Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

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]