I'm a French citizen living in Singapore after Sydney (in one of the companies you quote). I think you get a lot of things right there, and they apply to other

I'm a French citizen living in Singapore after Sydney (in one of the companies you quote). I think you get a lot of things right there, and they apply to other countries as well. Where I disagree: - Australia is a much bigger market than it looks because Australians are connected to the internet and have high disposable income. For example, only 10% of South East Asia's 618 million inhabitants are connected (and many, only on smartphones), and their basket value is as much as 5x lower for similar products, so you could almost argue that Australia is a bigger market than the whole of South East Asia! 70-90% of e-commerce depending on the products was coming from abroad in 2011 according to CBA crunching 1 million of their customers' accounts - that's heaps of local opportunities. - the government does not need to "support" young businesses, it just needs to get out of the way of entrepreneurs and investors. To be fair, compared to most of Europe, it does. Australia is a capitalist Anglo-Saxon country and if you are a citizen, it's pretty easy to start up. Singapore recently made it much harder to get government money, for example SPRING funding is only available to companies with investments from an approved list of VCs, and they have to be Singapore-based, but it still wins because it's the easiest country with the rule of law anywhere in the world to start a company in, especially when it comes to things like visas being granted in a few hours or days. - you forgot to talk about immigration law. It's better than the US' yearly H1-B lottery, but still pretty hard to import technical talent, which is scarce locally. Some of us get in for a year under the WHV scheme, which is a nice way to test foreign talent before you apply for sponsorship. From memory, of the 120 developers who applied to our last job posting, around 20% were from the US, 5% from Australia, 50% from Europe and the rest from countries where visas will be painful. If this is representative, Australian and US immigration policies hurt businesses. Australia's entrepreneur visa requires 1 million AUD capitalization, which is ridiculous - in Singapore you can theoretically capitalize your company with 50k SGD, and then apply for an Employment Pass for yourself; all you will need is someone else on an Employment Pass or better to act as director for the company in the meantime. Guess where all the Asian startups incorporate! But you are correct that there is a hell of a lot of places (such as tax law, with equity as you state or even with income, capital gains and corporate tax) where the government could make Australia considerably more competitive, and the funding environment is really bad (although I've found Australian investors much smarter in aggregate than elsewhere in the region).