With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/950283
28 BCBusiness ApRIL 2018 The 30 Under 30 may celebrate young entrepreneurs, but it keeps getting better with age. This year, our winners—including one double act with the same company—represent B.C. from Vancouver to Prince Rupert to Port Alberni. Some hold graduate degrees, while others are college dropouts. Some have global ambitions; others tend to their own backyard. As in previous years, many of these unstoppable women and men have built successful enterprises with a social pur- pose, whether it's helping the less fortunate, protecting the environ- ment or taking other steps to do business more responsibly. Then there are the stories of how they got here—often from other countries and in unexpected ways. After going the distance, the new- est 30 Under 30 cohort still have so much ahead of them. lIfE SToRY: James Clift is in the business of helping people find employ- ment and build careers, yet the White Rock native and UBC grad has never worked full-time for someone else and proudly keeps his startups' employee count below an all-time high of four. VisualCV helps job seekers build eye- catching resumés and portfolios. It's the flagship product of Vancouver parent company WorkStory, which also makes a tool to help people track and share their career accomplishments. Clift's own career path is a series of entrepreneurial ventures beginning in high school, with varying degrees of success. he imported and flipped cars; ran a window-cleaning franchise, then started his own business in the same field; and created websites for companies ranging from law firms to dog daycares. After graduating from the Sauder School of Business with a BComm in accounting in 2011, he tried and failed to build several software startups before founding WorkStory with Jade Bourelle, Ken miller and Thomas Zhou in 2014, the same year the company acquired VisualCV from a group of investors. THE boTToM lINE: WorkStory has grown to an annual run rate of more than more than $2.4 million as of October 2017. VisualCV's user base has expanded from 200,000 in 2014 to some 2.4 million members worldwide. –D.H. lIfE SToRY: husein Rahemtulla and Dhruv Sood have been friends since they met in grade 6 at Buckingham Elementary School in Burnaby. While Rahemtulla had lived in the area all his life, Sood's family had just moved there from Bangalore, India, where his father was a scientist working on flight dynamics for the Indian Space Research Organiza- tion and his mother was a translator. After the two graduated from Burnaby Central high School in 2008, they both went to mcgill University to study business. Living in residence and yearning for a home-cooked meal, they made red Thai curry but had to buy too much of some ingre- dients and forgo others—which would provide the germ of a business idea down the road. In 2010, they transferred to UBC, where Rahemtulla obtained a BA in philosophy in 2012 and Sood a BComm with a double concentration in finance and logistics in 2013. Right after graduation, Rahemtulla, who had been playing poker professionally since 2011, took over the management of his family's hotels on Vancouver Island while his father was being treated for cancer, which reignited his interest in business. In spring 2014 he met Sood, who was working as a research assistant for financial planning firm Raymond James Ltd. in Vancouver, for sushi. Bouncing around ideas, they remembered the Thai curry and discussed creating a company that would provide the exact ingredients needed to make a single meal. The following January, they launched Fresh prep. THE boTToM lINE: Starting small with just Rahemtulla, Sood and their childhood friend Becky Switzer (now Brauer), by February the East Vancouver–based company had grown to 102 em- ployees and 35 contract workers serving more than 7,000 customers from Squamish to Abbotsford, with plans to expand across Canada. Revenue was $3 million in 2017 and is projected to hit $12 million this year. To reduce packaging waste, Fresh prep delivers meals in reusable cooler bags that it retrieves when delivering the next order. –F.S. D h R u v s o o D + h u s e I n R A h e m t u L L A Co-founders and co-owners Fresh PreP FooDs inc. ages: 28 + 27 J A m e s C L I f t Co-founder and CEO workstory inc. CEO VisualcV inc. age: 29