Bridget Loudon & Emily Yue Named In SmartCompany's Hot 30 Under 30

Bridget Loudon and Emily Yue, Expert360's co-founders, have been named at number 15 in Smartcompany's Hot 30 Under 30 list for 2017. Each year SmartCompany publishes a list of 30 talented and successful young entrepreneurs, who are leading fast-growing companies. The class of 2017 includes companies with at least one founder who was 30 years of age or younger on March 10, 2017. Bridget Loudon, Exper360's CEO, turned 29 this year allowing the pair to qualify for the list. Emily and Bridget have already been named in a number of coveted lists and have been nominated for numerous awards for their work with Expert360, including being twice named in Startup Daily's 'Top 50 Women In Tech' and making the finals of the 2016 New Generation Award. Loudon has won a number of individual awards for her role at Expert360, including the Australian Emerging Entrepreneur Award.  "At Expert360, innovation is really the lifeblood of everything we do,” said Loudon. “Every piece of software that we build, every connection between a company and a consultant, that’s happening because we are there.” “Everything we’re doing, we’re doing it for the first time,” said Loudon. "While being named in SmartCompany's 30 Under 30 list is an incredible honour, the job is not even close to being done. It's now more important than ever that we knuckle down and build a unicorn startup."  

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From Smartcompany: The vision hasn’t really changed for the co-founders of digital consultancy platform Expert360 since they founded the business in mid-2013, but given the speed of the growth, the day-to-day of the business is different. “Every year we have tripled in size — this year, we want to triple again,” co-founder Bridget Loudon says. The business was on track to turn over more than $1 million in revenue in 2014, and to date, has secured more than $5 million in funding. Along with that explosive growth has come lessons, both personal and professional, about how to surround yourself with the best people to get big jobs done. “I think I didn’t quite realise how critical it was to not settle for who you believe us the best person,” Loudon says. The Expert360 platform lets time-poor businesses make connections with freelancers and consultants to find the right person for the job, and Loudon says she’s come to appreciate you have to understand who people are before you can know how they will act at work. “Working in a startup environment is about tackling things that you’ve never come across before, so it’s ‘how do we work together to get there?’ I spend a lot of time focused on who people are and why they made the decisions that they did. I think it tells you a lot more about how they will perform,” she says. With just under 20% of the company’s revenue coming from overseas, the business does have eyes abroad, but the management team are also looking at securing more of the Australian market. “We’re still very much focused on the Australian market. In Australia, there’s about $8 billion worth of project work that’s come through projects and word-of-mouth, we’re focused on dominating that market,” she says, adding that the business will be laying the foundations for international expansion towards the end of the year."

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