Tag: economic development

Startups become a Sydney mayoral issue

Encouraging tech startups becomes an issue in the Sydney mayoral election

There’s a mayoral election pending in Sydney and the talk of the city becoming a startup hub is becoming one of the issues.

Over the next few days I’m hoping to interview each of the four major candidates on their policies regarding how they see Sydney competing against the likes of Singapore and Shanghai, let alone San Francisco or London.

In 2009, I was working with the New South Wales state government on their Digital Sydney project which looked at how the state capital could become a global centre, one of the things we found was that the city had many of the attributes successful creative centres had – diversity, tolerance and access to talent.

That project died in the face of bureaucratic ineptitude but the idea still kicks around with last week’s launch of the NSW Government’s Jobs For The Future report which, despite its opening thirty pages of buzzwords and waffle, contains some serious analysis of the state’s reliance on inward facing service industry jobs.

Refreshingly, the NSW Government strategy looks beyond the current mania around tech startups based on the Silicon Valley venture capital model – something the Federal government’s Innovation Statement failed to do – and discusses how to encourage growth and investment in other emergent sectors both inside and outside the inner city startup communities.

While Sydney can be an attractive place to live for the digital elite, it falls down in a number of areas with property being among the most expensive in the world, telecommunications being costly and unreliable coupled with a complacent corporate sector and a stingy investment community.

Making the city more attractive is going to take a number of initiatives that including easing the cost of doing business, improving links between academia and industry along with tapping into Sydney’s diverse immigrant populations.

Some of these factors are within the City of Sydney’s purview but most of them are state or Federal matters. By definition this limits what local politicians can do.

Which doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try to do them and it’s good to see these topics have become issues in the local elections. For Sydney though, one suspects it’s going to business as usual until The Lucky Country’s luck runs out.

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England’s historical mistake

Middle England’s vote to leave the UK almost certainly dooms London’s tech startup sector. It may be the least of the UK’s problems though.

A few years ago I interviewed the boss of a US software company. At the end of the discussion he mentioned how his business had moved most of its development operations to London from San Francisco.

I was surprised at this – while San Francisco is one of the most expensive places in the world to do business, London is even pricier again.

“We can get labour in the UK,” explained the CEO. “In the US if I want to bring in some developers I’ll be tied up by immigration for months, if not years. In London, I can get on the phone and have a bunch of coders on the plane from Barcelona tomorrow.”

That ease of access is now threatened by the Brexit vote, should the UK leave the EU and give up on the free movement of workers across the continent then one of Britain’s core advantages is lost.

Brexit is a historic mistake by middle England that now threatens to see the UK disintegrate as Scotland leaves and the Northern Ireland conflict reignite, the tech industry though will probably be one of the first victims.

For the EU, this is a warning that reform of its institutions has to be a priority. One of the ironies of Britain’s vote is the monstering of Greece, Spain and Ireland following the 2008 global crisis that cost the EU much of its popular support was partly to protect London’s banks.

The bigger issue though is the British voters’ distrust of institutions and elites – something that’s driving Donald Trump’s rise in the US.

We live in interesting times.

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Indonesia looks to launch a thousand startups

Not having government financial support could be the strength of the country’s 1000 Startups Movement

Can Indonesia create a startup tech culture? The 1,000 startups movement aims to try.

The movement looks to encourage tech startups across the island nation with workshops, incubators and hackathons.

Notably, the program isn’t being supported by the Indonesian government with any money, just an expression of support.

That in itself may not be a bad thing, a program run to meet the needs of communities and industry is much more likely to succeed than one being supported by bureaucrats meeting KPIs or political objectives.

A question though is how appropriate Silicon Valley’s ‘unicorn’ model for tech startups is for a developing nation like Indonesia. While the nation has a high level of mobile phone penetration and a young population, it doesn’t have the sophisticated investment community or financial markets that underpin the Bay Area’s or those of other technology hubs.

Indonesia, like most developing nations, needs to find its own model which may turn out to be very different to today’s Silicon Valley when it reaches maturity later this century.

