Photo credit; Epic Fireworks
Although just 22 years old, Genevieve George can count herself as the CEO and founder of a successful online start-up.
George runs OneShift, an online jobs platform which matches employees with employers.
“I know it’s not that common for a 22 year-old female to run an online business but I had an idea and I had a strong feeling that this idea would work out,” George said.
And it’s even more uncommon than George lets on. A report conducted by the government’s Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research revealed 68.5% of small business operators were male and 31.5% were female. It also found that the lion’s share of business owners are aged 25 to 54 years old (28.2%). In 2007, business operators aged 20-24 years represented just 2.5% of all owners.
“Obviously one of the difficult challenges for a younger business owner is finding the funding to back your idea and to prove that your idea can really work. OneShift started off as a free WordPress site and was embraced predominately by restaurant, bar and caf?? owners in Sydney,” George said.
OneShift now has 217,000 users in a wide variety of businesses all around Australia.
OneShift is doing so well, it has been awarded the 2013 Winner of the Australian Business Award for three different categories:
- Innovation
- Enterprise
- E-Business.
George was the 2013 Winner of the Anthill 30Under30, which recognises entrepreneurs under the age of 30 for their outstanding entrepreneurial endeavours. She was also a finalist for Australia’s Small Business Awards.
“I do think that many young, business-savvy individuals lack the support and assistance to launch their ideas into the real world of business but it’s not impossible,” George said. “You do need a strong idea and you need to be able to let this idea go wild – change it, shape it, develop it. Finally you need a lot of motivation and persistence.”
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