UnicornShift.net
Entrepreneurial Journey told by one student
Story written by Harry Tate
If everyone’s an entrepreneur, who’s going to do all the other stuff haha!”
“My name is Jacob and I live in Campbeltown, 1 hour south of Sydney CBD. Growing up in Campbeltown, definitely had an impact on my ambitions to start my own company (Unicorn Shift). Growing up in Campbeltown, there was a lot of unemployment and a lot of impoverished areas with people who are struggling to get by. One of the ways out was to become a traffic controller. A two-day TAFE course could be done and then people could be employed as official and certified traffic control officers. People who were unemployed 2 days ago, could now earn two thousand dollars a week. This created a great opportunity for the local community. I identified this and saw that there was a resource allocation problem. There was also the issue that people who were working as traffic controllers were constantly on call and had a very limited social life. Generally, the nature of the construction industry meant that controllers were constantly on demand and on call. I created my business around that gap in the market. With Unicorn Shift, employees could now register and pick when they wanted to work. Giving the freedom the worker was important, and creating an easy platform for individuals to get work is rewarding and has turned into a successful business.”
“I don’t see the point of teaching entrepreneurship; I feel like entrepreneurs are often products of their environments. My co-founder was always the grinder, he had the lemonade stand as a kid and was always running the different schemes in school. I guess I have always tried to start new businesses, there’s great achievement in that”
“Being an entrepreneur is like bring a DJ, people discredit them. I want to establish myself as a real CEO. Someone who started a business or system, which created value and sustained it. I always want to be there in the end and be with the company. We are experiencing some growth now, and I want to expand from the human resources market into the construction and consulting industry as a whole. Our aim at unicorn shift is to be a one stop shop for traffic management control.”