A relentless drive to start his own business has paid off for one young Newport local, who is now reaping the rewards
BY ALEX DRISCOLL
While it may have proved frustrating for his parents and teachers, entrepreneur Sebastian ‘Seb’ Stritt found that his single-minded persistence for starting his own business is what opened the door for him.
“I used to build random things in primary school and sell them,” says Seb. “I then made my first $1,000 in about year 7 or 8, just shipping items to people.”
From there, an enterprising Seb started a popular social media page bursting with relatable content about his trips to the snow. Soon, he had amassed nearly 50,000 followers, and was getting brand endorsements. But his high school business acumen did not stop there, as he went on to start another business, ‘Hoppa’ aged just 15 in Year 9 at St Augustine’s College in Brookvale.
The service saw Seb connect with real estate agents, helping them to distribute letterbox drops around specific neighbourhoods, saving agents both time and effort.
“I did have to eventually stop,” he laughed. “The boxes that were outside my house were stacked up as high as the doorframe. So, there was a little bit too much demand and more than I could handle in high school.”
Hoppa ended up being the forerunner to Seb’s current business, ‘RealRun,’ which has expanded from its Northern Beaches roots and now offers services across Canberra and Geelong. Seb confidently believes it will be operating in every state by the end of the year and hit $1 million in revenue.
Since then, Seb’s success has caught the eye of Young Change Agents, an organisation that promotes social entrepreneurship in young people. Appointed to their ‘Youth Advisory Council,’ Seb found himself influencing changes to school economics textbooks, something which brought back memories from his own school days.
“I remember I always had my economics teacher looking over my shoulder in class when I would be working on my business, telling me to ‘get on the textbook Seb.’ And now, I’m literally in the textbook,” he laughs, of his inclusion in the new Cambridge University Press Money, Markets and Citizenship.
For the young, driven entrepreneur, the structure and predictability of school was often a source of frustration. “There was a lot on how to write reports, but it’s very hard to do entrepreneurial things in school,” he says. “I asked myself, ‘Do I need to do the HSC to start a business? No. Do I need a degree? No.’”
He decided that instead of focusing on academic marks, he would concentrate on creating portfolios, networking and simply trying to get his ideas off the ground, seeing where his creativity would take him and not allowing failures to stop him.
Seb (back row, left) is on the Young Change Agents’ Youth Advisory Council, seen here at the E3 Entrepreneurial Educator Exchange in 2024
Far from finding the unpredictability and uncertainty of the business world daunting, it is exactly where Seb thrives. “If I were to work a job and know where I’ll be in three years, know exactly the salary I’d be getting paid, the exact tasks I’d have to do every single day, I feel like I wouldn’t be fulfilled” he says.
“I think the best thing about where I am today, is that I wake up every morning, and I don’t know what the day has in store for me.”