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Disclosure, I work for data61, a major recipient of the gov't new innovation strategy. I'm also Canadian and have worked in technology in SF, LA, NYC, Vancouver

Disclosure, I work for data61, a major recipient of the gov't new innovation strategy. I'm also Canadian and have worked in technology in SF, LA, NYC, Vancouver and Santiago Chile. I have a very different perspective on this. Australia has had more than just one Atlassian. They've also got Campaign Monitor, BigCommerce, Canva, Where 2 (became Google Maps), Envato. Australia is also growing Freelancer (I don't believe it was initially built here), and I'm sure many others. Now, let's look at the comment regarding the newly announced innovation strategy does provide lots (probably too much) money to incubators, but so has every country. The incubator thing is just not successful outside a the few outliers YC, TechStars and maybe 1 or 2 others. However, one of the large components of the plan is tax incentives to early stage investors. There are also bankruptcy law reform. There is also a new Entrepreneur Visa. Now, Silicon Valley will almost always have an advantage to the history and network there. But that doesn't mean that Australia is "a crappy place" for tech business. I find Australia a refreshing change from North America. There is a realistic view on revenue models, less money is 'wasted' on poorly thought out businesses. Australians are bright resourceful people. I think this is a great place to be in tech. It punches above it's weight on the world stage. If you look at regions with major technology successes, what do you end up with? A bunch in the US, a few in China, a few in India, a few in Canada, a few in Germany, a few in the UK. Where would Australia end up on a list of population vs. influence? I think pretty high.

