31. Klyp

Revenue: Over $2.7 million
Growth: 74.85%
Founders: Chris Byrnes, 31, and David Perkins, 30
Head Office: Brisbane
Year Founded: 2005
Employees: 27
Industry: Internet
Website: klyp.co

Klyp founders Chris Byrnes and David Perkins met at university in 2002, when they were encouraged by their professors to commercialise a CD-ROM project they’d been working on.

While they never took that idea any further, after graduating they did start working together on a number of e-learning and learning management system projects on the side of their full time jobs.

“We had big dreams,” says Perkins.

“As time went on, we started to get enough work to stand the business up.”

The part-time gig soon turned into their own Brisbane-based digital agency, which set in motion three distinct strategic departments: development, design and marketing.

These days, Klyp has offices in Melbourne and Sydney, as well as their Brisbane headquarters, and Byrnes and Perkins are even looking at strategic partnerships in London.

The company offers what it calls ‘a full spectrum digital solution’ for businesses, from websites to apps, SEO to social media.

Perkins says due to the company’s strong growth, he and Byrnes found they had reached a crossroad last year when they realised the business had gotten bigger than the two of them.

“It’s impossible for us to be involved at every single touch point of the business now, so we had to find the right people, people we trust.”

What resulted was a full external and internal rebrand of the company, which saw the pair put a huge amount of time and money into creating a great workplace culture and reviewing all of their internal processes.

“It’s bigger than us now, it’s the guys that drive it,” says Perkins.

Byrnes and Perkins say they have made a decision to hire people “smarter” than them, surrounding themselves with sharp minds and specialty knowledge.

Fostering a sense of brand ownership in their staff, every Thursday the Klyp team holds a ‘family lunch’ where they discuss new ideas and show off any impressive work.

Perkins says one of the biggest learning curves for the business happened early on, in 2005, when one of the company’s biggest clients took its work offshore, disappearing and becoming uncontactable.

The company was down to its last $2 and had to let several staff go.

But employing a business coach and some strict accounting processes, Byrnes and Perkins fought back over the coming four years.

“When we had to tighten belts it was certainly scary,” says Perkins.

“But we worked our asses off and slowly got out of it.”

Looking to the future, Klyp is aiming to solidify its Australian presence in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, as well as looking at overseas penetration, and has a goal to push revenue numbers toward $5 million annually.