Simon Griffiths

Simon Griffiths is an engineer and economist turned one of Australia’s most prominent social entrepreneurs.

In 2007, after turning down his dream job offer as a corporate high-flyer, he moved from Australia to South Africa to immerse himself in his true passion: development aid.

There he discovered that the biggest problem faced by NGOs and social entrepreneurs is a lack of funding.

Driven by a passion to use business to give back, in 2010, Simon had the idea to start a toilet paper company that builds toilets in the developing world, and 2012, launched Who Gives A Crap with a crowdfunding campaign, agreeing to sit on a toilet on a live web-feed until he had pre-sold the first $50,000 of toilet rolls.

The multi-award winning launch attracted global media attention and generated over $1 million of PR value.

Since launching, Who Gives A Crap has doubled or tripled in size almost every year, primarily relying on word-of-mouth to fuel its growth, and has donated more than $10 million, proving that not only can you do good, while doing business, but that doing good is good for business.

Simon is also well known as the co-founder of Shebeen, a non-profit bar in Melbourne’s CBD that opened in February 2013 and ran for 3.5 years. Shebeen sold exotic beer and wine from the developing world, with 100% of the profit from each sale going to a development project in that drink’s country of origin.

At Ready24 Simon will take you on the journey from idea to start up, to successful large-scale company, sharing how he and his team took the business from strength to strength, without compromising on their purpose.