaking AI technology that tracks herd health, operating theatre nurses opening drone companies, and university drop-outs with billion dollar companies.
Here are 7 Australian Entrepreneurs who’ve made it
If you’re looking for inspiration and motivation, or you just need some reassurance to help you make the leap into your first venture, we’ve found some people who’ve been successful. Check out their stories and be inspired.
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Melanie Perkins the Founder and CEO of Canva
Melanie’s company, Canva, is a ‘unicorn’ (valued at over $1 billion), and around 75 million people use her product. She started her first business at 14 while still at Sacred Heart College in WA. After dropping out of the University of Western Australia at 19 Melanie started Fusion Books, the predecessor of Canva.
She was rejected by hundreds of Venture Capital funds before she found the right people to grow her business, and she continues to innovate – Canva has just launched a productivity suite to rival Microsoft.
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Scott Farquhar co-Founder and co-CEO of Atlassian
Scott grew up in Western Sydney. After leaving James Ruse High School he met co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes at university, where the pair came up with the idea for an IT Support business. That didn’t work, so they decided to sell the software they had been developing to run the IT support service, and the rest is history.
Twenty years down the track, Atlassian is one of the world’s largest tech platforms and employs almost 9,000 people.
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Kayla Itsines co-Founder of Sweat
After starting work as a personal trainer at 18, Kayla started posting workout routines and her clients transformations on Instagram. She quickly gained a huge following and started selling her workout guides as e-books. Her career boomed and she went on to launch Sweat a platform for her followers to connect on, which she sold in 2021 for $400 million with over a million followers.
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Eric Peck CEO and co-Founder of Swoop Aero
Eric graduated from uni with a degree in technology majoring in aerospace. He went on to complete his MBA, and was a Royal Australian Air Force Hercules pilot before launching Swoop, a drone delivery service,….. and he’s still only 30!
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James and Adam Gilmour Founders of Gilmour Space Technologies
Brothers James and Adam started their venture-backed Australian company back in 2013. Their Queensland based start-up is now one of the leading space companies pioneering new and innovative hybrid propulsion technologies designed to offer lower cost access to space. They’ve received over $26 million in backing to date.
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Vu Tran and Andrew Barnes co-Founders of GO1
Childhood best mates Vu and Andrew started their first business Busy Links when they were just 16. Vu the son of Vietnamese refugees is also a qualified Doctor and still works one day a week in that role.
They went on to start GO1 in a garage in Brisbane in 2015, helping businesses and individuals to find the training that they need. There are already over one million users on the website and GO1 is now valued at over $1 billion.
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Angus Goldman and Alex Harper co-Founders of Swyftx
Angus and Alex started their crypto exchange business Swyftx in 2018 after meeting on school science camp at the University of Sydney. By 2021 their trade volumes were reaching over $3 billion a month and they have no plans of stopping there.
Ready to launch your own venture?
If Entrepreneurship sounds like a path that’s perfect for you, you’ll find lots more information in our Pathways to Entrepreneurship Guide https://studyworkgrow.com.au/product/pathways-to-entrepreneurship-2022/.
Be warned, you will need to make your own way and do your lots of your own research to succeed in this field