Nathan Murphy – StartupSmart

Name: Nathan Murphy

Business name: Audio High School

Age: 20

State: NSW

 

Nathan Murphy may simply call his journey to business ownership as a “paradigm shift”, but Audio High School represents nothing short of a remarkable turnaround in his fortunes.

 

Until relatively recently, Murphy was living rough on the streets of Darwin, following a family falling-out.

 

Even during this dark time, however, he harboured ambitions to start a business. After being given what he calls a “kick up the bum” by the Salvation Army, which helped Murphy to a fresh start, he went about making this dream a reality.

 

Murphy’s business, Audio High School, provides digital audio versions of educational texts, reducing the need for tech-savvy high school students to carry around lots of books.

 

Using services such as Freelancer.com, Murphy bootstrapped his business and set about forging relationships with publishers.

 

He now hopes to get the service into as many schools as possible, having taken on technical help and winning a contract with Vision Australia to supply the service to vision-impaired students.

 

Murphy says that he is particularly inspired by the story of Virgin Group founder Richard Branson.

 

“He was dyslexic, he was poor, he went to jail, he was in five figures of debt, but then one day he looked at his life and completely turned it around, now he’s worth over $3 billion, he owns over 300 companies in the Virgin Group, and he’s making the world a better place every day,” he says.