11 ms·

Is Australia the next upcoming tech startup hotspot to watch?

19 points by jackyyappp 14y ago

pedalpete 14y ago
"if there are two startups, one in Australia and one in the USA, both targeting the USA market, which do you think is going to win?” 99Designs vs. Crowdspring, http://www.google.com/trends/?q=crowdspring,+99designs&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 http://www.google.com/trends/?q=crowdspring,+99designs&c..., leads me to believe that 99Designs is more popular, even though it was also later to market.
- tfm 14y ago
  I don't entirely trust these particular Google Trends figures as they show a minuscule amount of USA-based traffic. Regardless, though, of the particular instance, or indeed the reality -- the problem for any would-be head-to-head of this type is not generally which startup would "win in a fair fight", but rather which startup any potential investors believe would win. The problem for such Australian startups may be just that the question of "which is going to win?" is being asked at all.
damian2000 14y ago
There's been a long history of Australian inventors leaving Australia to get backing in Europe or the US. Hopefully things are changing for the better: E.g. Atlassian - http://www.theage.com.au/small-business/entrepreneur/100m-software-sold-a-year-not-a-single-cold-call-20120628-214k1.html http://www.theage.com.au/small-business/entrepreneur/100m-so... 99designs - http://www.theage.com.au/small-business/managing/blogs/enterprise/need-some-help-the-world-is-waiting-20110602-1fh0j.html http://www.theage.com.au/small-business/managing/blogs/enter...
- tfm 14y ago
  99designs did well from early investment from Atlassian, but their big recent VC dollaridoos came from ... Silicon Valley. Continuing the Australia/99 theme, we might observe that 99dresses was almost thumped into oblivion (due partially to lack of investment) before it enjoyed the expertise of YC and the attentions of the YC coterie. Given geographic inevitabilities and the lack of local investment it is hard to be optimistic about the Aussie startup scene, even given Fairfax media's recent (and beguiling) attempts to toot the local talent's horn.
keyle 14y ago
There are some serious problem with the immigration laws in Australia that would make such ecosystem very fragile. For example, we tried to hire a remote friend to move inland and work with us - and he is over qualified - yet because he's over 30, his chances of making it after 2 years of struggle with immigration are next to none. So as long as this happen, startups will be dead in the water. Australia has a lot of smart people, but that's not enough. The US west coast attracts all the smarts and doesn't block them in.
- bartonfink 14y ago
  Keyle - As someone who's just on the cusp of 30 and is actively planning a move down under, do you mind expounding a little further on what happened? I'd love to avoid the same pitfall if possible.
  - kqr2 14y ago
    It looks like Australia uses a point system to determine visa eligibility. http://www.visabureau.com/australia/immigration-points-test.aspx http://www.visabureau.com/australia/immigration-points-test.... For example, you get points for age. Applicants who are 25-32 years old get 30 points. As you get older, you get fewer points. Applicants who are older than 45 get 0 points. Since you need at least 65 points for a visa, it seems difficult once you are over the age of 45.
    - bartonfink 14y ago
      That's right, and unless someone uses a ridiculously strict determination for some of the criteria (e.g. how fluent am I in English?), I should have plenty of points. I'm more worried about some additional gotcha.
- fingerprinter 14y ago
  Can you describe the problems you've seen? Wife and I were over 30 when we moved to AU from the US. Certainly quite a bit of paperwork, but wasn't all that tough in reality.
bmunro 14y ago
Original page on Quora: http://www.quora.com/Is-Australia-becoming-a-hot-place-to-do-startups http://www.quora.com/Is-Australia-becoming-a-hot-place-to-do...
josephcooney 14y ago
I wish it wasn't the case, but based on recent HN discussion[1] .au has a number of issues to overcome (esp. re: dispersal of equity to founders) [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4169847 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4169847
pjin 14y ago
Betteridge's law of headlines: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4092880 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4092880
jwilliams 14y ago
If you're interested in the startup scene in Australia there are some great groups. e.g. Silicon Beach. The Jelly events are great too. You tend to find the same people at the occasional hack-a-thon and unconference-style events. I'd also recommend getting over to some co-working spaces. Events are great, but I've found them a better way to connect to a broader audience. In Melbourne I'd recommend Inspire9, but there are others (The Hub, OpenHub). There are similar counterparts in Sydney.
batgaijin 14y ago
What's the current price of bandwidth there compare to america/eu? How laggy is ssh/emacs to something close, like linode's japan instances?
- joahua 14y ago
  Relatively high. Also from east coast AU latency is better to west coast US than much of Asia in my experience. We just got AWS cloudfront in Aus which might serve as a decent barometer for the relative cost of bandwidth: http://aws.amazon.com/pricing/cloudfront/ http://aws.amazon.com/pricing/cloudfront/
djt 14y ago
"[No] Australians are much more risk adverse" I think they mean averse in this phrase its not that Australians are more risk averse, its that we have a culture of "tall poppy syndrome", which means that people that tend to become outliers, especially highly successful, tend to get "taken down a peg". It's ironic because we have quite a high work ethic. I lived in Northern California for a few months and saw a massive difference in the way that people believe that anything is possible and look up to innovators (as a society).
djt 14y ago
They didnt mention that a lot of Australians go overseas to work for companies, which could be a boon for us if an ecosystem blooms here, as I know a lot of entrepreneurs would love to move back to australia for the lifestyle.
- underwater 14y ago
  They did: "...influx of quality talent into the Australia ecosystem. These talents comes from the successful Australian engineers and designers who have left or will soon leave their careers at huge tech companies such as Facebook or Google to join or start new ventures back at home." I think he is vastly overestimating the number of Australians over here.
  - nigelk 14y ago
    I don't. I'm one of those Australians who moved to the US to work at Google, and then left to join a startup, Puppet Labs. There are a lot of Australians in tech in the Bay Area, particularly working in operations, and a regular topic of conversation is "what would I do if I moved back to Australia?" I'd still probably try to start a new tech company in the US, but I feel much less strongly about that than I did a couple of years ago, and hopefully that trend continues.
inopinatus 14y ago
The left-learning government is not supportive of startup business. And the economic indicators are not good. Notable issues include High income earners cannot offset business losses, thus deterring entrepreneurs. IR protections intrude on flexible working. Border protections make labour import difficult, despite the lack of a critical mass for skills. Government spending is high (although less than in the US), at 34% of GDP, leaving less on the table for investors to slosh around. This is set to grow as the population age pyramid inverts. Productivity is low. The only thing keeping growth competitive is the resources sector. This is probably an economic time bomb. Banks are massively risk averse and unwilling to lend, although the problem is not as severe as in the UK. Business failure is perceived by many as personal failure rather than a learning experience. The current government is essentially the political branch of the unions. They'd much rather prop up the dying manufacturing sector. Unfortunately there is no credible alternative party. If Australia is really unlucky then the ticking productivity bomb will explode along with the demographic inversion, causing a welfare crisis, a debt catastrophe, and probably a major recession. None of this prevents anyone from having a crack.
- caf 14y ago
  Government spending as a proportion of GDP is lower than in the USA.
  - inopinatus 14y ago
    You are quite right. I was looking at numbers from a few years ago. I shall adjust my post. Thank you
- femto 14y ago
  > Business failure is perceived by many as personal failure rather than a learning experience. I'd content that Australians' bias isn't against failure, but against making other people wear the cost of your failure. The reason some failed businesses are held against owners, is because the owners didn't make sure there was enough in company to pay the workers their entitlements (salary, leave and superannuation) when the doors shut. While the typically still wealthy owners hide behind the limited liability of their company, the workers pay a cost they can ill afford. A failed company that meets its obligations to its employees will be admired for "giving it a go".

