

Impressions of SXSW (and how Australian startups stack up) - dtalic
http://www.dinotalic.com/blog/impressions-from-sxsw-interactive-and-what-it-means-for-australian-startups/
An Australian product manager goes to SXSW for the first time and gives impressions. He also compares the US startup community to that in Australia.
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mirsadm
I agree with this to a certain extent but it doesn't help that the Australian
governments only interest is digging crap from the ground. There are no
incentives for tech companies to stay in Australia and the government seems to
have no interest in providing them. Now you have this situation where the cost
of living is also reaching insane levels so as a start up it is a bad place to
be in my option (I am from Melbourne) .

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verelo
The focus of the government there right now is to dig rocks up and sell them
for profit, its going to work for the next 40-50+ years at least...which is
more than I can say for social media, so i kind of get what they're up to.

While the startup life is great (i'm part of it, Australia, but in Toronto
Canada), funding small companies is something that a government is more
interested to do when unemployment is high, which in Australia it is not.

Australia tends to expect the government to solve the problems, i think the
right thing to do is make it happen for yourself. Dont expect the government
to fund your startup, make the rules startup friendly or even care that you
exist. They have their priorities, and if your idea is good enough...you dont
need them to help you.

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wisty
A bigger problem is the brain drain government spending creates. Why risk your
neck for a startup, when you could work on a fat government IT project?

And digging up rocks is _not_ a good long-term plan. The commodity market has
a little thing called "mean reversion". Basically, nobody cares where the
rocks come from. Australia has a _slight_ advantage over other countries,
because our rocks are pretty good quality, we have reasonable governance and
management, and we are close to Asia.

But, there's only a massive premium because China's demand has grown faster
than supply. Once the resource companies pull their finger out and start
digging faster, prices will drop right down. Rocks aren't iPads - nobody cares
where they come from. If Brazil or South Africa or Nigeria or Russia can dig
up similar rocks, or China funds a bunch of new resource companies in
Australia, supply will start exceeding demand and the price will go back to
around the cost of production.

It takes a long time to get the mines set up (there's something like a year's
lead time on the _tyres_ of mining trucks), so there's a few years (maybe a
decade or so) in which miners can charge as much as the market will bear.
After a while, supply will increase and the market will start asking for big
discounts.

That's how commodities work.

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ramiyer21a
Seems like the link goes to a domain parking page. That seemed to download a
trojan on my system. At least the file said giggedin_something.htm.

Be very careful.

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dtalic
Not sure what you're seeing but I can't reproduce the problem. I've checked
both the links to my site and giggedin (which I link out to from the blog
post) and they both seem fine. Giggedin is just a Launchrock page.

Which browser and OS are you running?

