Australia’s startup world glorifies venture capital as the holy grail—the insider’s ticket to fast scaling and billion-dollar valuations. FOMO sets in when headlines splash record-breaking funding rounds, fuelling a culture that views VC backing as the singular metric for success. As an ecosystem, we fixate on spinning the VC roulette wheel. Even founders who don’t… Read more »
Mentorloop is no longer your typical startup. For starters, it’s been operating profitably for more than two years after pivoting the business away from a growth-at-all-costs strategy in response to 2020’s initial pandemic-led funding freeze. Now its cofounders argue that other founders should look to the “thriving middle” with their business and consider steering towards… Read more »
Should you, or should you not take investor money? There are two schools of thought, and both have merit; it just depends on what you want and how quickly you want to achieve it. For example, if you are a 21-year-old tech grad building a software company out of your garage, and you want to… Read more »
Given the current economic conditions, it’s gotten a lot harder for startups to raise the kind of funding rounds that were once the norm a few years ago. Either by choice or because they haven’t been able to close a round, this has led many startups to consider whether the VC path is actually the… Read more »
Few startups have the luxury of big budgets in their early days. This five-step plan will help take that shoestring budget the extra mile. “A big business starts small,” as Richard Branson once said. If you have a great idea and no money, you are walking a well-worn path. Sadly, many fail – not through… Read more »
2020 has been a big year for the start-up industry in Australia. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported more than 340,000 new business entries in Australia between 2019-20, and KPMG reported startup investment rising despite COVID. Generally, companies take two different routes when kicking off a new business – seeking external investment or bootstrapping. I… Read more »
Brisbane software startup Octopus Deploy is close becoming a $1 billion company after its first funding round, taking a US$172.5 million (A$222m) from New York venture capital firm Insight Partners. The enterprise software business, which counts Microsoft, NASA, Xero and Disney among its 25,000 customers, has bootstrapped for a decade before taking on Insight with… Read more »
Smart Energy co-founders Beau Savage, Elliot Hayes & Jasper Boyschau When we started our solar company Smart Energy three years ago we had just enough money to sign a lease on a warehouse in Byron Bay and buy one pallet of solar panels. We needed every penny we could get so we saved money… Read more »
Adelaide’s reputation as a startup hotspot took a massive leap last month when the release of the StartupBlink Startup Ecosystem Rankings 2019 report revealed the South Australian capital had cracked to top 150 global cities for startups, rising from 227 on the list to 143. Australia overall jumped six places from 11 to 5th. It’s… Read more »
We doubled down for five months, and I thought I’d share how we got our app live under our $5,000 budget and the lessons we learned along the way.
When we started Sleeping Duck we had a tiny amount of bootstrapped capital that we had raised from running some online retail businesses.
No Yelling allows learner drivers to connect with instructors, book appointments and complete transactions through an app and online platform.
Training existing and new businesses with the knowledge to fly drones and apply them to their work is Perth drone training startup Global Drone Solutions.
‘Have I gone too far?’ How founders can beat their startup demons 
Smart hotels get even smarter: 72 Byte to launch in Australia with AI expert backing 
Tassie carbon accounting startup banks $5.3 million Seed round 
Eucalyptus head of growth Matt Rossi departs to launch his own marketing startup, Oodle 
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