19 points by jackyyappp 14y ago

"if there are two startups, one in Australia and one in the USA, both targeting the USA market, which do you think is going to win?” 99Designs vs. Crowdspring, http://www.google.com/trends/?q=crowdspring,+99designs&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 http://www.google.com/trends/?q=crowdspring,+99designs&c..., leads me to believe that 99Designs is more popular, even though it was also later to market.

tfm 14y ago
I don't entirely trust these particular Google Trends figures as they show a minuscule amount of USA-based traffic. Regardless, though, of the particular instance, or indeed the reality -- the problem for any would-be head-to-head of this type is not generally which startup would "win in a fair fight", but rather which startup any potential investors believe would win. The problem for such Australian startups may be just that the question of "which is going to win?" is being asked at all.

damian2000 14y ago

There's been a long history of Australian inventors leaving Australia to get backing in Europe or the US. Hopefully things are changing for the better: E.g. Atlassian - http://www.theage.com.au/small-business/entrepreneur/100m-software-sold-a-year-not-a-single-cold-call-20120628-214k1.html http://www.theage.com.au/small-business/entrepreneur/100m-so... 99designs - http://www.theage.com.au/small-business/managing/blogs/enterprise/need-some-help-the-world-is-waiting-20110602-1fh0j.html http://www.theage.com.au/small-business/managing/blogs/enter...

tfm 14y ago
99designs did well from early investment from Atlassian, but their big recent VC dollaridoos came from ... Silicon Valley. Continuing the Australia/99 theme, we might observe that 99dresses was almost thumped into oblivion (due partially to lack of investment) before it enjoyed the expertise of YC and the attentions of the YC coterie. Given geographic inevitabilities and the lack of local investment it is hard to be optimistic about the Aussie startup scene, even given Fairfax media's recent (and beguiling) attempts to toot the local talent's horn.

keyle 14y ago

There are some serious problem with the immigration laws in Australia that would make such ecosystem very fragile. For example, we tried to hire a remote friend to move inland and work with us - and he is over qualified - yet because he's over 30, his chances of making it after 2 years of struggle with immigration are next to none. So as long as this happen, startups will be dead in the water. Australia has a lot of smart people, but that's not enough. The US west coast attracts all the smarts and doesn't block them in.

