BCBusiness

24 B C B U S I N E S S . C A A P R I L 2 0 24 UNDER UNDER for one million birthdays in 2024. The team has five full-time employees and has currently launched products in four London Drugs stores (soon they'll be available in 40 LD locations). One Up Party is also conducting a helium tank pilot program with the goal of eventually providing balloon fill-up service at kiosks within major retailers. –A.H. TEVON GILL and BRYDON MARCH Ages: 28 and 27 Co-founders and manag- ing partners, MAG Security Systems and MAG Solar L I F E S T O R Y : When Tevon Gill and Brydon March were kids in Abbotsford, they dreamed up their first business venture together: a car dealership called MAG ("March and Gill"). They had the entrepreneurial itch from an early age, but after graduat- ing from the University of the Fraser Valley in business administration, they went their own ways. March served in sales, marketing and managerial roles at Telus, Shaw and ADT Security Services, while Gill led sales teams at Langley car dealership Preston GM and Edmonton marketing agency Exclusive Private Sale. Fast-forward to 2021, and boom: they're business partners. "I came up to Brydon, like, 'Hey, you know the security game, I know how to train and recruit... let's do this,'" Gill recalls. They launched MAG Smart Security in Mission to provide home protection and monitoring services across Canada and the U.S., including the installation of cameras and alarm systems. With the help of their friend and VP of sales Manpreet Chhina, the business grew quickly, eventually becoming a Telus-authorized dealer. In 2022, with over 250 five-star Google reviews, MAG Security was named New Business of the Year by the Abbotsford Chamber of Commerce. Smart energy seemed like the natural next step, says March: " ADT, Vivint, all of them started with secu- rity and solar was the next thing for them." In 2023, after noticing some of their own salespeople shifting to solar, March and Gill launched a sister company, MAG Solar, to help homes run on sustainable energy. B O T T O M L I N E : In 2022, MAG Se- curity generated almost $3 million in sales. ("[Last year], I think we were at around $4 million," adds March.) Funds from that company were used to set up Mission-based MAG Solar, which has an in-house team to support end-to-end solar panel installations and maintenance. "We do still have a strong pas- sion for vehicles," March notes, "and one day, that's what we're going to be doing with the capital we're getting from MAG Security and MAG Solar." –R.R. DANIEL AZAD Age: 29 CEO, Premier Cloud Inc. L I F E S T O R Y : Daniel Azad started working for his parents' company when he was 15 years old. Back then, it was essentially a call centre in Victoria. Premier Cloud eventually became a Google partner, helping customers use those products. "I was making minimum wage, maybe even under it, I don't know," he says. "I was in technical support for years, then I moved to sales, which I hated. I thought about school; I wasn't sure I wanted to be at the company." Even- tually, Azad started getting some traction, selling a few contracts here and there. In 2017, at his behest, the company did a pivot and started focusing on selling Google products. "I sold millions, because I was selling something I believed in," he says. Azad is in his third year of running Premier Cloud—the core of which is helping businesses use Google tools such as Google Workspace. The company is now looking to move into the Google Cloud space. "The Google Cloud platform has 100-plus products. Maybe a few [companies] are excel- lent at more than 50, but nobody is an expert in all of them," he says. "We're going into it with the attitude that we're not experts on everything, but we want to be experts on a few. We're going to focus on infrastructure migrations, data engineering, data visualization—things like that." B O T T O M L I N E : Premier Cloud has around 20 employees and is on track to hit $23 million in revenue this year. Azad just came back from Austin, Texas, where he's planning to expand Premier Cloud to an office space a few blocks from a new Google tower. "[Google] is going hard on Austin... they want to bring people in from all over." –N.C. JEANNE CHEN Age: 29 Founder, Ripple Market- ing, and partner, The Global Xchange (TGX) L I F E S T O R Y : Jeanne Chen moved to Canada from China when she was six years old, but she has always remained deeply connected to her homeland—and like many im- migrants and children of immigrants, that connection is felt strongest around the dining table. "Food brings people together. It fosters a sort of interpersonal harmony and this de- sire to understand each other," says Chen. The Vancouverite started her career as a food blogger with a focus on Chinese cuisine, and soon local restaurants were reaching out to her to ask for help with their marketing... especially when the COVID pandemic began. "There was a lot of negative press about the Chinese restaurant community, and I wanted to fight back," Chen says. Her work at digital marketing agency Ripple and at executive ser- vice and cultural consulting company TGX aims to bridge a gap between clients and customers. Through translation services, market research, optimizing social media accounts, partnering with local influencers and giving advice for HR training, she helps Chinese-speaking restaurateurs connect with the English-speaking community. B O T T O M L I N E : Chen's restaurant success stories include Richmond's Grill Party (the late-night BBQ joint's social media saw a 55-percent increase in followers after Ripple took over) and Burnaby's Top Wok Dim Sum Express (sales revenue for the all-day dim sum spot octupled). She takes on non-restaurant clients, too—a renewed email marketing approach resulted in a 5x increase in newsletter clicks for Crazy8s Film Society, and Red Chamber's Emergence Music Mentorship event hosted 200 in-person and 15,000 online attendees thanks to a fresh digital strategy. –A.H. MATTHEW HUSSEY Age: 28 Founder and lead strategist, Generosity X L I F E S T O R Y : Matthew Hussey used to believe that all entrepre- neurs were cutthroat. And although

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