BCBusiness

E O Y H o s p i t a l i t y + T o u r i s m W I N N E R T R E V O R S T Y A N [ GENERAL MANAGER, NORTHERN CIVIL ENERGY, I NC. ] 42 BCBusiness OCTOBER 2015 W orking for his uncle's excavation business from the age of 12 gave Trevor Styan, now 28, the skills for civil construction, but the family enterprise also taught him the values for leading a successful team. "You need to be a little more humble, a little more personable and understand what motivates people," he says. "And you have to work 120 per cent over everyone else, or you'll never have respect." Styan, who was also one of this year's BCBusiness Top 30 Under 30, took the leap to entrepreneurship in 2010 when he won a $1.3-million Yukon Ener«y contract to build the foundation for an electrical substation. "I'd never been shown how to do that sort of estimating, so I just racked my head and ¡gured it out," he says. By 2011, he had formed Northern Civil Ener«y ( NCE), a Nanaimo-based construc- tion and earth-moving company that doubled its revenue in its ¡rst two years. NCE has since completed 55 projects, with the average budget being $3.5 million (ranging up to their larg- est, a $10-million property redevelopment in Winnipeg for Manitoba Hydro). E m e r g i n g E n t r e p r e n e u r i n 2007, fresh Sauder grad Arnold Leung saw nothing but barriers to starting his own ¡nance business with little to no capital. The technolo«y world, however, was dier- ent, and Leung recognized the opportunity to leverage "brain power, as opposed to ¡nancial power." Leung launched Appnovation that same year, and today, the software enterprise has 143 employees in nine o"ces worldwide, and is using Drupal, Mulesoft and other open-source platforms to create web and mobile applications for clients such as Google, Cisco and Samsung. Revenue has doubled annually since 2009; this year, Leung expects it to reach $20 to $25 million. "When I saw a con- servative organization like the U.S. government choosing open-source technolo«y, I realized something was going to happen in that area," says Leung, 29. "And I wanted to be on top of it." —M.E. R U N N E R † U P A r n o l d L e u n g [ C E O , A P P N O VAT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S , I N C . ] T revor Dunn, 41, risked every penny he had to get the approvals for the Sea to Sky Highway's newest major tourist attrac- tion. "Being an entrepreneur is getting halfway through a train tunnel and not know- ing whether it's safer to turn back or keep running," he says. But the more the former Intrawest financial analyst and his partners, Michael Hutchinson and David Greenfield, examined the opportunity, the better it looked. In its first month, the Sea to Sky Gondola, located just south of Squamish in Stawamus Chief Provincial Park, broke a profit; in its first year, it beat its goal of 300,000 riders. This year, with more than 50 tour operators on board, Dunn expects to top that by 30 per cent. "Ten million people drive up the Sea to Sky Highway every year, and 70 per cent of them are looking for something to do. So there is huge potential for growth." –Melissa Edwards R U N N E R † U P t r e v o r d u n n [ M A N A G I N G PA R T N E R , S E A T O S K Y G O N D O L A ]

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