Top 100 Innovators of 2024: the innovators under 40 changing the game
An energy network in the sky, CCTV cameras that get to know you, changing building structures one timber at a time are just some of the clever ways these entrepreneurs are changing the world.
William Jeremijenko has a pretty novel idea. Along with co-founder Nelson Smith and chief operating officer Ruby Jones, the 23-year-old entrepreneur is building an optical energy network that can deliver power from transmitters to aircraft in the sky.
It does so using an infrared energy beam that’s invisible to the human eye but about a hundred times brighter than the sun.
Crazy? Maybe. Plausible? Venture capitalist Blackbird thinks so, throwing $3m behind the start-up, Aquila, last year to help grow its team and scale its energy network. They’ve already proven the concept works, putting up a drone over an Auckland farm and powering it with energy transmitted from 376m away.
This is an article from The List: Innovators 2024, which is announced in full on October 18.
Now Aquila wants to triple the range and prove the idea for a product called Lightway Sentry, which will be able to travel across one square kilometre of space, powered by transmitters.
“If you’re looking at drones which are pretty small, within the two to four kilogram range, it’s pretty easy to deploy and operate them within a visual line of sight up to about 400m,” CEO Jeremijenko says.
It’s all part of Aquila’s vision for a world in which energy networks are accessible almost everywhere.
“Ultimately, that’s the vision and the mission of Aquila, to create this infinite scalable energy network,” Jeremijenko says. “So it’ll make energy feel a lot like the internet – wherever you are in the world, energy is accessible.”
Aquila is currently flying drones made by Bask Aerospace, a manufacturer and retailer of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) based in Melbourne’s south-east.
“We integrate their drones with our wireless power charging so they can fly. It’s all kind of Australian technology that we’re currently working with, which is kind of cool,” says Jeremijenko, who graduated from the University of Queensland with a degree in mathematics in 2021.
With assistance from Jones, a former project engineer for wind and solar technology specialist Windlab, his vision for drones powered by an optical energy network is one where the vehicles can continue to fly as long as there is energy at the source of the transmitter.
“And the good thing about our technology is it’s just a beam of light, so you don’t really lose very much at all over distance,” Jeremijenko says.
While the start-up has already proven its technology works at distances under 400m, the long-term vision is for networks many kilometres long, with multiple transmitters powering aircraft as they travel. “If you can deliver power over, let’s say, tens of kilometres to drones, they can fly forever. They can then begin to replace earth observation satellites,” he says.
Aquila wants to target national security services with their drones that are used to monitor borders and critical infrastructure, and to support organisations such as surf lifesaving clubs.
SOME TOUGH TIMBER
Adam Jones was a structural engineering undergraduate at Monash University when he became fascinated with CLT, a construction product touted as a sustainable alternative to steel and concrete in buildings around the world. “I was the first student there to investigate it as part of my final-year project,” he says.
Cross laminated timber (CLT) is categorised as a mass timber, a product type that’s already proving attractive for use in mid- to high-rise buildings, as nations such as Australia position themselves to transition to a decarbonised economy.
It is regarded as stronger, more fire-resistant and durable than traditional structural timbers, and unlike concrete and steel, mass timber is a renewable resource and contains lower levels of embodied carbon.
‘We pay a lot higher than their local wages, and we give employees stock options so they have ownership of the business.’
Along with traditional products, mass timber is being deployed in place of concrete panels in the new Atlassian headquarters being built in Sydney, while glue laminated timber (GLT) is used for beams and columns.
A couple of years ago, Jones was working for a mass timber supplier and realised designers and structural engineers were struggling to integrate the new materials into their projects. Typically, programs designed around traditional building materials were incompatible with mass timber, forcing engineers to build their own manual spreadsheets. Suppliers, too, needed new software to assist them. It prompted the then 34-year-old to launch CLT Toolbox.
The Melbourne-based company has since raised $2.5m from venture capitalists, and now services 15 CLT suppliers with its software, which is used by about 1500 individual designers and engineers. Jones believes the software is unique, and will launch CLT Toolbox in Europe in October, with plans to expand into the US and Canada by the end of the year.
While Jones and two other executives are based in Melbourne, the remainder of the company’s employees work remotely: 17 software developers are in Java, 17 structural engineers are in Addis Ababa, and one employee lives in Serbia.
“We pay a lot higher than their local wages, and we give employees stock options so they have ownership of the business,” Jones says.
Aside from cost, another key factor in the company’s employment strategy is a chronic lack of talent in the Australian job market, contrasted by huge pools of committed, skilled developers and engineers in countries such as Indonesia and Ethiopia.
“There are better engineers there, to be honest,” he notes. “In Ethiopia we get a hundred applicants for every person we hire. Here, there’s a lack of a competitive landscape.”
After launching the company, Jones was joined by three other co-founders: chief commercial officer Ringo Thomas in Melbourne, head of engineering Lelissie Bedada in Ethiopia, and chief technical officer Ikhsan Agustian in Indonesia.
