Being a Startup in Australia “Macropod”

When the founders of Macropod – the firm behind tools including Bugherd, Stack, and Brief – Alan Downie and Matt Milosavljevic first started the business more than four years ago, they were eager to move to the US in search of greater support for the company, but that quickly faded. Being a Startup in Australia “Macropod”

In a blog post, Downie wrote that for the first six months of starting out, the pair travelled back and forth from the US in the hopes of securing capital, but said that while there was “Lukewarm interest”, for the most part, investors were more interested in whether the company was going to permanently move to the US. Speaking to ZDNet, Downie said he suspected there were two main reasons why there was so much interest about their possible relocation. Being a Startup in Australia “Macropod”

“For most investors we spoke to in 2011, investing in Australian companies was just something they hadn’t been exposed to or even considered. If you have a bunch of unknowns involved in investing in an Australian entity, and you can make them all disappear by simply having the company move to the US, then that’s what your natural inclination will be … it’s in the too hard basket; invest in a US entity instead.”

Aside from the company’s positive experience with 500 Startups, an early stage seed fund and accelerator program founded by PayPal and Google alumni that offered them access to mentors and potential investors, Downie said that being in the US was difficult. Being a Startup in Australia “Macropod”

“For us to go to the US, we’d have to have some pretty amazing opportunities that weren’t available here, but there just weren’t any obvious benefits beyond raising money,” Downie wrote.

“The thing is, there’s a bunch of really smart people here in Australia, but they’re very hard to find. In the US, it’s much easier to have a chance meeting with someone who can help you. That won’t happen here,” he said.

“There are only a few startup accelerators that take in maybe seven to eight companies each per year here, compared to dozens of incubators taking in hundreds of startups annually in the US. In the same time that Startmate here have incubated 40 companies, 500 Startups have incubated over 1,000.”.

“The discrepancy in angel and venture capital funding is similarly huge. If you’re looking for funding, Australia honestly isn’t a great place to do it. It’s definitely improving, though. In any case, good companies will find money no matter where they are founded,” he said.

Downie listed the likes of Atlassian, BigCommerce, Campaign Monitor, 99 Designs, Envato, Scriptrock, CultureAmp, Bugcrowd, and Buildkite as proof that Australian startups can be successful. Being a Startup in Australia “Macropod”

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