

Australian Government doesn't understand startups, gov responds - abrimo
http://blog.mijura.com/post/11904346350

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angusgr
I know it's at a different scale, but I'd be interested to know what
Australian HNers think of the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme:
[http://www.deewr.gov.au/Employment/JSA/EmploymentServices/Pa...](http://www.deewr.gov.au/Employment/JSA/EmploymentServices/Pages/NEIS.aspx)

(In short: program runs via Centrelink to give 13 weeks small business
training then 52 weeks of income support allowance while you start a business.
Available to anyone who would otherwise be eligible for an unemployment
allowance.)

I'm told the business training is very simplistic, but from what I understand
they will accept people looking to start any business.

Getting just enough to scrape by for 12 months while focusing on your business
seems like a good opportunity to me.

~~~
Joakal
I tried to get into it. They have wanted solid metrics, customers willing to
buy, etc. And I haven't even started my project because I was in middle of
university. I later decided to bootstrap, gut a lot of stuff and continue
doing university.

Although they'll pay and train you once you get in, there's no assistance if
you wanted to bootstrap. The person was very nice but said while it's a pretty
novel project and nationally beneficial, that's how the program is at the
moment.

It seems like they only wanted to fund small competing businesses, not
innovative businesses.

You would be more better off with this scheme:

<http://www.commercialisationaustralia.gov.au/>

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scheff
Good work,

I came to the same conclusion after 4 years of trying to get traction with my
startup in Australia. The Australian government has futile support for tech
innovation, which is a major failing considering our talent and adoption of
technology is world-leading in some cases.

We need to be innovating as heavily as we can if we plan to have an economy
post-mining boom. Currently our talent disappears overseas where they are
respected and appreciated, whereas they could be doing miraculous things in Oz
instead. You look at the buzz of energy and productivity in Silicon Valley and
realise that just a couple of skilled people can create jobs for hundreds and
boost the economy.

My own experience - I wrote to the then Tourism Minister, Fran Bailey,
explaining that Australia needed to innovate its tourism marketing or perish,
and that I had an innovative solution ready to go. The response was "Sorry, we
can't help you." And today, after one failed marketing campaign after another,
Tourism Australia has come around to the idea I put forward - get tourists to
spread the word themselves (see <http://www.nothinglikeaustralia.com.au>)

Therein lies the value of innovation - several failed multi-million dollar
marketing campaigns VS a lean startup reaching the same conclusion and
offering the same solution.

I injected all of my time and money into the venture, but didn't have the
necessary support to make it a genuine business operation.

I have lost patience with this government, but I haven't given up with startup
ventures, I just won't depend on our govt to achieve success.

~~~
cbs
>Therein lies the value of innovation - several failed multi-million dollar
marketing campaigns VS a lean startup reaching the same conclusion and
offering the same solution.

Hindsight is awesome, isn't it? They had now way to know that your startup
wasn't destine to fail, but now that your idea has been successfully executed
by someone else you feel vindicated. Great, but that doesn't retroactively
make you less of a risk back then nor does it prove that you would have
executed on your idea as well as the people they went with.

~~~
scheff
I knew with foresight that it was the correct premise because I saw it working
already in other formats. The only question remaining was "what is the best
format/execution to make it work?" and that is the uncertainty of which you
speak. Innovation allows us to rapidly fail and learn so as to come up with
the correct solution. Tourism Australia's answer was to keep creating multi-
million dollar marketing campaigns, which teaches us little and wastes
millions of dollars, and takes months of retrospective analysis to learn
anything. All that we've learnt from the marketing campaigns is "People aren't
as interested in Australia as they were 20 years ago." With a tech startup
solution we would have learnt a number of things through observation of how
the target demographic interact with each other and with tourism operators,
plus what they best respond to, and therefore how best to promote Australian
tourism products to them.

------
duncan_bayne
Agreed that Govt. here is clueless, but I'd appreciate you not lobbying for
them to take more of my money to give to your startup.

~~~
abrimo
Yea I was hoping they would reallocate the money they are currently spending.
For example, they give over 60m a year to private VC firms which 'manage' the
money by making very few investments. They've also committed almost as much to
Commercialisation Australia which doesn't seem to go anywhere.

The current government programs are costly and not yielding many results. I'm
hoping they could take a fraction of that for programs such as the ones in
Singapore or Chile and get far better results.

~~~
nl
The "correct" government policy to encourage high-tech startups isn't as
obvious as you seem to think.

Steve Blank recently recommended that the Finnish government "might want to
consider putting themselves out of the public funding business by using public
capital to kick-start private venture capital firms, incubators and
accelerators" [1]

That's quite a similar model to what the Australian government does already.

I've been involved in a few companies that had some funding from the old COMET
program[2] as well as the new Commercialisation Australia[3] programs, and
they aren't as useless as you seem to think.

As you note many of the current set of Australian startups have been funded by
overseas (ie, Silicon Valley) venture funds. Given that _Australian venture
funds_ don't see the opportunity it isn't at all clear why the government
would think differently.

In my experience there is a lot more awareness and support at lower levels of
government (state and local level), where startups are seen as supporting
local employment. For example, NSW recently announced $3M in funding for
"creative digital content" and there are a range of different programs in
other states.

The Silicon Beach group is very involved in thinking about this. They operate
mostly out of Sydney, but have an online presence too[5].

[1] <http://steveblank.com/2011/10/07/the-helsinki-spring/>

[2]
[http://www.ausindustry.gov.au/InnovationandRandD/Commerciali...](http://www.ausindustry.gov.au/InnovationandRandD/CommercialisingEmergingTechnologiesCOMET/Pages/CommercialisingEmergingTechnologies\(COMET\).aspx)

[3]
[http://www.commercialisationaustralia.gov.au/WhatWeOffer/Pag...](http://www.commercialisationaustralia.gov.au/WhatWeOffer/Pages/default.aspx)

[4] [http://www.startupsmart.com.au/finance/new-$3m-fund-for-
nsw-...](http://www.startupsmart.com.au/finance/new-$3m-fund-for-nsw-creative-
digital-projects/201110134173.html)

[5] <http://siliconbeachaustralia.org/>

~~~
zzygan
Excellent links. Very interesting.

The problem I see is precisely the point you raise " Given that Australian
venture funds don't see the opportunity it isn't at all clear why the
government would think differently"

Is there a way to help venture funds find the startups that are actually
happening here in Australia. Unfortunately not all of us have the opportunity
to reach out overseas for funding

~~~
nl
_Is there a way to help venture funds find the startups that are actually
happening here in Australia_

I don't think finding them is a problem. I think that venture funds in
Australia (generally speaking) don't have the skills to evaluate
software/internet startups and there isn't a track record of Australian
startups providing large enough financial returns for venture funds to be
interested.

My view is that Australian venture funds aren't an interesting source of
capital - they can't add value beyond investing money at best. Angel funding
is where the action is in Australia, and there are some interesting groups
doing good work in that area (StartMate, PushStart, Pollenizer,
Innovyz(maybe?)).

------
cbs
>However the government, culture and venture capital industry in Australia are
still far behind. Few grant programs exist

Are you really suggesting the reason they don't "get it" is that the
government tit isn't big enough to help you bootstrap your for-profit
enterprise? If I was an Australian, I'd be offended.

------
apedley
The current Australian government doesn't understand economics either. A
mentality of take from businesses and give to the poor. They might realize one
day that if they provided more for small businesses, there would be more jobs
and hence less poor.