That the 1,000 Startups Movement isn’t part of a government department gives it a chance to develop a unique Indonesian identity rather than trying to recreate an officially mandated copy of Silicon Valley. It will be fascinating to watch.

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Cisco President John Chambers on why the US should copy India

The next US President should copy Indian Prime MInister Modi in outlining a tech growth plan says Cisco’s John Chambers.

The next US President should copy Indian Prime MInister Modi in outlining a tech growth plan says Cisco’s John Chambers.

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Invite only collaboration

Can a council of wise men build a new Silicon Valley? TechSydney believes it can.

The success of Silicon Valley is partly based on the sharing of information. Can a closed group of business leaders replicate that success?

Currently I’m in the United States interviewing Australian startup founders who’ve moved to the Bay Area on why they’ve chosen to move their businesses in Silicon Valley.

Naturally there’s a whole range of reasons for relocating across the Pacific – for some most of their market was in the US, for others it was the accessibility of investors while for many the move was always part of their plan to go global.

A place you fall in love with

The almost unanimous comment though from the founders was one of the attractions of the Bay Area are the support networks, “It’s a place you fall in love with straight away – it’s the people and the attitude,” says Holly Cardew.  “People ask what can I help you with.”

Cardew, the founder of image management service PixC, sums up the consensus on the Bay Area business culture of ‘paying it forward’. Almost every entrepreneur who’d moved to San Francisco mentioned how the question “how can I help you?” was key to building a network and finding customers, staff and investors.

That openness to helping the ecosystem was greatly appreciated by Carl Hartmann, co-founder of logistics startup Temando. “I’m here today because people were kind enough to pay it forward,” he states.

Since then Harmann has become one of the ‘go-to guys’ for Australian entrepreneurs arriving in San Francisco and almost everyone we spoke to mentioned Carl as being a great help for them in obtaining initial introductions.

Building a community

Those introductions and helpful acts are essential in a community where the most valuable asset is the people, not just investors but the entire complex ecosystem of coders, lawyers, publicists, designers and various other disciplines essential for an industrial hub to thrive.

Which raises the question about yesterday’s announcement of the TechSydney initiative, a project claiming “to address the Sydney innovation ecosystem’s greatest challenge: collaboration.”

This is a good idea, and one this writer was involved in seven years ago with the failed Digital Sydney program in 2010 which aimed to bring together the disparate groups that make up Australia’s disparate tech and digital media sectors.

Government failures

Digital Sydney failed because the state government is poor executing at such initiatives so the fact TechSydney is being led by experienced startup founders, investors and advisors should give hope this attempt would be more successful.

However, TechSydney’s press release quickly dispels that hope with the opening line.

Australia’s most successful startups and global tech giants, including Atlassian, Airbnb and Airtree Ventures are backing a new not-for-profit aimed at turning Sydney into Australia’s Silicon Valley.

The “Australian Silicon Valley” line shows a focus on the current Bay Area tech startup model funded by venture capital and seed investors who are happy to forgoe profits in the hope of big capital gain when the business is acquired or goes public – the Silicon Valley Greater Fool model.

Silicon Valley itself is pivoting away from this model with businesses across the Bay Area now frantic to at least have the illusion of being profitable or on the path to making money. In narrowly promoting the tech startup model TechSydney seems to be trying to catch a wave that has already broken.

Slamming the door

The main worry from the TechSydney announcement though is that it seems to go against the open door policy that makes Silicon Valley so successful. Rather than encouraging questions and new entrants, TechSydney is slamming the door shut with only the successful and well connected invited.

The group will launch at an exclusive invitation-only Dinner on May 30 at the Powerhouse. Sydney’s top 200 technology companies will be in attendance. The first 100 have already been invited, and the group is now taking applications for the next 100 attendees at TechSydney.com.au, and is urging companies to register their interest today.

