Where are the Aussie Startups?

18 months ago, Tom Coates over at Plastic Bag asked “Where are the UK star­tups”? The ques­tion is being asked over at the Guardian of late, all of which prompts me to ask — what about the Aussie startup scene?

A recent post by Vishal Sharma at Read/​Write Web listed a few, but for mine, I don’t really feel we’ve ever had much of a startup cul­ture in Australia, com­pared with energy and dynamism you get in places like San Francisco, or even Austin Texas.

But am I wrong — do we have a decent startup cul­ture here? Is it a prob­lem? Are we doing fine?

Or is there some­thing in our nature that makes us rather con­ser­v­a­tive, at least in terms of business?

Would you con­sider start­ing up your own (not nec­es­sar­ily web) venture?

I’ve been in busi­ness with web ori­ented and based projects (soft­ware, train­ing, con­fer­ences) for well over a decade now, and I must say I do feel like we are some­thing of the excep­tion not the rule.

I’d love to see a vibrant startup cul­ture here — I’d love to see intel­li­gent seed cap­i­tal, an eco-​​system of good design­ers and devel­op­ers, men­tors for those start­ing out, events to help net­work (yes I am aware of things like the recent STIRR events (site seems down?), Dinner 2.0 (I have to admit to only hear­ing about these events sub­se­quent to their hap­pen­ing, despite feel­ing pretty well con­nected), as well as thing like Webjam and the kinds of events we run is con­junc­tion with Web Directions)

But, what do you think?

john

[tags]startup, entre­pre­neur, Australia[/tags]

19 responses to “Where are the Aussie Startups?”:

  1. I per­son­ally think it’s coming…

    I feel we are a bit behind ‘the Brits’ who are start­ing to get a bit of cov­er­age in the States as a col­lec­tive that is build­ing. And they are, you look in Austin SxSW and they were there in force last year and this year they are run­ning a party and tak­ing out a whole floor in the Hampton I am sure.

    As for Aussies, we formed a good posse last year, which I fig­ure has lead to great things hap­pen­ing in the indus­try with Web Jams and WSG meet­ings, etc. There is def­i­nitely a vibe hap­pen­ing, which I am sure will con­tinue on with more Aussie’s present for SxSW this year.

    Next steps? Breaking off and doing our own thing. I know there is a lot of talk about it every­time I am out, and many are doing it on there own, but more ClearLeft style col­lec­tives will soon be formed in Oz.

    ‘per capita’ I fig­ure it will go off pretty soon :-P

  2. John, the Aussie startup scene is alive and well. It isn’t quite boom­ing yet, but things are def­i­nitely hot­ting up. STIRR and Dinner 2.0 were both great events (and nat­u­rally, I quite like Webjam)

    Jon Yau started up a wiki page for list­ing Australian star­tups. There’s quite a few on the list now

    Gleddy is right. The Aussie web scene is primed to go off!

  3. I agree, I think it is hap­pen­ing. Communication issues are com­pounded by the spread of star­tups around the coun­try, but I’m in con­stant con­tact with peo­ple in Perth, like Minti, and PerthNorg, as well as oth­ers around the coun­try includ­ing TPN, Touchstone, Tangler, Gnoos, and Omnidrive. I’m also con­stantly meet­ing and speak­ing with oth­ers who are start­ing Internet com­pa­nies in Australia, and I feel like we’re all try­ing to give each other a help in hand. I know there is always some­one I can email or IM when I need to ask a question.

    The press are also doing a great job of pump­ing up the “startup mar­ket.” Josh Gliddon did a great job with his “Silicon Beach” story, and there has been plenty of press about new funds for Aussie startups.

    Blog posts like this can only help ;).

  4. […] John Allsop asks Where are the Aussie Startups? on the web­di­rec­tions weblog. […]

  5. I think cul­tur­ally Australia has a his­tory of pro­duc­ing fan­tas­tic ideas but forc­ing the inventor/​creator to go off­shore to get finance/​backing (eg. Why is Australia good at cre­at­ing inven­tions and poor at devel­op­ing them?). To make things worse we often end up buy­ing our own ideas back from over­seas manufacturers/​companies!