Jones says his company aims to solve all technical problems associated with the use of mass timber, and grow competencies among its employees, as well as architects and builders, to solve challenges in areas such as fire engineering, acoustics and costing. The chief investors in CLT Toolbox are Archangel Ventures, Giant Leap, Flying Fox, BlueScopeX, Gravel Road Ventures and Ecotone Ventures.
“Essentially we’re aiming to offer an automated software solution for the designers and suppliers,” he says. “It’s an amazing hardware solution for the problem of lowering emissions, and we are trying to offer a pathway for them to be used more in construction.”
STYLED FOR YOU
Danielle Johansen has faced some challenges building her e-commerce styling business, Threadicated, but she reckons she’s on the right track with her offer of a personalised digital service. “E-commerce can be an amazing channel to sell on,” says the CEO.
“However, I think we need to start being smarter about it, because the customer isn’t going to put up with being treated like a number any more.”
She claims that while Threadicated uses AI to help select clothes for customers, the “humans in the loop” offer a service that takes “that old in-store, personal styling experience that we know and brings it up to the modern day by doing it digitally”.
Johansen, 39, has spent about 20 years in the fashion business. She started Threadicated in 2019 as a side hustle, but has been full-time for the past three years.
‘Everyone who fills in their profile can shop a store that is personalised to their specific style, lifestyle, shape and budget.’
She employs a dozen people and has a fulfilment centre in western Sydney as well as shared CBD office space. She says 50,000 customers have used the service since it began.
“Each season we’re styling thousands of customers,” Johansen says. “We find people will come back after a year or two of being dormant, so maybe they’re going through a new life change or they’re just after a fresh look.
“We have an online style profile, and customers share with us information that helps us understand their style, lifestyle and fit. From there, we use artificial intelligence to basically weed out everything that’s not a match for them, and a human stylist will engage with them during this process to see if there’s anything further and grow that connection with them.”
Johansen says a flat retail economy has forced her company to develop other growth strategies, including corporate partnerships that “help their team understand the power of style and dressing in a way that gives people confidence to move up in their careers and close deals”.
The minimum price point for pieces is about $120, and an average customer spends about $1000 for five pieces. Clients range from 18 to 75 years old, but the key market is 35- to 55-year-old women and men.
Many e-commerce operations, she says, are struggling to get audiences who ultimately want connection and engagement. “We want to feel like we’re part of something,” she says.
“E-commerce has an opportunity to be bigger and better, but only if it doesn’t stay in this really old-fashioned way of doing things, treating everyone the same, so everyone sees the exact same products and has the exact same experience.”
As well as the digital styling service, Threadicated uses AI to offer a “personalised store” to customers:
“Everyone who fills in their profile can shop a store that is personalised to their specific style, lifestyle, shape and budget. That means you’re not trawling through thousands and thousands of products that aren’t relevant to you. You’re only focusing on the pieces that are right for you and choosing from them.”
CAUGHT ON CAMERA
Keaton Okkonen is still surprised Australian companies are only just picking up on his business product – software that can tell them more about their customers than the CCTV systems on which Black.ai is based.
The Melbourne-based company has won contracts with big retailers, including Walmart in the US, Mexico and Chile, but the local market has been harder to crack for Okkonen and co-founders, siblings Phoebe and Sebastien Collier. Launched eight years ago, Black.ai now employs 20 people and is valued at about $25m.
The software, developed over six years of research and development, uses video captured by retailers, for example, to create a shorthand picture of customer movements.
It’s partly about combatting shoplifting and partly about tracking people around the store to see how they shop. Says 30-year-old Okkonen: “We plug the gap between having to have a human watching what’s happening on the cameras and keeping note of everything or having no information at all. We generate insights for them.” Black.ai uses AI and machine learning to summarise activity caught by cameras. Okkonen, who is a software engineer, resists the term “surveillance”, arguing the firm’s work should be categorised as “computer vision”.
“I’d say about half of our use cases are focused on shoplifting,” he says. “You know, the person enters, goes straight to the cosmetics section, fills up a duffel bag and walks straight out, which happens more often than you might expect. The other side of it is about customer experience and store operations. A person’s entered, gone up and down six aisles looking for something they can’t find, and then walks out.”
Care is taken, he says, to ensure there are no privacy issues. The software blurs faces, for example. Okkonen says Walmart estimates the product delivers a 10-fold improvement in catching shoplifters and says that while retailers work on a 2 per cent recovery rate of stolen goods, Black.ai delivers 20 per cent.
The firm is focused on retailers for now, but Okkonen sees the product being used by companies to detect safety issues and also for tracking people in care environments. He says he has always had “a massive interest in automation and programming, robotics, that sort of thing”.
“One thing I found really interesting is trying to operate robotic systems or automation in large, complex spaces,” Okkonen says. “In areas where there are lots of people, that’s really hard, largely because people are unpredictable and can do a whole bunch of things that can just mess things up. What we’re doing now is trying to understand what people are doing, what is the state of the space, and how [users] respond to changes.”