andrewstuart 11y ago
The key point of the blog post is that any tech company that succeeds in Australia does so purely on its own two feet and that governments are at best mildly supportive of technology and at worst actively hostile. Turnbull destroyed the fibre to the home NBN and I can't see high speed ubiquitous Internet access coming any time soon. Imagine if 95% of Australian home - including ones in the country areas - had super high speed Internet - what that would do for the ability of Australians to live and work away from the cities and how good that would be for regional communities. Turnbull and Abbott tossed that out. I'm cynical about Government support for technology because it usually is very indirect. More often than not any money is funnelled into an "ecosystem of helpers" rather than to the developers. So venture capitalists and incubators get the money which essentially is then substantially dedicated to paying for the salaries and offices of the incubators and venture capitalists rather than going to entrepreneurs. As the blog post points out - there are thousands of developers sitting in their kitchen coding - they do not want a desk and chair as provided by an incubator and - like Atlassian - they do not want to even talk to venture capitalists, let alone waste time and money trying to get funding from them - an extremely unlikely event because the VCs are so risk averse. If I built something that got traction - which is what the VC's want to see - and I really needed VC then I damn sure wouldn't go to Australian VCs for it - that's the path to failure - if you must have money and you have traction, go straight to Silicon Valley first.
- regecks 11y ago
  I really don't understand the NBN meme. I've worked for small tech companies in Australia my entire (not so long) career, and access to high internet speeds has never ever really been a problem. When you're a programmer, what is the difference to your work between 10 and 100mbps, really? Yes, regional areas should be upgraded from dialup/slow sattelite to at least 10mbps. What kind of impact will that have wrt the OP? As someone who sorely wishes that a tech scene would actually take off here, issues that I believe dwarf the NBN are: small companies can't actually afford to fund hacking/R&D, risk aversion, a culture that is generally dismissive of [the] tech [scene], lack of encouragement in school education, and tax system (also the Australian Consumer Law) that will punish you for trying. I worked from a co-working "hacker space" for a couple of years and, uh, well, there was not a lot of hacking going on. I've recently gotten into this for myself, and while mildly successful, all our customers are overseas shrug. Edit: all good points made below. Quality of life will improve for us, still skeptical as to the degree to which it will address fundamental problems with the tech economy here though.
  - PebblesHD 11y ago
    The key point is that as an Australian programmer living relatively close to Sydney in an area less than a decade old, I can only get 5mbps (that's megabits) internet at the best of times, this means I am almost entirely unable to work remotely and getting access to the latest software and libraries requires hours of downloading. I can't host my own test servers because my upload speeds are in the tens of Kbps and all Australian hosting providers are prohibitively expensive. It makes it very difficult to get anything productive done away from the office, where even then I have 15-20mbps peak in the middle of North Sydney.
  - catmanjan 11y ago
    The benefit of NBN wouldn't be for employees, it would be for potential customers. I've heard so many times from so many people "I'd love to use X but my internet is dodgy/stops working when it rains/is slow between 5 and bed time" Where X is any number of internet reliant service
voltagex_ 11y ago
I'm Australian and want to escape to Vancouver (for various reasons, email me if you're really interested). Can you provide any pointers?
- pedalpete 11y ago
  I'm Canadian, so I don't know if I can give pointers to moving to Canada. I've just dropped you an email, let me know if/how I can help you out.
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    Yeah, worded that badly - which email address did you use? I didn't get it.
    - pedalpete 11y ago
      I used the one in your profile. votagex [] same org
- acrooks 11y ago
  I'm a software developer from & living in Vancouver, so if you need any tips check my profile for my email.
femto 11y ago
I'm on the other side of the divide: entities partnering with CSIRO (now part of Data61) to collaboratively bring research to market. On the technical front, they are great, if a little condescending at times. It's on the "business" side where they are difficult to work with, potentially to the point of killing the venture. For a government organisation, who you might think would be on "your" side, they are as hostile as any competitor. You typically end up bound by a one sided contract, as CSIRO have enough lawyers to out lawyer any small company. You have to be careful sharing information with them, as they tend to patent their research before revealing it to their partners, and after the fact you find out that the stuff you were collaboratively discussing and contributing to is now "theirs" to be licensed back to you. There is also potential for them to do a "spin out", in competition with your existing collaboration, and then it is a bun fight to get the organisation to see the potential for conflict. I think it can be traced back to the government's push for CSIRO to pay its own way, and past successes. Since the WiFi patent bonanza, CSIRO/Data61 has "gold fever" and every industry interaction is locked down tight, to ensure that CSIRO gets a pound of flesh. Frankly, I don't think the WiFi bonanza would have happened with today's environment, as the lawyers would have smothered the life out of the project with up-front demands. As it was, the commercialisation was done largely independently of CSIRO, by partners whose names are not on the patent, and CSIRO got their cut after the event. I'd guess, data61 is a good source of support if you're inside the organisation and spinning out. For those external to the organisation, my guess is that the costs outweigh the benefits, so better to go it alone. I'd love to hear of other people's experiences here. Incidentally, the word I'm getting is that most of the "new" money is old money relabeled, but that's just the way Australian politics works.
- pedalpete 11y ago
  I've heard similar remarks before femto, and hopefully this will improve. Data61 is trying to build a network with the local start-up scene. I'm not entirely sure how this is going to work. Partnerships is not my domain (I'm a developer/PM), so I can't speak to the legal and IP issues.
- nl 11y ago
  There is a tendency in Australia for research organizations to consider patent licensing revenue as the only way of commercializing that research. Clearly that is shortsighted, but there is such momentum (in the form of established procedures etc) that it can be hard to argue against. But hey - were are close to the worst in the OECD at commercializing research, so something has to change. (I work for an Australian CRC, but don't speak for them)

andrewstuart 11y ago

The key point of the blog post is that any tech company that succeeds in Australia does so purely on its own two feet and that governments are at best mildly supportive of technology and at worst actively hostile. Turnbull destroyed the fibre to the home NBN and I can't see high speed ubiquitous Internet access coming any time soon. Imagine if 95% of Australian home - including ones in the country areas - had super high speed Internet - what that would do for the ability of Australians to live and work away from the cities and how good that would be for regional communities. Turnbull and Abbott tossed that out. I'm cynical about Government support for technology because it usually is very indirect. More often than not any money is funnelled into an "ecosystem of helpers" rather than to the developers. So venture capitalists and incubators get the money which essentially is then substantially dedicated to paying for the salaries and offices of the incubators and venture capitalists rather than going to entrepreneurs. As the blog post points out - there are thousands of developers sitting in their kitchen coding - they do not want a desk and chair as provided by an incubator and - like Atlassian - they do not want to even talk to venture capitalists, let alone waste time and money trying to get funding from them - an extremely unlikely event because the VCs are so risk averse. If I built something that got traction - which is what the VC's want to see - and I really needed VC then I damn sure wouldn't go to Australian VCs for it - that's the path to failure - if you must have money and you have traction, go straight to Silicon Valley first.

