I have to admit that I ended up skimming over the rest of the article after the false choice of "unicorn or nothing" that the author characterized about SV. Even limited to YC companies, what percentage are unicorns? And is every company expected to be a unicorn? The vast majority of YC companies are moderate successes or moderate failures.

The whole "there's no Australian Secret or Pets.com" really sounded like sour grapes to me. Do Texans (people from a region of similar population size and GDP to Australia) boast about their lack of spectacular technology company failures?

Why not just say, "Australia is bloody awesome, it's home, and we've decided to stay for that reason. We're living proof you can flourish as a startup in Victoria. It turns out that we decided that we didn't want to move to the Bay Area."? I'd really be interested in the details of how they actually got it to work (marketing, customer relationships, developers).

That being said, I'm very grateful that they posted a blog about it. I've found Australian companies to be fairly tight-lipped in comparison. The more exposure there is to Australian technology companies, the more opportunities for customers and investors will materialize.