bartonfink 14y ago
Keyle - As someone who's just on the cusp of 30 and is actively planning a move down under, do you mind expounding a little further on what happened? I'd love to avoid the same pitfall if possible.
- kqr2 14y ago
  It looks like Australia uses a point system to determine visa eligibility. http://www.visabureau.com/australia/immigration-points-test.aspx http://www.visabureau.com/australia/immigration-points-test.... For example, you get points for age. Applicants who are 25-32 years old get 30 points. As you get older, you get fewer points. Applicants who are older than 45 get 0 points. Since you need at least 65 points for a visa, it seems difficult once you are over the age of 45.
  - bartonfink 14y ago
    That's right, and unless someone uses a ridiculously strict determination for some of the criteria (e.g. how fluent am I in English?), I should have plenty of points. I'm more worried about some additional gotcha.
fingerprinter 14y ago
Can you describe the problems you've seen? Wife and I were over 30 when we moved to AU from the US. Certainly quite a bit of paperwork, but wasn't all that tough in reality.

bmunro 14y ago

Original page on Quora: http://www.quora.com/Is-Australia-becoming-a-hot-place-to-do-startups http://www.quora.com/Is-Australia-becoming-a-hot-place-to-do...

josephcooney 14y ago

I wish it wasn't the case, but based on recent HN discussion[1] .au has a number of issues to overcome (esp. re: dispersal of equity to founders) [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4169847 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4169847

pjin 14y ago

Betteridge's law of headlines: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4092880 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4092880

jwilliams 14y ago

If you're interested in the startup scene in Australia there are some great groups. e.g. Silicon Beach. The Jelly events are great too. You tend to find the same people at the occasional hack-a-thon and unconference-style events. I'd also recommend getting over to some co-working spaces. Events are great, but I've found them a better way to connect to a broader audience. In Melbourne I'd recommend Inspire9, but there are others (The Hub, OpenHub). There are similar counterparts in Sydney.

batgaijin 14y ago

What's the current price of bandwidth there compare to america/eu? How laggy is ssh/emacs to something close, like linode's japan instances?

joahua 14y ago
Relatively high. Also from east coast AU latency is better to west coast US than much of Asia in my experience. We just got AWS cloudfront in Aus which might serve as a decent barometer for the relative cost of bandwidth: http://aws.amazon.com/pricing/cloudfront/ http://aws.amazon.com/pricing/cloudfront/

djt 14y ago

"[No] Australians are much more risk adverse" I think they mean averse in this phrase its not that Australians are more risk averse, its that we have a culture of "tall poppy syndrome", which means that people that tend to become outliers, especially highly successful, tend to get "taken down a peg". It's ironic because we have quite a high work ethic. I lived in Northern California for a few months and saw a massive difference in the way that people believe that anything is possible and look up to innovators (as a society).

djt 14y ago

They didnt mention that a lot of Australians go overseas to work for companies, which could be a boon for us if an ecosystem blooms here, as I know a lot of entrepreneurs would love to move back to australia for the lifestyle.

underwater 14y ago
They did: "...influx of quality talent into the Australia ecosystem. These talents comes from the successful Australian engineers and designers who have left or will soon leave their careers at huge tech companies such as Facebook or Google to join or start new ventures back at home." I think he is vastly overestimating the number of Australians over here.
- nigelk 14y ago
  I don't. I'm one of those Australians who moved to the US to work at Google, and then left to join a startup, Puppet Labs. There are a lot of Australians in tech in the Bay Area, particularly working in operations, and a regular topic of conversation is "what would I do if I moved back to Australia?" I'd still probably try to start a new tech company in the US, but I feel much less strongly about that than I did a couple of years ago, and hopefully that trend continues.

inopinatus 14y ago

The left-learning government is not supportive of startup business. And the economic indicators are not good. Notable issues include High income earners cannot offset business losses, thus deterring entrepreneurs. IR protections intrude on flexible working. Border protections make labour import difficult, despite the lack of a critical mass for skills. Government spending is high (although less than in the US), at 34% of GDP, leaving less on the table for investors to slosh around. This is set to grow as the population age pyramid inverts. Productivity is low. The only thing keeping growth competitive is the resources sector. This is probably an economic time bomb. Banks are massively risk averse and unwilling to lend, although the problem is not as severe as in the UK. Business failure is perceived by many as personal failure rather than a learning experience. The current government is essentially the political branch of the unions. They'd much rather prop up the dying manufacturing sector. Unfortunately there is no credible alternative party. If Australia is really unlucky then the ticking productivity bomb will explode along with the demographic inversion, causing a welfare crisis, a debt catastrophe, and probably a major recession. None of this prevents anyone from having a crack.

caf 14y ago
Government spending as a proportion of GDP is lower than in the USA.
- inopinatus 14y ago
  You are quite right. I was looking at numbers from a few years ago. I shall adjust my post. Thank you
femto 14y ago
> Business failure is perceived by many as personal failure rather than a learning experience. I'd content that Australians' bias isn't against failure, but against making other people wear the cost of your failure. The reason some failed businesses are held against owners, is because the owners didn't make sure there was enough in company to pay the workers their entitlements (salary, leave and superannuation) when the doors shut. While the typically still wealthy owners hide behind the limited liability of their company, the workers pay a cost they can ill afford. A failed company that meets its obligations to its employees will be admired for "giving it a go".