Sheng Yeo – with Joseph Glanville and Alexander Sharp

Names: Joseph Glanville, Alexander Sharp and Sheng Yeo

Business name: OrionVM

Ages: 19, 20 and 22

State: NSW

The ability to spot a gap in the market, great technical skills and sheer hard work has made OrionVM one of Australia’s leading tech start-ups.

As with many businesses, frustration was the key. Wanting to create a new sort of search engine, they sound that the cloud computing storage they wanted to use was unsuitable.

Realising that others may want a similar solution, they switched their focus to the cloud, working out of Yeo’s dorm room at the University of Technology Sydney and raising money from friends and family.

Barely 18 months on, they now have what they claim is the world’s fastest storage engine for cloud computing.

The business’ potential is strong – a number of clients have come on board and a $1 million funding round is in the offing.

But the founders haven’t been swept up by the euphoria – not only do they lend their time to start-up events such as the Sydney Hackathon, they man the customer service lines themselves.

“It was really hard at the beginning, but we provide really good service,” says Yeo.

“If we get a call or an email from a client, it gets replied to in under five minutes. We’ve built up a good reputation over time, it wasn’t easy at first, but we got good references from our clients.”

“Go with your dream, don’t listen too much to the people who say you can’t do it, go with your dream and go hard at it.”