Andrew McGrath – who graduated from Kurri High School in 2004 – founded digital coupon company Checkout 51 with business partners Noah Godfrey and Pema Hegan in 2012.

Located in Toronto, Canada, the company has 37 employees in Toronto and 10 in Philippines, and in July was acquired by a News Corp subsidiary, News America Marketing.

Andrew has come a long way from gaining what he described as a “terrible” UAI in high school – but not through lack of hard work.

Having studied a Certificate II in IT after hours at Metford TAFE in Year 10, after finishing high school he went on to gain a Certificate IV and Diploma in Programming at Tighes Hill then enrolled at Newcastle University in 2006.

At the same time, he started a company doing server management, making computers for people and writing software for an online education system with two friends.

“The goal was to pay the bills with the server management and the computer making side of things and eventually transition over to software full time,” Andrew said.

But in 2007, Andrew decided he was too busy to be in university and working on his business, so he dropped out of university to focus on the business.

A year later, he travelled to Canada and in the midst of the financial crisis, managed to get a job as a project manager at a billion-dollar business with thousands of employees.

Andrew joined a social media company in 2011, where he says he learnt a lot and re-connected with the startup community.

In early 2012 he started a new company, Verelo.com – a website monitoring company that he went on to sell to Dyn.com in December that year.

While the deal to sell Verelo was closing, he started Checkout 51 with Noah and Pema.

In his downtime (“to make my life about something other than just work”, he says), Andrew has been focused on getting his private pilot’s license and has been flying Cessna 172s for the last year.

While he originally went to Canada to chase a girl (which didn’t work out), taking the leap has paid off for this boy from Kurri.

Looking back on his high school years, Andrew said it is important to get what you need out of the HSC and nothing more.

“If that is a good mark to get into university, then give it a go; but keep in mind there is more than one way to skin a cat and that the HSC will not define your life – it certainly didn’t define mine,” he said.

He advises students to spend their school career learning how to learn, not memorise.

“Learn to manage stress, be creative, personable, graceful under pressure and adapt quickly when the ground shifts under your feet,” he said.

“The ability to exercise these skills will most certainly impact your ability to succeed in the real world.”