There is a new breed of entrepreneurs - they are millennials who, having grown up glued to their mobile phones and social media, are now harnessing that social reach to build viable businesses.
It is almost impossible to imagine starting a business without a bank loan, but now many young entrepreneurs are starting their businesses in their bedrooms with little to no money to begin with.
One of those people is 21-year-old Nathan Hunter, who came up with the idea for his fairy floss business Fluffe while at university, before launching in 2015, courting customers through Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat.
"I really fell in love with the idea of it - flavoured fairy floss - and how it could be done and that's how it started," he said.
"I never even gave a second thought to social media, the reason I actually got Instagram is because I was looking online, and they were just like social media is your best free marketing tool."
Mr Hunter initially posted photos of his fairy floss creations on his Instagram account, and now has 119,000 followers.
His products are a collection of pastel-coloured versions of the sugar-spun treat, as well as huge milkshakes topped with floss, lollies and chocolate.
It eventually captured the attention of local markets, where he began to sell them.
Influencers super-charge social media momentum
Through friends he eventually met Sydney 'influencers' with hundreds of thousands of followers, who would post photos of his products, exposing his work to vast numbers of new potential customers.
Influencers are people with a high number of followers and who are often paid by brands to create content that is distributed through their lucrative social media channels.
"Before this I didn't even know people made a living off Instagram," said Mr Hunter.
"I didn't know people had accounts that had hundreds of thousands of followers, so I think I was just in the right place in the right time."
Instagram has 7 million monthly active Australian users, while Snapchat has 4 million daily active users in Australia, according to the latest company statistics.
Australia had a smartphone population of 15 million in 2015, according to Deloitte.
The proliferation of social media means most companies are on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and other platforms.
Those that are not often risk losing the ability to connect to their customers and, therefore, their relevancy to audiences, which often have short attention spans.
Mr Hunter now works with businesses in Sydney in cross-promotions, including monogrammed leather goods maker The Daily Edited, Myer, women's fashion brand Mimco and Bailey's.
"I find that more companies want to work with me, more higher profile companies because of the social media following," he said.
"So, socially, if they're doing an activation in public, they'll have me there because I can promote it on mine which will then get it out to more people of course."
As for the future, Mr Hunter is turning his focus to online sales, limited edition flavours each month and continuing to build his online community.
"I think I would love to have a lolly shop, a very cool lolly shop," he said.
"I'm planning it now, but I definitely don't have the funds to do what I would want to do right now."
Despite his growing customer base, Mr Hunter said he is not looking for investors, an idea that he said sort of traumatises him.
"I would hate to not be able to do something that I wanted to do because it would affect someone who has to say yes or no to it," he said.
"It's not what I should be doing from a business sense, but it's working for me so maybe it's a new type of business that we're living in now - how it's all online."
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