Pete Cooper’s ESS Review Submission
My personal submission to the government ESS Review based on the various initiatives, accelerators, educators etc… I am involved in across the Australian and regional tech and tech enabled startup ecosystem.
There are 33 recommendations across 7 categories to make Australia more effective!
Feedback and comments are very welcome.
Looks like a lot of my circle of contacts are now officially marketers not just ‘mere’ geek entrepreneurs.
When Hell Froze Over – in the Harvard Business Review. An excellent article from Steve Blank that is a must read.
I spoke recently to a few hundred people at Customs House in Sydney CBD down near Circular Quay, a gorgeous old sandstone building.
If you know anyone that is learning or just entering the tech startup space in Australia this playlist is a MUST WATCH.
The City Of Sydney (CoS) Lord Mayor Clover Moore introduced the program of professional tech startup industry experts –
The genesis of the night was a startup round table of 20 leaders called by the City of Sydney strategic development unit lead by Andrea and Charnelle after our chats earlier in the year. This unit has the rare skill of planning up to 20 years in advance which is great to see but I wouldn’t want that challenge…
The round table was chaired by City of Sydney CEO Monica Barrone who has been a steady supporter of the program and the ecosystem. They made it happen along with Jo Kelly and Gail Marshall and the CoS even rolled out the green carpet for us. Huge Thanks.
The event was oversubscribed and post event survey made us all very happy –
Both of which are remarkable.
The next one has been scheduled for September. I hope they book the Sydney Town Hall for 500 people cause I think we can fill it, then we can get them all to attend SydStart too.
They rolled out the green carpet for the startups 101 night at customs house in the sydney cbd.
It wasn’t xmas but this was the most recent wide angle view photo I had, awesome no?
People often ask me why are professional tech startups companies different from normal small business companies.
More specifically I would say tech startups with a focus on disruptive innovation that are run by professional entrepreneurs are VERY different because of the following main points.
But why is this question important?
This question is important because it guides or regulators in helping and hindering these new powerhouses of the economy. After all, most importantly very few people can create millions and even billions of dollars in new wealth from a garage with two people yet this is widely accepted as reality for our very special industry.
No doubt there are others too, add them in the comments and they will be included in the next version of this post.
Before posting this I had the pleasure of listening to the CFO of Google Patrick Pichette speak on a similar topic and my key takeaways on what he sees as key attributes of successful entrepreneurs were
Powerful words indeed.
Numerous people have made attempts at mapping the Sydney and wide Australian Technology Startup Ecosystem. This is ours and we aim to be the most comprehensive not in duplicating the data but in pointing to the major hubs or collation efforts by others.
We also have our own internal data at Cooper & Co which we share with paying clients and use for for-profit investment profiling.
Rather than further muddy the waters I thought it was worth while laying out the current landscape so everyone is aware of the major lists/maps etc..
Are there any others out there? There are obviously others like tech crunch but they are so main stream they have been excluded.
In terms of tools used to build this ‘maps’ the main ones seem to be
In terms of approach to updating the main ones seems to be
Would warmly welcome suggestions and pointers to other lists out there.
Time to stop plodding Australia. It is time to go screaming into these amazing tech enabled blue sky opportunities. Forget the resources red ‘ocean’. Grab hold of reality and read on…
Throughout the short but eventful history of Australia we have been often referred to by domestic and international commentators as riding on the back of something, riding on someones coat tails or basically not having originality of thought or independence of action.
I think these commentators are incorrect and purely demonstrating their own short sighted views and lack of context, especially lack of awareness of the unique or at least highly differentiated inventions, businesses, products and services we have created.
These creations have come in turn from unique circumstances not least being the tyranny of distance, scarcity of resources like water, food, population, manufacturing, technology, skills and of course funds.
Frankly these are just excuses.
Any entrepreneur knows scarcity just helps rapid decision making and outcomes.
So we have had our fair share of riding –
Riding on the sheep’s back
Riding on the farmers’s back
Riding on the miner’s back
And of course riding on the coat tails of England, America and more recently China, India or even just ‘Asia’.
Well now it is time for us to be –
Riding on the Geek Entrepreneur’s back
What does this new future look like?
A brand? Like Silicon Beach Australia? Glad our PM finally heard this recently, around 5 years after the term was in wide use in the tech entrepreneur community.
A network? Like NBN? No doubt it will help. No doubt we all want fibre speeds. But how long will it take and what price will we pay both now for implementation and longer term through lack of innovation or competition for this new monopoly. It is taking decades to reintroduce effective telecoms competition after the Telstra (Telecom) monopoly, this new monopoly will cause even greater risks to creative commerce and privacy. It is a little bit like superannuation, an enormous honey pot of data (and value added revenue), too tempting for government to ignore.
A community? Like sydstart, fishburners, silicon beach, aesy.org and so many others around the nation in every state and territory capital? Probably, yes. But learning to encourage and support these fledgling future economic engines is key. Remove their barriers don’t add to them or ignore them. Lately I have attended a string of political announcements promising awareness but is anyone actually listening and acting? No, they keep quoting an understanding of disruptive technology without having read the book. No, they fund and promote the largest events for startups which are actually run by millionaires and are only one third of the real thing which is run by real startups and real community.
We need simple changes to –
Enable superannuation funds to invest in startups via simple aggregators run by corporates and industry experts (not ICT experts and not advertising centric digital creative service providers but true entrepreneurial tech startup industry experts – there is a huge difference – despite many common tech skills and some commercial skills).
Enable startups to pay tax only on realisation of the return. For example on trade sale, on IPO, on change of control or on raising of material amounts of capital. This allows employees, co-founders and early enablers (mentors, angels, accelerators like pushstart, startmate and founders institute) to participate in very early stage high risk ventures without being literally killed by paperwork and capital gains tax before a cent is realised. It is only common sense.
Create more pure computer science graduates. All the real innovators from google australia to the tech startups from atlassian to freelancer to fishburners all know this. They are the job creators and export income generators and wealth creators for our nation. Some universities are doing well despite challenges to their business model but dumbing down computer science is the fast track to unskilled oblivion. We need more pure specialists that understand ground up technology (build a new quantum computing capability or ever a smarter/faster mobile phone or phone operating system – but please, please, please – not another programmer of trivial iphone or android apps that doesn’t understand the whole tech stack).
Actively promote at city, state and federal level a national roadshow of our leaders to visit the heart of this community in Sydney not to mention their ‘vital organs’ i.e. peers in each state and understand the transformative power.
Only when each leader at each level understands what we already have and supports it much much earlier in the lifecycle than they currently do and stops talking down our ecosystem (e.g recent comments by senior people from commercialisation australia at conferences and popular media) will we truly thrive.
The good news is our smartest people are going to The Valley and New York and coming back to share and leverage local advantages and natural assets that you don’t have to be a visionary to see or utilise.
The good news is our smartest people are getting funded by truly disruptive funding and community enabling technologies and the people behind them others (like our government, bureaucrats and media) are yet to even comprehend.
The good news is these disruptive innovators are creating jobs while other countries strategies focus on job destroying efficiencies.
The good news is this is being accompanied by social innovation that is transformative.
I hope Andrew Stoner, Greg Pearce, Julia Gillard, Doron Ben Meir, Asher Moses, Peter Grey and a few others get to read this and actually follow the links rather than skim the headlines. I hope these same people stop using the same old excuses and put downs. I hope they stop using the same old examples of ‘success’ that are literally years old (good though they may be).
We are world class in places, lets nurture and grow those, it just takes a little awareness, alignment and encouragement not even much money or much time.
We could be flying on the geeks back if we do it right.
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