{"id":42184,"date":"2023-10-20T15:19:21","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/thankyou-groups-daniel-flynn-wins-emerging-entrepreneur-award-i-was-just-a-kid-who-got-an-idea-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:19:21","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:19:21","slug":"thankyou-groups-daniel-flynn-wins-emerging-entrepreneur-award-i-was-just-a-kid-who-got-an-idea-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/thankyou-groups-daniel-flynn-wins-emerging-entrepreneur-award-i-was-just-a-kid-who-got-an-idea-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Thankyou Group\u2019s Daniel Flynn wins emerging entrepreneur award: \u201cI was just a kid who got an idea\u201d – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Responding swiftly to the needs of your customers goes a long way, according to Thankyou Group founder Daniel Flynn.<\/p>\n

Flynn described what it felt like getting his first order for Thankyou\u2019s water bottles at the 2015 Ernst & Young Southern Region Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards ceremony in Melbourne on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

Flynn, last year\u2019s Young Victorian of the Year, took out the night\u2019s top gong, EY\u2019s Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year Award for his social enterprise, which helps fund projects in developing countries from the sales of water, hand products and food products in Australia.<\/p>\n

On accepting his award, Flynn told the audience the Thankyou\u2019s first water order was for 50,000 units.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe director of the company said how quickly can you get it to us, and we said three weeks,\u201d Flynn said.<\/p>\n

The response was delight at how quickly the order would be received, Flynn says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we said, yeah, we\u2019re pretty quick at Thankyou Water.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year is the 15th anniversary of the EY awards, which aims to celebrate entrepreneurial drive, creativity, innovation and to inspire the broader business community.<\/p>\n

The winners, as well as the social entrepreneur and listed award category recipients, will go on to represent the state at the national awards in October, where they will compete for the title of 2015 Australian EY Entrepreneur Of The Year.<\/p>\n

Flynn told SmartCompany<\/em> it is a “huge honour” to have come this far, while saying awards were a bonus rather than the goal and awards nights “a great chance to meet good people”.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t set out to do this to win awards, it\u2019s incredibly humbling,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

“There\u2019s so many inspiring people in the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cI probably never thought I\u2019d be in anything like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flynn says awards are another opportunity to share Thankyou\u2019s message.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just a kid who got an idea, got a great team and made it happen, and anyone can,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The night\u2019s other main winners included Moose Enterprise Holdings and Controlled Entity\u2019s Manny Stul, who won the award in the industry category, and Envato\u2019s Cyan and Collis Ta\u2019eed, who won the award in the services industry.<\/p>\n

Cyan told the audience the idea for Envato, which bills itself as an ecosystem of creative websites, came about one day when the pair was \u201cat the swimming pool\u201d thinking about the idea of business and travel.<\/p>\n

Collis says one of the online business\u2019s success stories was a novel one. One seller who created a website through the site is made up of one person from Pakistan and one from Florida. The two have never met but have made millions together.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey connected on the site\u2026 they\u2019ve made six or seven million together but still to this day have never met,\u201d Collis said.<\/p>\n

Also recognised in the non-competitive regional award categories were Andrew Sudholz, of Japara Healthcare Limited in the listed award category, Ian Carson of SecondBite in the social entrepreneur category and PDF Food Service\u2019s Richard Smith, who was awarded the lifetime achievement Champion of Entrepreneurship award.<\/p>\n

EY\u2019s Melbourne Managing Partner, Gerard Dalbosco congratulated the winners.<\/p>\n

\u201cVictoria has a strong history of entrepreneurs who look for a better way of doing things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey take calculated risks and identify opportunities where others only see obstacles. Our 2015 award winners are excellent examples of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

*SmartCompany attended the awards as a guest of EY<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This article was originally published on SmartCompany.
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Responding swiftly to the needs of your customers goes a long way, according to Thankyou Group founder Daniel Flynn. Flynn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42184"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}