Here is a list of 10 business owners who were set to make a big impact in 2013. 1. Matt Barrie – Freelancer The concept of the Freelancer business is a simple one – a directory of jobs open to freelancers of any sort. The 38-year-old Barrie is a tough leader. It’s working. Freelancer now counts $50 million in revenue and 4.3 million users. 2. Josh Guest – b2cloud Josh Guest is the founder of B2Cloud, a company which makes its money by both building apps, and reworking dodgy apps that have been created outside of Australia. Guest has an extensive web design background, building a company when he was in high school. He built B2Cloud after starting off with just a few apps, then ramping up production from there. The business actually started as a blog, the idea being a place where people could write about technology. From there, the business worked on a contracting app and continued on. The app market is changing all the time, with hundreds of thousands of apps available online at once. Guest intends to build up his business by working with companies who have already had apps built for them, but are of a lower quality. B2Cloud is already turning over $1.5 million. With an eye on the quickly changing market, Guest could be expected to boost that number in the year head. 3. Jack Fitzgerald – Ship 2 Anywhere Jack Fitzgerald moved from studying logistics at university to actually starting his own business within the sector. The company attempts to make the parcel shipping business easier by delivering instant quotes. With so much activity happening in the parcels market, it seems a good time to work on helping businesses ship their goods. The business turned over $1 million last year, and Fitzgerald says the business is set to double that in 2013. 4. Tom Waterhouse – Tom Waterhouse Tom Waterhouse always had the upper hand entering the gambling market, coming from a family of bookmakers. The son of bookie Robbie, and trainer Gai Waterhouse, Tom has put a lot of his effort into maintaining his online betting agency, TomWaterhouse. Launched in 2010, the business is now one of the largest corporate bookmakers in the country. With tens of thousands of account members, and revenue in the hundreds of millions, Waterhouse also has big plans to take the business international very soon – all this at 30 years old. 5. Amanda Lintott – Career Driven Amanda Lintott started her recruitment company, Career Driven, after working as a lawyer for several years. It wasn’t a great time to start a business – just before the global financial crisis – but that hasn’t stopped her from reaching success. Specialising in the automotive sector, the business focuses on finding salespeople for dealers. She had to overcome a few growing pains – such as setting the wrong price for services – but Career Driven has already reached $2 million in revenue. 6. John Winning – Winning Appliances John Winning is one of the key players in Australia’s eCommerce space. Despite all the talk no one can sell bulky goods online, Winning has turned Appliances Online into an online powerhouse turning over tens of millions of dollars a year. (The most recent estimate was in 2011 at $10 million, although Winning has said revenue has doubled since then). 7. Alec Lynch – DesignCrowd Alec Lynch is a busy man. His crowdsourcing site DesignCrowd has been moving from strength to strength over the past two years, receiving $3 million in funding from Starfish Ventures. The business was even named by Wired as start-up of the week back in March 2012. It’s easy to see where Lynch is heading. After acquiring a US company at the end of 2011, and moving into Asia during the end of 2012, DesignCrowd is at the forefront of global expansion. After starting the company from his parent’s dining room, Lynch has lofty goals to make DesignCrowd a $100 million business. The next year will see him make significant advancements towards that goal. 8. Justin Dry, Leigh Morgan and Andre Eikmeier – Vinimofo The online liquor market has been exploding in Australia. Several larger players such as Dan Murphy’s have been experiencing a boost in sales due to shoppers eager for a bargain. Justin Dry, Leigh Morgan and Andre Eikmeier didn’t just capitalise on this trend by building a successful site – they were quickly snapped up by one of the biggest ecommerce groups in the country. The business started as a blog, but has built 30,000 subscribers. The trio was at the right place, at the right time with the right product – and is now part of the Catch of the Day group. But just because they’re part of a larger group doesn’t mean this business won’t be going places. The trio are very much in charge of the company, and considering Catch of the Day wants to boost its wine offering in a big way, Vinimofo is set to be a major player in the local wine market. 9. Sarah + Emily – Bellabox Sarah and Emily Hamilton didn’t have any experience in the beauty industry when they started their subscription business, Bellabox, in late 2011. It didn’t matter. Now the company has tens of thousands of subscribers – and recently won $1.3 million in its very first round of funding. The pair’s business comes from a concept they found in the United States. Bellabox offers boxes of beauty products – samples, mostly – to time-poor men and women who can’t spend a lot of time browsing stores for new products. Bellabox has beaten out several competitors so far, racking up over 10,000 subscribers with barely any marketing spend. The $1.3 million in funding from a consortium is just icing on the cake. 10. Nicole Kersh – 4cabling There’s so much talk about “big data” these days, but few entrepreneurs are actually doing something with it. Nicole Kersh is one of those few. Kersh started her cable selling business, 4Cabling, as an online wholesaler, but has branched out into manufacturing, designing and import as well. Turning over nearly $8 million a year, the company has carved out a nice niche for itself. It would be enough to say Kersh has built a successful business at just 28 years old, but there’s more. Kersh recently built an entirely new site based on the sales data she recorded from her original site. Big data doesn’t reveal anything unless you do something with it. Kersh is one of the successful few who can both analyse the data and create an opportunity.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Apr 2014 19:00:00 +0000
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