In some respects this is to be expected of the Sydney business community – the city’s industry is based upon the Rum Corps model of the colony’s early days where success is based upon connections and influence rather than being open and collaborative. This attitude underpins the ‘mates culture’ that is critical to acquiring power and wealth in New South Wales and across Australia.

With an attitude of having an ‘invite only’ group leading the push the hopes of creating an ‘Australian Silicon Valley’ are doomed. By locking out new entrants or dissenting thinkers, it’s impossible to create a vibrant hub.

Creating an open mindset

For Sydney, or any other Australian city, to succeed as a global hub in any industry that legacy of the Rum Corps, the mates network, needs to be suppressed and a more open, collaborative mindset put in place.

TechSydney can do that if its leaders choose to do so. Hopefully at their invite only meeting at the end of the month the wise men of Sydney’s tech elite will decide that an open initiative that welcomes newcomers and tolerates new ideas is the best opportunity to make the city a global leader.

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Rebuilding America’s communities

The Atlantic’s James Fallows explores how America’s communities are adapting to a new economy

One of the features of the Twenty-first Century will be how communities take over providing their own services as cash strapped governments find it difficult to provide the services citizens expect.

In many respects the United States is ahead of the rest of the world in this as the decentralised nature of US government sees many functions being the responsibilities of local county and city agencies.

Following the 2008 financial crisis many smaller cities and rural counties found their revenues crunched, for many of them this compounded thirty years of economic decline as local industries folded or fled overseas.

James Fallows in the Atlantic recounts a trip with his wife across the United States where they visited communities rebuilding themselves in the face of economic adversity.

In his long piece detailing how those different communities are rebuilding, Fallows comes to the conclusion a new political consciousness is evolving among the groups working to change their cities. While early, the common objectives of these groups will evolve into a movement.

Fallows marks what will almost certainly be a defining feature of today’s first world nations as their politics evolve around these movements.

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Does venture capital really matter?

Venture capital investments are concentrated in a handful of cities, but does it matter?

Around the world governments are trying to replicate the Silicon Valley startup model. But does that model really matter?

On the Citylab website, Richard Florida looks at which cities are the leading centres for startup investment.

Unsurprisingly eight of the top ten cities are in the United States with San Francisco and San Jose leading the pack. While London and Beijing make up the other two, the gap between the regions are striking with the Bay Area being home to over quarter of the world Venture Capital investment while the Chinese and London capitals com in at around two percent.

global-startup-cities

While these proportions are impressive, the numbers are not. The total VC investment identified by Florida in 2012 is $45 billion, according to the Boston Consulting Group there was $74 Trillion of funds under management in 2014.

That makes the tech venture capital sector .06% of the global funds management industry.

In the US alone over 2013 small businesses raised $518 billion in bank loans, more than ten times the global VC industry.

What this scale shows is how small the tech startup sector really is compared to the broader economy and, more importantly, how the Venture Capital model perfected in the suburbs of Silicon Valley is only one of many ways to fund new businesses.

Even in the current centre of the startup world, it’s estimated less than eight percent of San Francisco’s workforce are employed by the tech industry although that goes up to nearly a quarter in San Jose.

None of this is to say the startups are not a good investment – Thomas Edison’s first company raised $300,000 in 1878, $12 million in today’s dollars, from New York investors including JP Morgan. The Edison Electric Light Company, while relatively modest went on to being one of the best investments of the 19th Century.

That twelve million dollar investment looks like a bargain today and it’s highly likely we’ll see some of today’s startups having a similar impact on society to what Edison did 140 years ago.

Edison’s success created jobs and wealth for New Jersey and New York which helped make the region one of the richest parts of the planet during the Twentieth Century and that opportunity today is what focuses governments when looking at encouraging today’s startups.

So it’s understandable governments would want to encourage today’s Thomas Edisons (and Nikola Teslas) to set up in their cities. The trick is to find the funding models that work for tomorrow’s businesses, not what works for one select group today.

While the Silicon Valley venture capital model receives the publicity today, it isn’t the model for funding most businesses. Founders, investors and governments have plenty of other options to explore.

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