Video review site becomes $575m business creator Brandon Evertz is taking to US

Brandon Evertz started BigUnlimited when he was just 19 years old with a loan of $500 from his father.

The pair listed BigUnlimited on the Australian Securities Exchange and now Evertz is taking on the United States with BigUnlimited's purchase on Thursday of consumer app and platform Tipsly for $4.2 million.

The future is video

Evertz struggled with dyslexia throughout school and relied on video tutorials to keep up to date with the other kids which he says helped him realise the significance of video.

"I feel like the future of the internet is going to be video-driven and the reason I thought that was myself and my friends didn't like to read as much as we used to," he says.

Evertz had been estranged from his father, Richard Evertz, but the pair reunited and instead of going to university Evertz went travelling around Australia in a campervan with him "coming up with business ideas".

"I was reading a review on a text review site and I thought there has to be a site people can go to and see professional videos of businesses," Evertz says. "That set us on a journey. It took a good six months to nail the right idea."

Evertz saw a gap in the market for a social media platform for video-based reviews given so many review sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor rely primarily on written reviews.

"There was nothing that resembled that business model at all on the market," he says. Read more