    I doubt that web star­tups are any dif­fer­ent from the more tra­di­tional “inven­tor”. It’s all about ideas and Aussies are a very smart, cre­ative bunch. Yet we tend to be a bit con­ser­v­a­tive — we like “quiet achiev­ers”. Startups tend more towards “loud and brash achiev­ers” so maybe it just doesn’t come nat­u­rally (yet).

    Then of course there’s the dreaded Tall Poppy Syndrome. We like peo­ple to be suc­cess­ful, just not TOO suc­cess­ful. I sus­pect suc­cess­ful star­tups seem a bit too much like “easy suc­cess” since the hard work isn’t quite so visible.

    We’re a com­plex bunch under all that laid-​​back atti­tude, eh :)

    Looking to the future though… the Australian web indus­try seems to be build­ing up to some­thing. Not sure what it’s going to be, but it’s going to be fun find­ing out! ;)

  6. Alive and well I reckon!

    I spend a fair bit of time in the val­ley and noticed a lack of events, which is why I organ­ised for a STIRR and the more reg­u­lar din­ner 2.0’s. The response from the com­mu­nity has been great.

    At the end of this week Tangler is also help­ing put together BarCamp as well. I would guess we’ll see 200+ at that event.

    There’s so much going on down here it’s amaz­ing we stay hid­den so well. We’re such quiet achievers. :)

    • By:John
    • February 26th, 2007

    Probably won’t make bar­camp this time, as will be too long away from the fam­ily with web­jam, and plan­ning for Web Directions tak­ing me up to Sydney this week. Then off to the US for IASummit, and Web 2.0 Expo.

    We cer­tainly have events like bar­camp, and Web Directions, but most of the focus of those isn’t star­tups, though they cer­tainly are related. My guess is a small % of the atten­dees are actu­ally in star­tups, though happy to be wrong on that.

    I’ll try to swing an invite to the next din­ner 2.0 ;-)

    j

  8. My reply was get­ting longer and longer, so I upsized it from a com­ment into a full size blog post.

    Trackbacks don’t seem to be work­ing (or turn­ing up?), so it’s linked here.

    m

  9. It’s funny, because at this dis­tance, it seems as if Australia has at least a few star­tups who’ve estab­lished them­selves, whereas Toronto has so very few.

    • By:Matt
    • February 27th, 2007

    Hi John

    Great chal­lenge, I talked a bit about start­ing up Minti and also the chal­lenges of fund rais­ing on a pod­cast with the 2WebCrew shortly after we first launched. It’s long but deals with a num­ber of your ques­tions: http://​2we​bcrew​.the​p​od​cast​net​work​.com/​2​0​0​6​/​0​4​/​2​8​/​2​w​e​b​-​c​r​e​w​-​0​0​7​-​m​a​t​t​h​e​w​-​m​a​c​f​a​r​l​a​n​e​-​f​r​o​m​-​m​i​n​ti/

    A key point I would men­tion is the dif­fi­culty in get­ting access to cap­i­tal pre-​​launch. Generally the VC’s we talked to had a very very hard-​​nosed approach to the busi­ness and stated that “tar­gets would be set and if they are not met then a pro­fes­sional man­age­ment team would replace the founders” — the Web 2.0 world is not about set­ting tar­gets, its about being flex­i­ble and danc­ing to the lat­est tune that will bring you rev­enues or more value cre­ation. For exam­ple we recently launched a whole suite of photo tag­ging and rank­ing func­tions on Minti.

    Minti/​Vibe has changed dra­mat­i­cally in it’s focus since launch and we are now actively nego­ti­at­ing soft­ware licenses (nope that was not in our pitch to the VCs) and also launch­ing new ver­ti­cals from our par­ent com­pany Vibe Capital (that was a one line bul­let point in our ini­tial pitch).

