5 Aussie Entrepreneurs Breaking the Mould in 2025

What makes some entrepreneurs succeed while others struggle? Five Aussie entrepreneurs are changing business trends in 2025, each taking a completely different path.

One’s finding minerals from space using artificial intelligence. Another turned 100 rejections into a $40 billion design company. The third captures carbon from diesel generators and embeds it in concrete. Then there’s a recipe app that grew to 800,000 users and relocated to New York, plus two teenagers who built a $100 million e-commerce platform.

At ABmag, we’ve tracked how these Australia-based entrepreneurs built world-class companies. We’ll take a close look at their stories and learn what actually works when building companies from scratch.

Let’s begin with their common ground.

What Do These Five Entrepreneurs Have in Common?

The five entrepreneurs we’ll be covering in this blog aren’t household names yet, but they’re building businesses that solve real problems across Australia and beyond. Now, do they have anything in common?

• Different cities, different industries: From Adelaide space tech to Sydney fintech, Melbourne climate solutions to a recipe app now in New York. They operate across different sectors, which proves that you don’t need Silicon Valley to build world-class companies.

• Common thread: They all tested ideas quickly, kept costs low in the early days, and listened closely to what customers actually needed. This works better than the traditional “build it perfectly first” mentality that burns through capital before you know if anyone wants your product.

• What makes them stand out: None of them followed the typical startup script of raising massive seed rounds or hiring 50 people in year one. Most started with small teams and bootstrapped or raised modest investments before proving traction.

Now let’s see how each of these entrepreneurs built something worth watching.

See also: Kofta Grocery Checklist: One-Tap Ordering from Your Favourite Apps

1. Flavia Tata Nardini: Using Space Tech and AI to Find the Minerals We Need

What if you could find critical minerals in months instead of years, using satellites and artificial intelligence? Flavia Tata Nardini’s Adelaide-based company combines space technology with AI to solve one of the oldest problems in resource exploration.

Artificial Intelligence Meets Satellite Data for Mining

Flavia is a former rocket scientist who worked at the European Space Agency before moving to Adelaide. She tackled a problem most people ignored: slow energy transition. Traditional mineral exploration takes 15 years with a 1-in-200 drill success rate.

Her company, Fleet Space Technology’s ExoSphere platform uses satellites, ground sensors, and AI to cut exploration time from 11 months to four days in real projects. The company raised $150 million in December 2024 and now works with Rio Tinto and Barrick Gold across five continents.

Combining space technology with mining is also helpful because Australia’s economy runs on resources, and clean energy needs these minerals fast.

Currently, Fleet Space Technology is valued at $800 million.

2. Melanie Perkins: Building Canva Into a $40 Billion Design Empire

Getting rejected by 100 investors would crush most founders and send many of us back to bed for a month. But Melanie Perkins used it as fuel.

From University Tutor to Tech Founder

Melanie was tutoring graphic design students at the university when she noticed how frustrating Adobe Photoshop was for beginners. She saw an opportunity but needed to prove she could build something first.

That’s why she launched Fusion Books, a yearbook software for Australian schools. It was a success, and it gave her credibility and taught her how to run a company. But pitching Canva in Silicon Valley meant years of rejections. Investors didn’t want to back a non-technical founder from Australia.

So, what finally changed their minds? The combo of her Fusion Books success and a massive market that Adobe was ignoring.

How Generative AI Powers 135 Million Monthly Users

Today, Canva has 135 million monthly users across 190 countries. The platform did $3 billion in annual revenue last year and recently added generative AI tools like Canva Code and Canva Sheets.

It’s the highest valued female-founded and led startup globally (currently). Melanie and co-founder Cliff Obrecht joined the Giving Pledge to commit half their wealth to good causes.

3. Raj Bagri: Turning Diesel Emissions Into Concrete With Carbon Capture

After seeing engineers struggle to commercialise climate tech, Raj Bagri knew she could bridge the gap. Though she came from banking and hospitality, she became obsessed with carbon capture technology and saw a massive opportunity.

