Dynamic Business and Elmo Cloud HR & Payroll hosted the Top10 Dynamic Entrepreneurs luncheon in Sydney last Thursday. The Top10 Dynamic Entrepreneurs celebrates and recognises the hard-working, driven and passionate entrepreneurs in the Australian small business community.
We know from our Friday entrepreneur features that a lot of the time, entrepreneurial work goes unnoticed in this space, and it can be a very lonely journey… an up-and down rollercoaster to reach success.
Top10 Dynamic Entrepreneurs aims to change this, by bringing entrepreneurs together and showcasing their fantastic achievements in business.
Now in it’s second year, we rounded of the awards with a special celebratory event where entrepreneurs could network with each other and learn valuable business insights from our judges and sponsors.
First up, all of the guests in attendance were introduced and welcomed with a guide to the afternoon’s schedule. All winning entrepreneurs collected their well-deserved awards.
From there Dynamic Business interviewed Jeremy Liddle, one of the members of our judging panel and an entrepreneur himself, about investing and pitching.
As Jeremy is currently a Founding Partner at SDGx – a Singapore based deep technology venture capital, acceleration, and research group – he was the perfect expert for us to ask!
A lot of entrepreneurs resonated with some of the issues and mistakes discussed, such as the misalignment of values or wanting to gain investment for the sake of it.
Jeremy explained that he has seen instances where service based businesses with little overheads were still pitching for capital when it wasn’t really required in order to make the business work in the early stages.
Some of our winners had already gone through their funding, were approaching their second or third rounds or they were looking to consider it for the first time in the near future.
In terms of landing a successful pitch, Jeremy shared his most useful piece of advice (coming from an investor first-hand!) that potential investors buy into the founder as a person before the business plan. Much like an interview, in the majority of cases, you have made a decision within the first few minutes of meeting that candidate.
Our second speaker was another member of the judging panel, Liz Kaelin, who just very recently left her role as Chief Client Officerat Terem Technologies. Liz aims to help people stop investing in tech that is just plainly not good. She is a graduate of the muru-D accelerator, was featured on Shark Tank Season 2 Episode 8 and sold her catering startup in 2017.
Liz discussed that there are few traits needed to succeed in business, but the key one that stuck with the room was perseverance. There were several nods of agreement when this word was mentioned.
Again from interviewing so many entrepreneurs over the years, Dynamic Business knows first-hand that there are many failures on the road to success. You can read up on our most read entrepreneur stories further here:
Rob Deutsch: The entrepreneur behind F45
Global in under two years: Face Halo founder Lizzy Pike reveals her success story
Dimmi founder Stevan Premutico on choosing his next startup idea – that’s already taken off
From the Bondi Farmers Markets to Shark Tank: SOFI Spritz now kicks off equity crowdfunding
Lastly, and just before photos were taken and final drinks were had, Darryl Garber, Chief Commercial Officer shared the insights of ELMO’s growth story.
ELMO literally started in a basement that continually flooded, and now– from what we hear – has some amazing Sydney office space for the staff, where numbers have gone from 4 to 200+.
What has been crucial to their success, Darryl explained, has been the culture that ELMO has worked hard to create and retain, actively including all the key team members in driving the business forward.
Three of our winning entrepreneurs, Aaron Smith, Errol McClelland and Nicole Lamond, have already been interviewed post winning their title.
Watch this space to find out more about our remaining winners with their upcoming interviews or catch up on the 2018 winners here.
Entries for next year’s Top10 Dynamic Entrepreneurs will open in September 2020. If you know someone who deserves the title, or if you yourself are an industry-changing entrepreneur, please make sure you tell Dynamic Business all about it with a submission next year.