    Minti is not cur­rently gen­er­at­ing sub­stan­tial rev­enues but that is a tap we can turn on when we choose. There are no other par­ent­ing sites on the web with as few ads as we oper­ate on. Meanwhile our con­tent base is grow­ing won­der­fully with over 3,800 par­ent­ing arti­cles there is some­thing there for any par­ent and we are larger than most of the big US play­ers in terms of con­tent depth.

    Australia is an awe­some place to live and well founded web based busi­nesses give you a choice in base loca­tion, although I dare say we may have missed a few fund­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties com­pared to if we lived in the val­ley but we are doing very well in terms of fund­ing and now have a lot of inter­est in the site due to our focus on exe­cu­tion of the vision.

    All the best
    Matt — Minti/​Vibe Capital Co-​​founder

  11. The num­ber of web related con­fer­ences that are announced and then can­celled is not help­ing. While there are many con­fer­ences run­ning, many of them are high cost (for stu­dents) and not going to be attended by peo­ple with­out a cur­rent startup.

    For those peo­ple who are not cur­rently con­nected to the startup com­mu­nity here in Australia, there aren’t any large sign­posts point­ing some­where for peo­ple they can look to for guid­ance, or at least exchange war sto­ries with.

    Stronger ties with uni­ver­si­ties, com­mu­nity groups and the pub­lic will raise the pro­files of cur­rent Aussie star­tups and help those kids in high school find a path for their next cool thing.

  12. […] I have been think­ing about the cul­ture of Australian start-​​ups after read­ing these posts…http://blog.scouta.com/2007/02/26/aussie-startups/http://www.webdirections.org/2007/02/26/where-are-the-aussie-startups/ The rea­son why there Australia seem­ingly has no cul­ture of start-​​ups IMO is that there is no sense of com­mu­nity aroundstart-​​ups. What I mean by this is there are plenty of peo­ple out there will­ing to help me out but, the con­ver­sa­tion is often via email, Skype or over a cof​fee​.So no one else hears the dis­cus­sion or even knows that it took place. The Victorian Government and Microsoft have a pro­gram called VictoriaDotNet http://​www​.vic​to​ri​adot​net​.com​.au/ Specific ben­e­fits of being a mem­ber of the VictoriaDotNet clus­ter include: Leveraging our brand to raise the pro­file of its mem­bers Networking and part­ner­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for like-​​minded organ­i­sa­tions Being part of a larger entity at trade shows and exhi­bi­tions Having a point of con­tact to reach and con­sult with the indus­try or indi­vid­ual organ­i­sa­tions Being show­cased for local PR and accom­plish­ments in these tech­nolo­gies Having a sin­gle voice for the indus­try to com­mu­ni­cate with Microsoft, Government and other asso­ci­ated ven­dors   I think VicDotNet has died in the ass over recent years…or at least I don’t hear much about it anymore…Franky any thoughts???So there is move­ment and it shows that peo­ple and gov­ern­ment are try­ing to address the problem…albeit if there moti­va­tion is about get­ting users to adopt there tech­nol­ogy. For me start-​​up cul­ture is based on com­mu­nity and a sense of belong­ing to a group not energy…If I heard an Australian going off like an American presenter/​speaker I’d laugh! Wouldn’t you?That high energy that you get in the U.S doesn’t trans­late here…“Sheel be right mate!” atti­tude is an Australian now we just need to find a way to end the con­ver­sa­tion with “Sheel be right mate, oh and come and let me intro­duce you to.…insert VC name here” :) How do we do that?Community…community…community…it’s all about com­mu­nity and com­mu­nity comes from engag­ing your fel­low start-​​ups! So like Rich, John, Bronwen and oth­ers lets get some­thing hap­pen­ing by engag­ing each other, work­ing as a group to bet­ter lever­age skills and con­tacts.   Thursday, 01 March 2007 23:28:23 (AUS Eastern Daylight Time, UTC+11:00)      Comments [0]   Web 2.0  |  […]

  13. I think the Aussie Web-​​startup scene is going well.

    We have some really bright ideas down here, good net­work­ing between peo­ple, and a unique coding/​usability aspect and cul­ture that stands us apart from the US/​UK.

