Australia might not be on people's radar as a hotbed of entrepreneurial activity. In the past, the country has been accused of lacking innovation and encouraging a risk-averse mentality. Nonetheless, a handful of entrepreneurs from Australia have overcome those barriers.

The Land Down Under has produced some great minds, including Canva founders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, AfterPay creator Nick Molnar, and Atlassian's Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar. It's also where John Ilhan, Rupert Murdoch, and Katie Page—arguably the most well-known Australian entrepreneurs—are from.

John Ilhan

John Ilhan is best known as the founder of Crazy John's, which went on to become the largest independent phone retailer in Australia, and for once being named the richest Australian under 40.

Ilhan was born in Yozgat, Turkey, on Jan. 23, 1965, and later migrated with his family from T🍬urkey to Australia at the age of five. He grew up in Broadmeadows, a working-class section in the northwestern part of Melbourne, was said to be a big fan of sports, playing on the football, basketball, and soccer teams, an𓆉d rarely saw his parents because they were working so much.

His 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:entrepreneurial spirit started to emerge during his childhood. At one point, he started selling a newspaper on the street corner, then sold the business to a friend for a nice profit. Later, he went to university to study art but quit and ended up working on the same Ford production line as his parents.

Ilhan moved into sales at Ford, then landed a job selling cell phones. There, he unearthed a talent, topping sales records for three years. He was eventually prompted to open his own store across the road with just 700 Au💟stralian dollars and a loan from his parents in 1991. This was partly due to a dispute over pay.

The first few years were tough but Illhan's hard work eventually paid off. Through expansion, Ilhan’s one store, Crazy John’s, became a retail chain of 120 stores that eventually developed into Australia’s largest Telstra mobile dealership. By 2003, he was named the richest man in Australia under 40.

IIhan didn't get to see through his plans to expand overseas. In 2007, IIhan died of a heart attack at 42. He was estimated to be worth over AUD $300 million at the time of his death. He was also well known for his generosity and philanthropy.

Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch, born Keith Rupert Murdoch in March 1931, is one of the world’s most prolific business moguls. Rupert was born in Melbourne to Sir Keith Arthur and Elisabeth Murdoch. In 1952, at the age of 21, his father suddenly passed away, leading him to inherit Australia’s News Limited and become the 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:managing director of the media company.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Murdoch acquired a variety of newspapers based in Australia and New Zealand. In 1969, he expanded his reach into the United Kingdom, where he took control of News of the World and, later, The Sun. In 1981, he acquired The Times.

Rupert Murdoch began to truly fulfill his potential for generating tremendous financial gains when he started using his entrepreneurial talents in the United States. He expanded into the U.S. market in the 1970s, funded by his substantial interests in the United Kingdom and Australia, acquiring the distressed San Antonio Express-News in 1973 and creating Star magazine, a supermarket tabloid, in 1974. Two years later, he bought The New York Post.

In 1985, Murdoch made acquisitions that eventually changed the landscape of U.S. television news, first by purchasing a controlling interest in 20th Century Fox, and by subsequently buying half a dozen U.S. television stations. These moves📖 formed the foundation for the creation of the Fox Television Network and the Fox News Channel, which launched in 1996. Within five years, it became the number-one rated cable news network.

Murdoch’s global media 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:holding company, News Corporation, continued to grow with the 1987 acquisition of Harper & Row (later rebranded as HarperCollins), the founding of Sky television in Britain in 1988, and the 2007 acquisition of the Wall Street Journal.

In 2012, Murdoch split his newspaper and entertainment business into two separate entities: News Corp. and 20th Century Fox. Disney later acquired the majority of the latter, with the remaining broadcast business now known as Fox Corp.

As of Jan. 10, 2025, News Corp. (NWSA/NWS) 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:market capitalization of $15.94 billion while Fox Corp. (FOXA/FOX) has a market capitalization of $21.43 billion.

Katie Page

Katie Page is the 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:chief executive officer (CEO) of Harvey Norman, a large department store established by her husband, Gerry Harvey and Ian Norman, in 1982. There are more than 270 Harvey Norman stores spread across the globe from Ireland to Singapore.

Page was born in 1956 in Mareeba, a town in North Queensland, Australia. Her father encouraged her to read the business sections of the newspapers and she went to a school where women were told they could do anything.

After school, Page moved to Sydney and began working with Gerry Norman. Together, they turned a one-store operation into a 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:multinational retail chain generating billions of dollars in revenue. In 16 years, Page went from an assistant to CEO. She has been credited with overseeing Harvey Norman's massive expa♈nsion, including overseas, and keeping it relevant in the internet era.

Page’s company trades on the 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and is one of the component stocks of the ASX 200 Index. She was one of the first women to hold a top-level executive position at an ASX 200 company and is currently the 18th richest woman in Australia with a 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:net worth of AUD $1.6 billion.

The Bottom Line

Australia has produced many entrepreneurs over the years, some of the highest p🅺rofile of whom are Rupert Murdoch, Katie Page, and John Ilhan.💖 These three figures led the way for others to follow and each offers fascinating stories characterized by lots of ambition, great ideas, hard work, and determination.