Start up secrets

Young, smart, focused and flexible – meet the winners of the inaugural SmartCompany Crown Lager Business Start Up Awards.

When we first dreamt up these Start Up Awards earlier this year, we wanted to recognise not just the fastest growing start up company, but the entrepreneurs who were really trying to do something different by creating new products or services, exploring new business models and making a difference to our community.

What we got was a fabulous group of more than 120 companies from around Australia and from a diverse range of industries.

But despite the variety of entrants, these entrepreneurs all share two common traits – their passion for their business and their willingness to do things differently.

Take Point Project Management, the Adelaide consultancy company which took the major prize for fast growth, the Crown Lager Start Something Special Award.

Founders Michael Snare and Brendan Bilston met in 1993 at the Defence Force Academy in Canberra; Snare was a senior classman, while Bilston was a junior.

The company has expanded rapidly and has built revenue to $13.4 million in just three years. Behind the firm’s success is a strong growth plan, overseen by a board of advisers and underpinned by a set of highly developed processes and systems.

“For everything that everyone does there is a documented process in terms of what they do and how they do it,” Bilston says.

Or take Chris O’Brien, founder of waste management firm Hungry Giant, who was 22 years old and working in an electronic goods store when the site of truck after truck carting away polystyrene to landfill gave him an idea.

A few years later, he had invented, built and commercialised a machine that compacts polystyrene foam with just $300 in start up capital.

His company now offers a variety of waste management solutions. But instead of charging on the volume of waste collected from a client’s workplace, the company charges companies to use its onsite recycling equipment, thus reducing processing costs and, in many cases, trips to landfill.

This allows O’Brien’s small company to compete with global waste management giants who typically drive down prices to squeeze their rivals.

These are just some of the great stories you’ll find among the award entrants. We’ve profiled the 50 fastest-growing companies here – as well as finding out about their start up stories, you’ll even find a tip from each business. You can also see a list of the up and coming start ups here.

But the awards also highlighted some broader trends which underline why our start up community will be so crucial in leading the Australian economy towards recovery:

They’ve managed the downturn brilliantly

The last few years have hardly been a great time to start a new business – just ask Jim Noort, founder of toilet hire business Viking Rentals. In the last 12 months, his key market, the Queensland construction sector, has experienced a 40% drop in activity. It would have been enough to knock any company out, but Noort focused and knuckled down.

“This was a very challenging period from which we have only recently emerged from. We survived by carefully planning a rolling 60 day cashflow forecast and reviewing it every single day. We are through that now and are starting to flourish again.”

Rental Depot founder, David Caruso, has also been hit by the property slump.

“While our cash customer base has steadily increased, our account customers have gone into freefall. The lack of activity in the building industry has affected our bottom line considerably. To exacerbate the problem, a number of our ‘better’ account customers also had administrators appointed, while still owing us considerable amounts,” Caruso says.

Despite this, he’s been able to push further into the lucrative DIY sector and has annual revenue of $523,000.

The female entrepreneur is one the rise

One of the most exciting features of the awards is the impressive number of female entrepreneurs – 30% of companies have female founders or co-founders, which mean women have a far bigger presence than on SmartCompany’s Smart50 or any of Australia’s rich lists.

In many cases these women became disgruntled with the corporate world and saw an opportunity to focus on a certain niche of their industry. Other female start up entrepreneurs, such as Fiona Gudmunson of Unique Kids, started their businesses out of the need to stay at home with children while trying to develop a satisfying and rewarding career.