Diesel generators are everywhere. Mines, construction sites, and remote towns all pump out CO2. Add that to the cement industry being one of the planet’s biggest emitters, and you’ve got a problem worth solving. That’s exactly what Kapture does.

The Melbourne startup captures carbon emissions from diesel exhaust and embeds them into concrete. It’s a solution that tackles two emission sources at once.

A Co-Founder’s Approach to Climate Technology

Through our conversations with climate tech founders, we’ve learned that non-technical backgrounds can be an advantage. Similarly, Raj thinks differently about how technology gets built and commercialised.

Kapture’s retrofit technology captures up to 90% of CO2 from diesel exhausts. Then the captured carbon gets embedded into concrete as a permanent replacement for traditional cement ingredients. No green premium means concrete companies save money while cutting emissions.

The company completed successful trials with Horizon Power between January and March 2025. Now they’re preparing for better commercialisation. Raj co-founded Kapture with Jacob Youngert in 2022 and went through the Startmate accelerator recently.

4. Christine, Ivy Nguyen and Will Kent: Building an E-Commerce Recipe App

You might be wondering how a recipe app ends up with 75% of its users in a market it didn’t even launch in. That’s exactly what happened to ReciMe.

Melbourne sisters Christine and Ivy Nguyen, along with their mate Will Kent, started ReciMe during lockdown in 2021. They noticed a gap: people were saving recipes from Instagram, TikTok, and food blogs, but there was no good way to organize them all in one place.

Using Google Trends and Market Data to Validate Demand

Recipe content was exploding online, but nobody had built a tool that actually solved the storage problem. That gap turned into an opportunity.

How They Built ReciMe:

• Started during lockdown: The trio launched in November 2021 and hit 500 users in 24 hours. That’s when they realized the US market was hungry for this solution. Americans wanted a way to save recipes from all their favourite sources without the hassle.

• Focused on one killer feature: The smart importer tool lets users pull in recipes from anywhere in seconds. When they rebuilt the entire app around this one action, retention tripled and revenue grew 20 times.

• Moved to where the customers are: With 75% of users in America, the co-founders relocated to New York City in April 2024. This is why being closer to your main market is important when you’re trying to understand what people actually want.

• Attracted heavyweight investors: They raised $1.5 million in July 2024 with backing from Marissa Mayer, the ex-Yahoo CEO. The app grew from 20,000 to 800,000 users. They began by validating their concept with pre-seed funding from LaunchVic’s Alice Anderson Fund before scaling.

5. Liam Millward and William Gao: Solving E-Commerce Retention at Ages 17 and 19

Most founders wait until they’re older and more experienced. Liam Millward and William Gao didn’t have time for that.

What Aussie Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Two Young Co-Founders

Believe it or not, Liam was 17 and William was 19 when they founded Instant in April 2021. They’d been running their own e-commerce store during COVID and kept losing sales when customers abandoned their carts at checkout. They built a one-click checkout solution first, then pivoted to an all-in-one retention marketing platform when they saw a bigger opportunity.

They raised $2.2 million in 2022, which broke Australia’s pre-seed record. Then $18 million in March 2025, hitting a $100 million valuation. The company went from zero to $1 million in annual revenue in six months, and its clients include Toys R Us, July Luggage, and Peppermayo.

Also, their investor, Blackbird, noted that Liam and William showed maturity that would be impressive for founders twice their age.

The Real Secret These Five Know (That Most Don’t)

You don’t need the perfect background, unlimited funding, or years of experience. What you do need: a problem worth solving, customers willing to pay, and the guts to adjust when your first attempt doesn’t work.

So, just pick one idea this week. Talk to five potential customers and ask what frustrates them. Then build the simplest version of a solution and see if they’ll pay. That’s how these five started.