Melbourne Startups to Watch

- How was the internet speed? If you choose the right suburb you might end up with fibre to the home, which is fast. If you don't, you'll end up with ADSL2, which sucks. Be careful - though the inner city will likely have at least adequate speeds for streaming.

- Where did you work? There are lots of coffee shops and co-working spaces in Melbourne.

- Is it easy for someone moving from outside to blend in? Yes, I have American friends who have moved to Melbourne and decided to stay forever. It is a very multicultural city which overall is accepting of everyone. You will find bad eggs on the outskirts, but that is the case almost anywhere.

I'm now based in SF, but was based in Melbourne with my other co-founders for many years - my cofounders and a large chunk of the company are still based in our Melbourne HQ.

- We were based in Richmond, now the CBD (city). The city or any of the surrounding areas are good areas and easily accessible. Public transport is pretty great. Pretty do-able to live there without a car.

- Meh. Not that great. You count your home connection as fast if it's over 10Mbs. A few lucky areas have NBN, which is fast, but it's not that widespread yet. It's also expensive. However, the thing that gets me is the latency. Chatty protocols (Like Rubygems) are really terrible. That said, it's more in the irritating category than unworkable.

- We were in the Inspire9 co-working space for a (long) long time. I think we were almost 40 employees there when we moved out. Inspire9 was one of the first. There are now a lot to choose from.

- It was pretty grim a while back, but there are a raft of very credible VCs based in Australia now. We work with Blackbird, who are fantastic. It's along flight, but jumping on a plane to SF is probably still a good idea.

- Melbourne is a very multi-cultural city. I'm biased, but really terrific city. I think most people would have a great time there.

- Very much so and it's growing exponentially lately.

If you or any other founders out there are in or considering visiting Melbourne and want to connect, feel free to email me (email is in my profile).

- City/Richmond is the place to be

- Internet is pretty good in CBD from my experience (coffee shops) but not good enough to do heavy lifting (read: Australian internet sucks, sibling post is correct 10 Mbps is fast in Australia)

- Not sure about VCs in Melb but I have heard a lot lately that VCs in Australia have really aggressive and nasty contracts so I personally would want to have a 3rd party look over any funding I was singing up for.

- There's some really good meetups here especially Silicon Beach Melbourne, Startup Grind, Startup Victoria and Inspire9 Pitch Nights. Perth seemed a lot more driven from the central co-working space and then grass roots (apart from some "innovation incubators" from some companies which come and go) than what Melbourne is, not sure about compared to Sydney but it feels a lot more commercial here (more businesses selling to startups.) Wish there was a few more less corporatey hackathons or grassroots feeling events here.

- Andrew Hyde (founder Startup Weekend) spent some months here and his biggest point of how we can improve was Melb needs to do more to promote its Startup Success stories other than the obvious ones (Seek, Carsales.com.au, REA, Envato)

> Where were you based? Near to the city or a suburb?

In and around the city

> How was the internet speed?

It's still Australia. It's bad everywhere.

> From where did you work? Co-working spaces / coffee shops?

I worked mostly in offices because I work better in offices. Most of the time I worked in the bar of another company's office. Wrote on the windows with whiteboard pens. Moved to a co-working space much later on.

> Is it easy get connected with VCs?

I wasn't involved much in finding them but we had a few interested. When we were ready is wasn't hard to get in front of some.

> Is it easy for someone moving from outside to blend in?

Outside Australia? Outside Melbourne? Don't bother blending. You do you.

> Are other founders are helpful to each other and share their experiences?

It's a mixed bad. You meet a lot of great people who are very fun and interesting. As to be expected there are also a lot of jerks who think they're hot shit. Generally more good than bad.

Healthcare - is London healthcare similar to Scotland? Aus isn't as good as Scotland but it is very close.

Niches - there's a lot, especially in Melbourne. Australia is a pretty remote country so we have a lot of our own websites. REA, seek etc.

Can't speak for UK healthcare, Australian healthcare is good but has a private component. you will probably buy private for the tax incentives. there are also going to be out of pocket costs which may be unusual for a Brit but comical to an American.

Schools... in Melbourne I haven't heard of that kind of competitiveness. Sydney, sure.

You should figure out visas and ensure you can get on a path to PR. You should also visit if you never have before bringing your family all the way over. You want to be 100% committed to the move or else you will probably give up and move back.

on the whole it's the most liveable place on earth if you believe the data.

Health care is pretty good, though not quite as good as UK (dental, for example is not covered by Medicare). Some doctors charge more than the govt rebate, so you may be out of pocket if you have a particular doctor you want to see. YMMV.

Schools are pretty good. There will be at least one state school in your zone which you are entitled to enroll your child in; beyond that it depends on demand. Childcare (i.e. the years before school) is a different matter, and you sometimes wait for a year or so for a place in a particular centre (apply early). Private childcare providers tend to be pretty bad; community/council centres tend to be good.

Melbourne is a great tech hub, but nothing compared to SF, SEA Aand NY. There is no real way to get funding from public investors, you have to talk to "old money" (though this was a couple of years ago, this may have changed).

There was a great article I read a while back talking about Atlassian's move from AUS to USA.

When they were starting up JIRA they had to do it from $10k credit card debt. No investors in Australia wanted to touch them. So they moved to the USA and got funding almost immediately.

From memory Atlassian was profitable very early on. I'm not sure what's wrong with investors there. A lot of our economy is run from raw materials, so maybe they just don't get it?

EDIT:

My experience is that software engineers are very intelligent there. I've worked with a lot of smart people in the gaming industry and mobile.

The issue is a lack of leadership and funding.