CHEMISTRY
Meet the entrepreneurs trying to solve the world’s dependence on China for graphite. Christiaan Jordaan and materials scientist Dr Drew Minett are the co-founders of Sicona Battery Technologies, a Wollongong-based start-up with a goal to redefine the chemistry in batteries to allow the use of silicon.
Graphite makes up about 95 per cent of anode materials used in lithium-ion batteries and the major issue, Jordaan says, is that the world remains overly dependent on one country to source it.
“Today, between 95 to 99 per cent of graphite is produced in China,” he says. “They completely control that part of the supply chain and it’s an indispensable part of a lithium-ion battery. But you can sort of move away from that by using silicon-based materials, and that’s where Sicona comes in.”
If your mind was wandering into a hardware store and to the aisle with clear silicon used to seal tiles and outdoor electrical products, that’s not quite the right idea. Sicona uses silicon metal – in a solid form.
“We combine that with a source of carbon to create the final product as a composite of both,” Jordaan says, adding that Sicona sources carbon from petroleum, refining and steel industries.
While silicon cannot completely replace graphite, it can partially do so, and it can often change the chemistry of the battery for better. When not done correctly, however, it can end the life of a battery early, so it’s a tricky market to play in, Jordaan says.
“Our technology not only gives you an opportunity to increase the performance and the energy density and the charge rate of the battery, but it also gives you the opportunity to get away from China,” he says.
Using less graphite has other advantages, too. “While graphite is limited by how much you can store, silicon changes that paradigm,” Jordaan says. “The fundamental thing here is that it requires more engineering, the more you increase the silicon.”
The tech founders know they have entered a market at the later stages and need to play catch-up, but are confident the business has an edge over competitors.
“There are a lot of companies in the US, in particular, that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars to scale up their technology platforms to produce effectively the same products, which are silicon and carbon in a composite,” Jordaan says. “But they use a gas called silane gas, so their product is silicon plus hydrogen in a gas form, and it’s very, very volatile.”
That product, known as pyrophoric, has the potential to be incredibly dangerous. “It doesn’t need a flame, it doesn’t need an ignition source, it will literally just burn on its own,” he says.
“Sicona is coming in a little bit later in the game by offering the same quality product, but at a price that is five to six times lower per kilogram of production costs.” And safer, he adds.
Jordaan is originally from South Africa and moved to Australia in 2016. When he first arrived, he worked with ASX-listed New Energy Minerals, and that led him to China and Mozambique in East Africa to develop a graphite deposit.
In 2019, he was searching for new opportunities and found a group at the University of Wollongong who were looking to commercialise a silicon-based battery material.
BACK OFFICE GIG
The three co-founders of an online platform that is disrupting the legacy music business happily admit they are good on vision and sales but not so great on tech. That didn’t stop Jeremiah Siemianow, Brandon Crimmins and Alan Jin, who between them had studied commerce, science, arts and marketing at university, when they launched Surreal in 2019. They looked around the world and hired some of the best and brightest tech heads – from MYOB, Facebook and Etsy – to set up programs they argue are reimagining the legacy music and entertainment sectors.
With investment of $6.5m so far, Surreal, based in Melbourne, has just seven employees and is on the verge of being profitable. The platform began as a marketplace for entertainers looking for gigs, but has morphed into a business providing infrastructure and back-office services for venues, entertainers and agencies.
It now services about 1000 venues, 15,000 entertainers and 150 agents, mostly in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, but with increased penetration in Europe, Asia and North America.
Says Siemianow: “When we entered the industry, we wanted to create a product for the entire industry, but the feedback we got was that artists just wanted to be able to find more gig opportunities.
Venues were struggling, in some cases, to find new acts, so we thought the best thing we could do was to just build a marketplace.”
They quickly realised the big opportunity was in servicing venues that needed a better way to manage their logistics, things like communications, scheduling, bookings and payments. So the trio built a site to “handle every single thing that the business is doing from an entertainment standpoint”.
In short, it’s a new ecosystem with a level of infrastructure not previously seen in the sector.
And the ideas just keep on coming.
One of the more recent innovations is a product that allows entertainers and other venue workers to be paid on the night rather than waiting for their cash.
The Fast Track payments tool was released just a few months ago but has already proved popular, with about 24 per cent of workers taking up the service each week.
“When you compare that to most fintech products around the world, it’s well ahead of market uptake rates,” Siemianow says.
“We weren’t a fintech company, but now people are considering us as being in the fintech space. We’ve been able to create a brand new product that doesn’t exist around the world in the live entertainment space.”
Before they launched Surreal, Crimmins had managed venues, Jin saw himself as a “recovering musician” who had tried to break through in the industry, and Siemianow had worked in hospitality.
Now, they are united in an ambitious vision to change a live entertainment industry that has lagged in adopting and developing digitised operational systems. “The vision for us is that every piece of live entertainment around the world will be booked on our platform,” Siemianow says.
