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You might not know it, but Australia is a great place for a startup.

There are a lot of Australian startups, all taking advantage of the country’s incredible energy.

Sydney s the largest hub for Australian startups, with 35% of the startup companies in Australia being located there. Melbourne has 14% and Brisbane has 9%.

Part of the reason there are so many Australian startups is theta the Australian economy is going very strong.

Australia has the world’s 3th-largest economy with the ninth-highest per capita income. The job market there is also very sold. Salaries are pretty high.

Thriving Australian Startups

Checkbox

The founder of Checkbox, Evan Wong, has built two business so far and her is just 24 years old.

Checkbox is a legislation digitizing platform that recently won the grand prize at the annual StartCon pitch competition.

This means that the Checkbox team will go on to represent Australia at the Startup World Cup in 2018. They have won numerous other awards, including regtech of the year at the 2017 Australian FinTech Awards and was a 2017 Westpac Innovation Challenge winner.

:Different

Australia’s property market is on fire and startups have been trying to ease the pain. This Australian startup is one of them. It looks to make enting and property management easier for small-time owners.

It is run by Google and Uber alumni Mina Radhakrishnan and Ruwin Perera. They have recently completed a $1.3 million seed round. Their platform is beginning to catch on so well that they have recently had to disable their advertising.

Sprout Stack

This startup is changing how fresh produce is grown and distributed in an environmentally friendly way. They use using vertical hydroponics in a highly controlled environment called the Sprout Stack Farm. this is a modular location and is highly automated.

The Sprout Stack Farm locations are built using shipping containers, meaning the environment can be precisely controlled within.

The result is year-round, chemical-free, locally grown fresh produce. There are currently three of these farms, which make use of the company’s own IoT automation system.

Uno Home Loans

This platform helps users to search, compare and settle a home loan all in one place. Users can get as much help as they need from a team of experts or go it on their own if they prefer.

Uno envisions a future where people can connect their bank accounts, upload documents and in a matter of seconds, and are presented with the best options for their needs, all with complete visibility.

Persollo

This is the world’s first platform for targeted social selling that is powered by AI and data. It allows influencers and brands to convert their social media engagement into sales in less than 15 seconds.

It is designed for mobile social media and has a single-page checkout that allows payments through any social network or key influencer website. It has helped more than 700 businesses across 16 countries to increase their conversion rates.

CliniCloud

They believe in the power of technology and design to help deliver a better healthcare experience. Their first product, a connected medical kit for the home is now used by thousands of families around the world and by leading telehealth, remote patient monitoring platforms, and health systems to gather patient data with ease.

Speedlancer

Online freelancing businesses are not new. But the startup Speedlancer offers a unique value to the industry. Founded by Adam Stone, Speedlancer is one of the few successful startups based in Sydney that are making a name for themselves. It provides a marketplace of over 450 freelancers with a unique value: all tasks get delivered within four hours.

Tablo

Tablo makes publishing a real book as easy as publishing a blog. You can write or upload a book and publish it in eBook & paperback to 40,000 retailers, from Amazon and Barnes & Noble to thousands of physical stores around the world. It’s the largest distribution network available to authors, and the easiest to use.

TheIconic

Ecommerce is a huge box of business these days and when we talk about TheIconic, it is Australia’s most popular fashion retailer. Founded by Adam Jacobs and Cameron Votan, the startup gathered a seed funding of $26 million backed by the tech giant Rocket Internet.

Tribe

Founded by a popular radio and TV host, Jules Lund, Tribe is a marketplace for content creators that connects them with brands around the globe. It was launched in 2015 and, since then, it has been creating waves in the industry with 2,600 brand campaigns.

Afterpay

Launched in 2014, Afterpay is one of the successful Australian startups that has revolutionized the Australian way of making payments. Founded by Nick Molnar, Afterpay is an easy-to-use payment method that enables anyone to pay in 4 equal fortnightly installments.

ShippIt

Founded in Sydney by William On and Rob Hango-Zada in 2014, Shippit is a cloud-based startup. It powers delivery services for up to 300 merchants and businesses. With a total equity funding of $1.63 million, the startup is a modern-day shipping solutions for carriers and consumers.

Campaign Monitor

A Sydney-based startup of 2004, Campaign Monitor made headlines with a seed funding of over $250 million in 2014. It took a decade of persistent effort and hardwork to make this email marketing company a massive success. Founded by Ben Richardson and Dave Greiner, the startup now has over 250 employees with offices in Sydney, London and San Francisco.

99Designs

Founded in 2008 by Matt Mickiewicz, 99designs is the world’s largest marketplace for graphic designers. Mr. Mickiewicz is best known for being the Co-founder of SitePoint and Flippa. His startup, 99designs connects over 22,000 graphic designers with businesses from more than 190 countries.

Canva

Canva needs no introduction. It is one of the leading graphic design platforms designers around the globe love and adores. So far, this successful startup has raised $42 million and used to be valued at $345 million. Today, as of January this year, it has grown to $1bn market valuation.

XY Gaming

XY Gaming is one of the largest esports tournament platforms, where users compete for cash prizes across games like League of Legends, Dota 2 and Smite. XY Gaming organizes asynchronous esports tournaments, where they automatically monitor the players in-game statistics and award them scores based on their performance, creating a convenient and hassle-free way to compete.