regecks 11y ago
I really don't understand the NBN meme. I've worked for small tech companies in Australia my entire (not so long) career, and access to high internet speeds has never ever really been a problem. When you're a programmer, what is the difference to your work between 10 and 100mbps, really? Yes, regional areas should be upgraded from dialup/slow sattelite to at least 10mbps. What kind of impact will that have wrt the OP? As someone who sorely wishes that a tech scene would actually take off here, issues that I believe dwarf the NBN are: small companies can't actually afford to fund hacking/R&D, risk aversion, a culture that is generally dismissive of [the] tech [scene], lack of encouragement in school education, and tax system (also the Australian Consumer Law) that will punish you for trying. I worked from a co-working "hacker space" for a couple of years and, uh, well, there was not a lot of hacking going on. I've recently gotten into this for myself, and while mildly successful, all our customers are overseas shrug. Edit: all good points made below. Quality of life will improve for us, still skeptical as to the degree to which it will address fundamental problems with the tech economy here though.
- PebblesHD 11y ago
  The key point is that as an Australian programmer living relatively close to Sydney in an area less than a decade old, I can only get 5mbps (that's megabits) internet at the best of times, this means I am almost entirely unable to work remotely and getting access to the latest software and libraries requires hours of downloading. I can't host my own test servers because my upload speeds are in the tens of Kbps and all Australian hosting providers are prohibitively expensive. It makes it very difficult to get anything productive done away from the office, where even then I have 15-20mbps peak in the middle of North Sydney.
- catmanjan 11y ago
  The benefit of NBN wouldn't be for employees, it would be for potential customers. I've heard so many times from so many people "I'd love to use X but my internet is dodgy/stops working when it rains/is slow between 5 and bed time" Where X is any number of internet reliant service

voltagex_ 11y ago

I'm Australian and want to escape to Vancouver (for various reasons, email me if you're really interested). Can you provide any pointers?

pedalpete 11y ago
I'm Canadian, so I don't know if I can give pointers to moving to Canada. I've just dropped you an email, let me know if/how I can help you out.
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  Yeah, worded that badly - which email address did you use? I didn't get it.
  - pedalpete 11y ago
    I used the one in your profile. votagex [] same org
acrooks 11y ago
I'm a software developer from & living in Vancouver, so if you need any tips check my profile for my email.

femto 11y ago

I'm on the other side of the divide: entities partnering with CSIRO (now part of Data61) to collaboratively bring research to market. On the technical front, they are great, if a little condescending at times. It's on the "business" side where they are difficult to work with, potentially to the point of killing the venture. For a government organisation, who you might think would be on "your" side, they are as hostile as any competitor. You typically end up bound by a one sided contract, as CSIRO have enough lawyers to out lawyer any small company. You have to be careful sharing information with them, as they tend to patent their research before revealing it to their partners, and after the fact you find out that the stuff you were collaboratively discussing and contributing to is now "theirs" to be licensed back to you. There is also potential for them to do a "spin out", in competition with your existing collaboration, and then it is a bun fight to get the organisation to see the potential for conflict. I think it can be traced back to the government's push for CSIRO to pay its own way, and past successes. Since the WiFi patent bonanza, CSIRO/Data61 has "gold fever" and every industry interaction is locked down tight, to ensure that CSIRO gets a pound of flesh. Frankly, I don't think the WiFi bonanza would have happened with today's environment, as the lawyers would have smothered the life out of the project with up-front demands. As it was, the commercialisation was done largely independently of CSIRO, by partners whose names are not on the patent, and CSIRO got their cut after the event. I'd guess, data61 is a good source of support if you're inside the organisation and spinning out. For those external to the organisation, my guess is that the costs outweigh the benefits, so better to go it alone. I'd love to hear of other people's experiences here. Incidentally, the word I'm getting is that most of the "new" money is old money relabeled, but that's just the way Australian politics works.

pedalpete 11y ago
I've heard similar remarks before femto, and hopefully this will improve. Data61 is trying to build a network with the local start-up scene. I'm not entirely sure how this is going to work. Partnerships is not my domain (I'm a developer/PM), so I can't speak to the legal and IP issues.
nl 11y ago
There is a tendency in Australia for research organizations to consider patent licensing revenue as the only way of commercializing that research. Clearly that is shortsighted, but there is such momentum (in the form of established procedures etc) that it can be hard to argue against. But hey - were are close to the worst in the OECD at commercializing research, so something has to change. (I work for an Australian CRC, but don't speak for them)