A Victoria Point teenager has turned a time-saving idea into a multi-million dollar business, helping online shoppers check out faster.
Liam Millward's business Instant has secured a $2.2 million pre-seed raise with backing from investors as he and his co-founder get their business off the ground.
The 18-year-old grew up travelling the world with his parents and fast-tracked his education to graduate high school at just 16.
He now lives in Victoria Point and studied diplomas in business and marketing and communications at TAFE.
Mr Millward said he was no stranger to business ventures and created start-ups at a young age.
"I started my first business, a travel blog when we were travelling at about 13," he said,
"When we stopped, I started my second business called Navigate Australia, which is a free digital magazine focused on everything travel and camping related in Australia."
In April last year, Mr Millward and co-founder William Gao began working on Instant, an online checkout platform that allows customers to make purchases with one button click.
Mr Millward came up with the idea while studying the growth of e-commerce throughout the COVID pandemic.
"I started an online store and I noticed a huge loss of sales or abandoned carts at the point where people had to enter their credit card information to purchase something online," he said.
"I wanted to solve my own issue and take away the hassles of buying online to make the process as simple as possible.
"We launched with our first catalogue of stores around November last year.
"This year for us, with our recent capital, we're focused on growth from a merchants perspective, building our team and making the checkout experience as easy as possible on every Australian e-commerce store."
Mr Millward said despite the challenges, being a CEO was something he enjoyed.
"You've just got to be driven and make it possible," he said.
"All of our employees and customers are quite a bit older than us, but they're all helping us make this checkout experience easy.
"I wanted to build something to solve my issue, validated that idea with brands in Australia through my network.
"If you really believe in the idea and you want to make it happen, you can start a business without capital."