Meet Melbournite Ed Craven, Australia’s youngest billionaire with an apparent net worth of $3.86 billion, which is pretty good for a 28-year old! But my 2GB colleague, Ben Fordham wanted me to explain how it all happened, so this is my take on the Ed Craven success story.

Here's a sketch of the picture, according to The Australian’s Jared Lynch:

1. Craven owns Easygo Solutions, which he started with Bijan Tehrani.
2. The company employs around 300 people.
3. The big money-spinner is Stake, which Wikipedia says is the following: “Stakeoffers traditional casino games (such as slots, blackjack and roulette) and sports betting. It offers video streams with live dealers. Users at Stake generally transact in cryptocurrencies rather than traditional currencies for their betting accounts.
4. This kind of gambling is banned in Australia.
5. It’s a global company with offices in Serbia, Australia and Cyprus.
6. It has faced “hyperscale growth” and is offering starting bonuses to new techie staff up to $100,000!

How did Craven achieve this? Well, he identified a market that taps into three big addictive markets for consumers — gambling, bitcoin/cryptocurrencies and the Internet’s partner in ‘crime’ — the smartphone!

Starpoll.com says online gambling is the number three activity behind reading emails and then reading news! So, Craven and his mate are in the right space from the start. Then he goes for the competitive advantage to offer his online ‘casino’ for those who want to gamble with cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are the playthings of the rich and adventurous, the tech community, the young (who are smartphone addicted) and the criminals of the world, who like the anonymity of the new age ‘currencies.

Forbes Australia looked at how it all kicked off for Craven and Tehrani and this is what Matt Craig found: “The duo began dabbling with crypto in 2013, when Bitcoin was trading for around $100. Along with a few friends, they coded a primitive game called Primedice, which lets users bet Bitcoin on the roll of a virtual die. Primedice generated enough profit to make it a full-time job for its teenage creators. “Their ambitions grew in the spring of 2016, when they opened an office in Melbourne and founded their company, Easygo, with 18 employees. Easygo launched Stake the following year, eventually adding slots, table games and a sportsbook, with all wagers in cryptocurrency.”

This chart shows how their interest in bitcoin had to be the basis of the capital they needed to grow their operation since 2013.

Bitcoin

Undoubtedly, Craven and Tehrani have business acumen, know how to exploit a gap in the market and have learnt from the likes of Apple and Atlassian. These tech success stories attracted the best people and paid them a lot to come up with the cutting-edge business/tech processes to create outside the square, fabulously successful businesses.

There’s an old saying about money that goes “easy come, easy go”. Well, I suspect Easygo wasn’t easy to create and it’s why most people can’t do it and given what it’s selling and what consumers want to buy, Craven and Tehrani are set to get richer!