SafetyCulture

Their mission is to help companies achieve safer and higher quality workplaces all around the world through innovative, low-cost mobile-first products.

Goodfilms

Goodfilms is a better way to discover and remember films you’ll love. It puts your friends’ opinions and recommendations at your fingertips, instead of averages of millions of strangers.

Effective Measure

Differentiate your brand, app or website using demographic and behavioral analytics. Narratiive helps you gain exposure to local and international agencies, helping you win more advertising revenue.

Stitch

Macropod Software

Macropod Software Pty Ltd makes software to help devs, designers and their clients work well together. Macropod was founded in 2011 by Alan Downie and Matt Milosavljevic. The business originally formed under the name Bugherd, the name of their simple point and click bug tracker. Bugherd is the perfect tool for reporting website bugs and feedback.

HappyCo

HappyCo develops a suite of software to improve the efficiency of operations in the field.
The Happy Inspector product helps their customers to replace their paper-based forms and workflow with a customizable mobile app and powerful web-based software to improve their efficiency.

Buddy

Buddy makes IoT data usable. We’ve created technology that pipes raw data generated from IoT or “connected” devices straight into business intelligence tools like SAP, Salesforce.com, ZenDesk, Geckoboard, Tableau, etc… with no custom hardware, firmware or special connectivity.

Ninja Blocks

DesignCrowd

DesignCrowd.com is a marketplace for crowdsourced creativity. They help business outsource or ‘crowdsource’ graphic, logo and web design ideas from designers around the world.

Rome2rio

Rome2rio is a multimodal transport search engine that launched in April 2011. Rome2rio’s platform is capable of long-distance (inter-city) trip planning as well as local (intra-city) journey planning.

indee labs

CoinJar

CoinJar is a next-gen personal finance account powered by Bitcoin. Move seamlessly between currencies and pay anyone globally, using the world’s fastest payment network.

UpGuard

UpGuard is the first Cyber Resilience Platform for the cloud and the data center.

Veryfi

Snappr

Snappr makes professional photography easy and affordable for everyone. Make a booking in 60 seconds and get instantly matched with a pro at a very reasonable fixed price. Their photographers are rigorously pre-vetted to ensure a very high quality of the product.

BlackSquare

Rezdy

Rezdy is the global distribution system connecting booking agencies to complementary tourist attraction businesses. They make reserving “things to do” as easy as purchasing a flight.

Airtasker

Airtasker is a fast-growing online and mobile marketplace for local services and temporary labor. They are revolutionizing the way people and businesses get more done by connecting real-time labor requirements with one of the world’s most under-utilized assets – people power.

QLC

QLC provides scalable access to digital work experience anywhere in the world. They connect you to remote internships with VC-backed startups, introduce you to an ecosystem of mentors, and provide digital skills training through online and video materials.

Why this startup environment grows in Australia

The minimum wage in Australia is $18.22 AUD ($14.48 USD). There has not been an economic recession in Australia in 26 years. Homeownership rates are very high, even with elevated home prices, especially in major hubs like Sydney and Melbourne.

The state governments support a strong and robust public education system. 40 out of the 43 Australian universities are public universities.

The government provides very generous student loans and subsidies. Australia has a universal public health system and a high standard of medical care.

Even with all these advantages, there are obstacles for Australian startups. There are a few primary hurdles to startups in Australia:

Culture

Australia’s business culture is due for a change. The country has a strong sense of national humility. Displays of success are occasionally met with some very unpleasant hostility. This is called “tall poppy syndrome”.

This refers to a slower that grows taller than the other flowers around it and is thought to need to be cut down to size to fit in (and make the other flowers feel better).

Many Australian startups are working together to counteract tall poppy syndrome by creating a culture of shared success and collaboration.

There is also another cultural issue. Startups do best when their founders and founding teams have a driving passion and hunger for success. Many startup founders in Australia are older and already doing very well financially.

The average participant at Fishburners, a not-for-profit dedicated to scaling Australian startups, is 36. These Australian startup founders are often in their mid-30s and 40s.

They have often worked for one of the top 4 global accounting firms or in banking environments for more than a decade before breaking out on their own. This fits into the cultural norm where a school to university to corporate career path is celebrated.

In order for the Australian startup scene to really succeed and thrive, startup founders need to fight off the comfortable business atmosphere and bring in high levels of energy that a good startup atmosphere needs.

Risk Averse Investing

Investors are vital for startups. Australian venture capitalists are often very risk0severse. This is a problem, for Australian startups, who need investors who are willing to take a chance, sometimes a very large one.

Even with a healthy economy, however, investment in local startup companies is low. Because of some generous tax incentives, people of all ages in Australia have an unusually high level of investment in property.

The Australian government makes this worse because it mandates people save for retirement through employer-provided superannuation. This is a compulsory arrangement to put retirement savings into a fund that is not accessible until retirement age.

The superannuation is taxed at a lower rate. Australia has one of the world’s largest superannuation funds at $2.3 trillion. Only 0.011% of that is invested in local venture capital.

By way of contrast, US pension funds commit around 2% of funds under management to this asset class, which is 180 times multiple of the Australian numbers.

Ending thoughts on these Australian startups

There are a number of Australian startups, even though they have had to clear significant hurdles, and many more are up-and-coming on the horizon. If you’re looking at the startup world, don’t leave Australia out of the mix!

If you liked this article with Australian startups, you should check out these as well:

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