    As the founder of atmail​.com based locally, we have expe­ri­enced some fan­tas­tic export suc­cess for our soft­ware solu­tions, and encour­age other star­tups to take the plunge, keep your idea sim­ple and lean, and FOCUS!

    Remember, its not the idea, its the exe­cu­tion. Take a leaf out of the US mar­ket­ing book for that one …

    • By:Mark
    • March 6th, 2007

    I’ve only been observ­ing the scene for 3 — 4 months, but I can hon­estly say that it def­i­nitely appears to be grow­ing (and at a fast pace). Barcamp Sydney was a bril­liant exam­ple of the grow­ing inter­est in this arena ( the sup­port shown for rave​aboutit​.com​.au was amazing!)

    sci­en­taes­tubique on 26/​02/​07 at 11:35 am

    “… While there are many con­fer­ences run­ning, many of them are high cost..”

    I def­i­nitely agree with this — there are a lot of indus­try events (break­fasts with key peo­ple in the indus­try) etc, but at around $150 a pop, these don’t come cheap for a stu­dent (or some boot-​​strapped start-​​ups for that matter :) )

    Cheers,

    M

  15. I don’t know you know. I looked at this post and the responses that John got to it when it was first made and thought that maybe he was being a bit harsh, and that we were in fact pulling our weight in the tech startup world. But I’ve just been doing a bit of idle late night brows­ing and come across this, about Canadian star­tups. Which I think makes for sober­ing read­ing. Canada is only 50% big­ger than Australia in terms of the crude raw met­ric of pop­u­la­tion, and yet look not just at the sheer vol­ume referred to here, but the breadth of what they con­cern them­selves with.

    No idea what it means. I guess some sort of prox­im­ity to the US and Silicon Valley, SFO in par­tic­u­lar may have some­thing to do with it. But I do think it casts a bit of a harsh light on what we have going on here in Australia.

  16. […] A few weeks back I posted here ask­ing “Where are the Aussie Startups?” […]

  17. Paul Graham has writ­ten a lot about How to Be Silicon Valley http://​www​.paulgra​ham​.com/​s​i​l​i​c​o​n​v​a​l​l​e​y​.​h​tml and we’ve been talk­ing a lot about this here in Toronto.

    Joey has been pon­tif­i­cat­ing http://​accor​dionguy​.blog​ware​.com/​b​l​o​g​/​_​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​s​/​2​0​0​6​/​5​/​2​4​/​1​9​8​1​8​2​9​.​h​tml

    The cul­ture of risk. The com­bi­na­tion of rich peo­ple and nerds. I think Aussies are really sim­i­lar to Canadians.

    I’m not sure I want to live in Silicon Valley, but I do want a vibrant open cre­ative com­mu­nity. And this requires a lot.

  18. I’d say there is no estab­lished “IT Entrepreneurship cul­ture” here for sev­eral reasons:

    1. It’s hard for one per­son to com­ply with all the reg­u­la­tions and paper­work as well as run their business

    2. Our con­ser­v­a­tive fed­eral gov­ern­ment has cut fund­ing to uni­ver­si­ties by a huge amount in the last 10 years

    3. Fewer peo­ple each year are study­ing IT at uni­ver­sity because a lot of the IT jobs in big com­pa­nies have been down­sized or out­sourced over­seas and peo­ple don’t see the pos­si­bil­i­ties for a sta­ble income

    4. A lot of Australians setup small busi­nesses but the vast major­ity of these are “old school” type good/​services busi­nesses, not deal­ing in bit and bytes.

    5. Our gov­ern­ment and large busi­nesses often award IT projects to over­seas com­pa­nies even when a local com­pany could have done the job bet­ter and at less cost and as a result of that and hard­ware imports we have a huge ICT trade deficit

  19. We are now run­ning Ausie Startups Carnival March 3 – 17 ‚2008. We hope to dis­cover few more and write about them. Details here — http://​star​tups​.shar​mav​ishal​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​2​/​r​e​g​i​s​t​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​f​e​b​r​u​a​r​y​-11 – 24-2008.html

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