Emerging businesses offer chance to shine

From the outside, the start-up world appears littered with success stories about best mates who built a business from their spare room, scaled up and then cashed out, leaving the newly minted founders ready to do it all again.

But what is less discussed, even as start-ups become a virtual dime a dozen, is that you don’t need to be a founder to build a career in them.

According to Steven Maarbani, an executive director at equity crowdfunding platform VentureCrowd, there’s a shift towards talented people stepping away from roles in the big corporate players to seek out the ‘‘dynamic’’ careers on offer in start-ups.

‘‘In the real estate technology space we’re seeing the beginning of a mass exodus of executives leaving the traditional firms to join start-up teams trying to fix legacy problems the industry has endured for years. I am also seeing this more and more with lawyers and accountants,’’ Maarbani says.

The attraction? Partly, it is the utopia of starting with a clean slate. Read more

Sue White - Brisbane Times - 17 Aug 2018