2013’s Hot 30 Under 30: 1-5

Ned Dwyer Company: Tweaky Age: 28

Plenty of the Hot 30 Under 30 have made their living by starting online businesses – Ned Dwyer has made his by improving them.

His company, Tweaky, is built on the idea that small business owners can make small changes to their website instead of a huge, sweeping redesigns. Tweaky puts companies in touch with consultants who can help them with anything from advertising to visual design.

Although the company only launched in July of 2012, it has received $450,000 in start-up money from 99designs and Sitepoint.com, run by Mark Harbottle. Dwyer claims the operation is already profitable, with 10 employees.

Dwyer has plenty of his own experience, having grown his previous business, social media campaign consultancy Native Digital, from $25,000 in revenue to more than $1 million in the previous year. He still maintains a majority shareholding in the business.

Dwyer says he’s committed to profitability – so much so he gave up alcohol for as long as Tweaky didn’t make a profit.

Nick D’Aloisio Company: Summly Age: 17

Australian-born Nick D’Aloisio created Summly, an app which condenses news into shorter summaries, in March 2011 at only 15 years old. The algorithmically generated summaries caught the attention of many investors, and shortly after its creation D’Aloisio secured his first venture capital funding from Hong Kong-based billionaire Li Ka-shing, an investment of $300,000.

The initial version of the app, which aimed to solve problems with reading the news on smartphones, was downloaded over 200,000 times and in November 2012 D’Aloisio received $US1 million in venture capital from celebrities such as Yoko Ono, Ashton Kutcher and Stephen Fry.

In order to create the app, D’Aloisio used technology from SRI International and in March this year it was this technology which caught the attention of Yahoo. In March, Yahoo acquired the app and D’Aloisio became a sizeable $30 million richer.

Nicole Kersh Company: 4Cabling Age: 29

Kersh cracked the cabling market in 2007, after realising traditional cable companies were “running on a stale business model”.

Kersh was innovative, making her own cables and becoming Australia’s first online cable distributor. 4Cabling now turns over $8 million a year, a 25% increase per year.

Over the past year, 4cabling has gone through a magnitude of changes.

“We’ve refreshed our website, migrated over to a new platform – just listening to our customers’ feedback and making it easier.

Currently, Kersh and her team are developing a range of e-commerce websites providing customers with more cabling services such as installation.

As for the future, Kersh’s ideas continue to be big.

“World cable domination!” she says.

Jack Delosa Company: The Entourage Age: 26

The Entourage, Jack Delosa’s fourth business venture, is an education institution, which focuses educating and developing a new breed of entrepreneur.

“We started The Entourage as a way to connect the next entrepreneurs with current entrepreneurs,” he says.

Delosa is looking to branch into the United States, whilst he had originally planned to go through another company, the plan has changed.

“I think we will probably now go in there ourselves, speaking to the best universities and thought leaders in the world, and we are building this because we want to retain our integrity,” he says.

Delosa says The Entourage now has revenue in the “multi-millions of dollars” and has increased its revenue by 100% over the last two years.

“We’ve had phenomenal success,” he says.

Jodie Fox Company: Shoes of Prey Age: 30

Online retailer Shoes of Prey has gone from strength to strength since launching in 2009 and earlier this year it partnered with department store David Jones, giving the e-commerce site a bricks-and-mortar offering.

The partnership with David Jones has allowed both retailers to explore new ways of boosting sales, as Shoes of Prey set up a booth at its flagship Sydney store, allowing customers to access Shoes of Prey’s self-designed, custom-made products while in-store or design their own using tablets.

This time last year, Shoes of Prey raised $3 million in funding, including investments from Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes and US venture capitalist Billy Tai. The funds are being used to expand its team from 14 to 24 and publicise the site through a new marketing campaign.