What does it take to be the best service provider in your field? Four leaders in defence tech, healthtech, executive recruitment and water infrastructure give us a glimpse.
Ahead of the 2026 EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ program’s 25th annual awards in October, Startup Daily is profiling the trailblazing entrepreneurs named as national finalists.
So far, we’ve met the finalists in the Social Impact, Emerging and Industry categories.
We’ll soon meet the Technology finalists, but today it’s all about the Services category; four founders breaking new ground in how they deliver service across their respective fields.
Kuba Kabacinski, Consunet
In 2002, Adelaide entrepreneur Kuba Kabacinski (pictured) bought a small web development business for $200 while studying IT at Flinders University.
Today, that business is Consunet, a defence tech software company with more than 130 staff working on high-tech solutions for electronic warfare and spectrum management (powering communications devices and sensors).
Kabacinski says their biggest challenge was backing themselves and investing $6 million to compete against six multinational companies for the Australian Defence Force’s electromagnetic battle management project. They won, and successfully delivered the $61 million project.
“The long-term impact that I hope to achieve with Consunet is to disrupt the global spectrum management market to ensure that communication technologies are broadly available to everyone at an acceptable cost,” he says.
“And we want to have a billion-dollar valuation.”
Stella Petrou Concha, Reo Group
As the CEO of national recruitment, executive search and professional services agency Reo Group, and cofounder of executive development firm HiveQ, Stella Petrou Concha (pictured) is passionate about helping people realise their full potential.
Renowned for her focus on self-mastery and its role in shaping careers, the acclaimed author and academic practises what she preaches, mastering her own pivot from medicine to talent strategy when she founded Reo in 2009.
“After two years working for an international agency, I said to my husband Marcello, would you back me in going into business? I’d like to start my own agency. There’s an opportunity in the market here where could do it just a little bit differently,” Conch says.
“Instead of focusing on the client side, I’d like to focus on the candidate the side. The candidate’s the one that has the really deep need, and they need support in identifying what the trajectory of their life needs to be and how that’s going to align to a career.”
Today, the business has three offices in Sydney, Parramatta and Adelaide, with specialised consultants helping to develop candidates to get the jobs they want.
The current jobs market and cost-of-living crisis has been challenging, Concha admits. But keeping hyper-vigilant and focusing on the business’ two growth engines – its people and its customers – is what keeps driving business forward.
Dr Chris Behrenbruch, Telix Pharmaceuticals
Dr Chris Behrenbruch (pictured) is the managing director and group CEO of Melbourne-based Telix Pharmaceuticals, an oncology company that develops radioactive drugs to help treat cancer and rare diseases.
“Our class of drugs is really unusual. We take a molecule that targets a cancer signature and we attach radiation to it and we inject it into you, and it whizzes all around your body until it finds a tumour and then it kills it,” Behrenbruch explains.
Behrenbruch founded Telix in 2015, combining his experience in radiopharmaceuticals and biotech with a German physician’s expertise in nuclear medicine.
Now ASX-listed, with commercial operations in Australia, the US, Europe and Japan, Telix (ASX:TLX) has made a global impact with its innovative approach to medicine.
“Last year we changed the lives of about 150,000 people. That means that a child got another year with their father or got to spend more time with their grandfather. So that’s a big deal,” he says.
Matt Rear, PPS Water Group
Matt Rear’s career is all about moving water from location to another – a complicated task for the remote mining projects PPS Water Group works across in WA.
A former C-suite executive in the lithium industry, Rear (pictured) has grown his water infrastructure company significantly in recent years, delivering sustainable water management solutions for the likes of Rio Tinto, BHP and Fortescue.
“A major milestone at PPS is that we’ve just completed the Western Range [iron ore mine] project. It was the largest water infrastructure project to my knowledge in one contract,” he shares.
“It was [around] $100 million. It started as $40 million, and because of our good work, we stayed there for over two years,” he says.
Rear puts PPS’s success down to building trust with clients without compromising the output.
“We became the preferred contractor by delivering safely and by delivering on time and just being there for the client,” he says.
More about EY Entrepreneur Of The Year
The EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Program recognises Australian entrepreneurs who are disrupting traditional ways of doing things and building a better working world.
Run by global professional services organisation EY, the EOY program spans 60 countries and jurisdictions and provides exclusive networking and learning opportunities to participants. EY Australia will host a gala event on October 15, where winners across five categories will be awarded (Emerging, Industry, Services, Social Impact and Technology).
One winner will be chosen to represent Australia at the EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™ global competition in 2026.
For more info, visit the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year website.
Startup Daily is a media partner for the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year program.
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