Impressions of SXSW (and how Australian startups stack up)

Impressions of SXSW (and how Australian startups stack up)(dinotalic.com)

15 points by dtalic 14 years ago | 5 comments

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.

mirsadm 14 years ago |

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) .

verelo 14 years ago | |

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.

wisty 14 years ago | | |

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.

ramiyer21a 14 years ago |

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.

dtalic 14 years ago | |

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?