9. King Kong

Revenue: $7.5 million
Growth: 314.5%
Founder: Sabri Suby (32)
Head office: Victoria
Employees: 40
Industry: Marketing and communications
Website: kingkong.com.au

Much like its namesake, 32-year-old founder Sabri Suby’s digital marketing agency King Kong is big, hairy and audacious.

The business’ 314% growth and $7.5 million in revenue after just four years in operation is driven by its serial entrepreneur and prodigal marketing wunderkind founder — and is a testament to his goal to deliver marketing services unlike any other in Australia.

Suby discovered his love for sales and marketing when he was just a teenager, and spent several years honing his craft in London and cementing his spot as the top salesperson at each company he worked at.

However, during those times he found he was being quoted “outlandishly high” prices for marketing services, such as tens of thousands of dollars for a banner advertisement. Naturally, the founder thought he could do it better, and started King Kong out of his bedroom in 2014.

“I soon realised no digital agency in Australia would talk about what the return on investment would be for a business. With a service that is so measurable I couldn’t understand why agencies were hiding behind vanity metrics like impressions and click-through rates,” Suby says.

“I decided it was time to shake the trees and weed out the digital cowboys by starting the first full-service digital agency in Australia that focused on return on investment (ROI) and guaranteed results.”

Though starting small, King Kong’s growth soon became immense, with the founder making upwards of 180 phone calls a day to try and stay on top of things while still signing new clients. However, that period of craziness taught the founder how to become efficient and organised with his time, and recognise when to grow his team in order to grow the business.

Looking to the future, Suby wants King Kong to achieve world domination, just like the original King Kong very nearly did. Outside of that, King Kong wants to be the leading agency for medium to large businesses seeking to scale, both in Australia and internationally.

“Having made our mark in the Australian market, we now plan on both continuing our local domination and expanding further afield,” he says.