Tony is the leading entrepreneur in Australia, a board member of Commercialisation Australia, a mentor and a startup founder. Before the presentation Tony asked everyone to login to Zeeting, a ‘second’ screen for presentation, allowing people to see slides and interact with a presenter using a personal mobile device.  A lot of information in this presentation was based on the PWC report on entrepreneurship in Australia.  Some interesting facts that learned through I this talk:

50% of Australians are interested in entrepreneurship in contrast to 65% in the USA. 20% of those who are interested in entrepreneurship actually goes to start a business. According to this talk a bulk part of startups (64%) are launched in greater Sydney. Alarming 73% of  startup businesses that have been started will fail after the 1^st year in operation.

There are several obstacles that restrict the growth of startups in Australia. First, is the lack of capital that flows into Australian startups. For instance, VC funding per capita is about ten time smaller in Australia than in the US or Israel. Second obstacle is Australians’ fear of failure; a number of people in Australia believe that if one fails once then he or she will not be given another opportunity.

In contrast to the US and particularly in the Silicon Valley, failing is normal for a startup. Venture capital community in the US often will often have more trust to an entrepreneur who has an experience of failure.  Fortunately, the fear of failure becomes less pronounced these days and 40% of Australian startup entrepreneurs who failed the first time will launch a startup again.

The IT/software businesses dominate a startup ecosystem in Australia which is driven by founders’ ability to start such businesses with relatively small amount of capital and growing demand for innovative IT products & services. Large companies recognise the importance of Big Data that provides competitive advantage. Corporations acquire tech startups as many large companies find that acquisition is one of the most effective strategies to bring innovation. Tony presented several examples in Australia when large companies acquired innovative startups. One such example is Grabble from Wollongong that was acquired by Wallmart.

If we look at the Australian startup success stories majority of those are in the software/IT industry. However, there is much smaller presence of life sciences startups that often have even higher risk of failure and require much greater up front investment than software based startups. In our next post we will discuss useful resources that exist for Australian life science entrepreneurs.

The presentation was tailored to tech startups that capitalise on disruptive innovation and have potential for rapid growth, global reach and significant returns.  However, majority of entrepreneurs in Australia are owners of traditional small businesses that are not based on disruptive innovation.  Such businesses will most likely rely on personal investment, money from family & friends and traditional bank loans as opposed to funding from equity investments.

At Planning4business we help small businesses find most appropriate funding opportunities and meet their financial objectives.

by

The post How to create a successful global Start-Up Company in Australia appeared first on Planning Services for Your Business.