aussie 2.0 : yay or nay.

There's been a bi-annual post by the usual aussie suspects - whether it be the comprehensive work of Vishal Sharma, together with RWW, the pro alter-ego of Silkcharm wooing todays audience, mr dawson selling sydney 2.0 VIPthinks, as well as the tracking by blogpond.com.au of the Aussie 2.0 startups, which in a way also blends into tracking the most popular blogs downunder.

The recurring theme is due to the "small market size" no one is big or hungry enough to track the local blogosphere in a techmeme leaderboard meets technorati-ish rank, or do the Forrester ala Techcrunch like research for the startups in the space. Not to mention that when does the term startup wear off when leaders (or more accurately) the leader Atlassian is closer to a decade old than an inception stage play like the impressive, glad Dunc finally pocketed the WA capital gains and ploughed it into multi content channeld Inquisitr.com.

Lachlan Hardy between feeding his surrogate child and preparing food 2.0 said it best within 140 characters that he was "critiquing startups while I'm still in this weird snarky mood. I can't decide if I'm being honest or stupid." I dont think u r being stupid, but any startup is vhard, and doing it is alot harder than it may seem from the outside.









The truth sadly is Web 2.0 is affirming every stereotype, worst gut feel assumption that we've heard a million times when it comes to Australias state of innovation :












- There is very little strategic funding for the space grumbles the entrepreneur (If I look at my pictured list which i developed for a churchill club talk nearly a year ago : Redbubble, who metarand just did a podcast with, have had substantial funding. The Minti parent has some WA money and is also doing well, tho other related investments such as Omnidrive have also been adnausetweetrd as not being so successful. The Wireless social network space has definitely been funded ala Bluepulse, Mig33, Funkysexycool. And collaboration has had some moderate funding whether it be Quicklinks, Booking Angel, and not sure how Remember the Milk funded themselves, but that business has at least been a success. But outside of these examples, most businesses whether it be Scouta turned Recommendation Ventures, ours (Feedcorp/gnoos) have had to rely on a combination of sub $500k angels and others such as TPN/Fanfooty/Skitch/NorgMedia/Edublogs/Dlook? being self funded thru drawing down mortgages, not taking salaries, use of equity for payment, and the ol' consult for services (ala 3eep)

- There have been no au-consumer 2.0 home runs. I'd say there is alot of 50k-500k uniques per month players. A lot less at 500k-1m (like TPN) And while many like Edublogs have some very impressive usage metrics where user bases double every quarter to half - I dont think many are challenging the top 10 or even top 50 websites visited by Australians. The only web 2.0 ones to do that are those already acquired by Google, Newscorp and Yahoo. (well other than Wikipedia which is a not for profit!) Hence the Netus strategy of trying to recreate the ecorp ninemsn/ebay success : But even that has been limited with Gizmodo and Defamer having nice localised product, but if au blog comments are indication of popularity then the Petre/Denton 2.0 assets locally are being gazumped by single person, non commercial blogs like muchadoaboutsumthin and reasonsyouwillhateme - both of which are not even commercial enterprises.

- The most success is in web hosted services that are enterprise focused not 2.0, but rather were created in the last wave and have over time become very valuable businesses. That being Hitwise (sold to Experian) and Atlassian (still independent!) So with others like Remember the Milk doing well ere, and having a very global, classic web 2.0 approach - this is a segment Aussies seem a chance of being successful in. But it would be good to see more startups here and maybe there are, but the ranks are small, and the Omnidrive story again a sign it is anything but simple. Especially when we lack the financing, and even with that in place lack the engineers with skillsets and a propensity to take on startup work, preferring $100+ ph 9-5 financial services dailies. Its much easier to work on anz.com and have a life. Who needs innovation when u can get home at a decent time for dinner.

- Those who do succeed disown Australia, think global from day one, and spend as much time overseas as possible : There seem a few trajectories/case studies here. You can spend time on Mornington Peninsula like me, come into meetings/meetups when u need to, or Geelong like the Fanfooty crew. Similarly the MTUBs, PTUBS, STUBs, and BarCamps seem to be growing, and when combined with qik, ustream and twitter, there is an always on network of locals, that also crossover into different time zones. But some Aussies like the Tangler crew who had 7 figure financing spent alot of time O/S, but also prob also deferred some of the hard decisions initially as they enjoyed the honeymoon period, but also like alot of us, hit technical/product roadblocks. Kewler kats like Skitch have landed on Citizen Agency spare bedrooms and done their thing when needed and continue with their authentic viralness and incremental product releases. We could all learn a bit from the Skitchy.

- Lack of 2.0 Consumer Success leads to a focus on enterprise. I would definitely like to have had more resources and an effort at consumer space but its always been a lower order priority to enterprise. The scars of 1.0 were too well remembered. Others seem to have learnt this lesson or also see their business model here. The rise of widgetonomics also means a hybridised model of websites, social networks and end users with friends being the target customers, and self service/API/widgets being the product which then allows a user base to be developed on the back of someone elses' connections. So it will be interesting to see how Dean Jones of Ansearch (not the cricketer) new second life in social networks Exit Reality goes. Ditto Metarands Outback Online which is a larger attack on the virtual worlds space if I understand it right.

- Our broadband is screwed so its not surprising we have no good video startups. No vimeo, qik, ustream, youtube, metacafe, veoh - Doesnt surprise me one bit I cant think of a video startup because none of us mainline enough video, fast enough, to be able to think about a nextgen video play we'd bet our lives on. Jeepers the only startups I can think of historically were the homescreen/quicklflix etc home delivery of dvds. Scary. Give us fast broadband already The Three Amigos! Then we might have some video startups surprise. Even better if we can connect the mobile phone world to the video world.

So the scorecard doesnt look to pretty. In fact it resembles the Dees footy match I went to week before last where Melbourne was down by 52 points at half time. No bookmakers were taking odds on the game by then. Dees staged the biggest comeback of their 150 year history and won by a goal. It also resembles the Aussie film industry - We have great, no bullshit, multi-dimensional skilled people. Who will end up working in Hollywood and indie productions. But as an industry more strategic money is needed, from where I am the number one thing is getting access to skilled technical folk, who can take these ventures from zero to hero. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie.