- There is no startup community in Australia - INCORRECT
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There is a massive amount of community activity for those who care to look for it.
Here are just a few examples
- PushStart - http://www.pushstart.com.au
- StartMate - http://www.startmate.com.au (NB: Alan, the OP, is cofounder of http://www.bugherd.com which went through StartMate's first Sydney program and is doing incredibly well)
- Fishburners - http://www.fishburners.org/
- AngelCube - http://www.angelcube.com
- Startup Weekends (here's the next Melbourne one) - http://melbourne.startupweekend.org/
- Silicon Beach Google Group - http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia/
- Sydney Tech Startup Meetup (Open Coffee) - http://www.meetup.com/open-coffee-sydney/
...or just sign up to The Fetch (http://thefetch.org/) or Sydney Startup Digest (http://startupdigest.com/2011/05/24/sydney-startup-events-2/)
From a funding point of view you have more and more angel / super-angel sized investment $$$ coming online all the time. There's also an ever increasing amount of large scale investment into top Aussie startups from leading Valley firms.
This has led to a good number of successful startups and more that continue to be started everyday.
I could keep going on but I won't... :)
The point is, let's not get confused. The post is about a specific issue with being a non-US based startup not about the Aussie startup community as a whole.