I'm an Australian but I currently work in New York. From my perspective, a startup in Australia has many hurdles:<p>1. The cost of living. Seriously, Australia is an incredibly expensive place to live now. I'm from Perth and I'd say that overall it's cheaper for me to live in _Manhattan_ than Perth now. MANHATTAN. Actually, same for same rent-wise, Perth is still cheaper but Manhattan has options Perth doesn't (like saving money by living in a walk-up);<p>2. Virtually no VC and startup community; and<p>3. Depending on your industry, you will find very consumer-friendly legislation that is actually a problem for small companies to comply with, particularly in the finance space (and within that space, particularly dispensing anything that could be construed as "financial advice"). The US has gotten worse about this in the last decade with SOX and other reactionary legislation but it's still better.<p>Put it this way: I don't think something like Mint could ever be done in Australia.<p>Now Australia's fortunes rise and fall with China's so the boom industries are mining and construction. If you can think of something to sell to these industries, you could make a lot of money. But why do it in Australia? The strong Australian dollar makes it more attractive to do it elsewhere.<p>Sure health insurance is an issue but you can buy that in the US and even if it's hundreds of dollars a month (IMHO) you're better off overall.
Why being an aussie start-up doesn't suck - two words - health insurance. The public health system provides for much, and as a private citizen for a few hundred dollars a month I can get coverage for elective things. I'm not faced with a decision like 'shit, if I quit my job at bigco and go and do this startup thing and then get sick will I be putting my life at risk?'
Seeing as this article is from 2010, looks like Chargify now has "eWay" listed as a payment gateway. <a href="http://chargify.com/payment-gateways/" rel="nofollow">http://chargify.com/payment-gateways/</a><p>Being a European company, just looked at Chargify, and Quickpay is the gateway that looks like it supports all of EU. Going there, it looks like I need an acquirer for my gateway. So you're telling me that I need an acquirer to get the payments, a payment gateway for the credit cards, and Chargify to manage recurring billing?<p>Kill me now, please.
If anyone has an article on EU credit cards basics, please let me know.
Recently I discovered that there is a US work visa specifically for Australians (the E-3). Unlike the H1-B, the E-3 cap of 10,000 per year has never run out. Also, E-3 applications go under less scrutiny and are more likely to be approved and are generally approved quicker. It's worth thinking about if you are an Australian programmer interested in working for a US startup.
Australia has low self esteem and a 'you'll never make it' attitude which is pervasive. There is little consciousness within employees of the concept of 'equity' which can often be replied with 'I don't work for 'free'' - or even for for 'less'.<p>It took us 3 months to set our our facility using chargify which was fuct - whatever. But now it works and it is awesome.<p>I moved to the bay area from Australia for the knowledge hub and to find hackers who are also environmentalists (who seem to be as rare as hens teeth). The amount I have learned technically in a short period of time has been profound.<p>I can never go back to Australia. It feels like a ball chain has been removed now I am in an environment that cultivates, even reveres nerdy freaks and dreamers.
- The lack of payment gateway options in Australia sucks - CORRECT<p>- There is no startup community in Australia - INCORRECT<p>------<p>There is a massive amount of community activity for those who care to look for it.<p>Here are just a few examples<p>- PushStart - <a href="http://www.pushstart.com.au" rel="nofollow">http://www.pushstart.com.au</a><p>- StartMate - <a href="http://www.startmate.com.au" rel="nofollow">http://www.startmate.com.au</a> (NB: Alan, the OP, is cofounder of <a href="http://www.bugherd.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.bugherd.com</a> which went through StartMate's first Sydney program and is doing incredibly well)<p>- Fishburners - <a href="http://www.fishburners.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.fishburners.org/</a><p>- AngelCube - <a href="http://www.angelcube.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.angelcube.com</a><p>- Startup Weekends (here's the next Melbourne one) - <a href="http://melbourne.startupweekend.org/" rel="nofollow">http://melbourne.startupweekend.org/</a><p>- Silicon Beach Google Group - <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia/" rel="nofollow">http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia/</a><p>- Sydney Tech Startup Meetup (Open Coffee) - <a href="http://www.meetup.com/open-coffee-sydney/" rel="nofollow">http://www.meetup.com/open-coffee-sydney/</a><p>...or just sign up to The Fetch (<a href="http://thefetch.org/" rel="nofollow">http://thefetch.org/</a>) or Sydney Startup Digest (<a href="http://startupdigest.com/2011/05/24/sydney-startup-events-2/" rel="nofollow">http://startupdigest.com/2011/05/24/sydney-startup-events-2/</a>)<p>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.<p>This has led to a good number of successful startups and more that continue to be started everyday.<p>I could keep going on but I won't... :)<p>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.
I'm also an Aussie living in the US and agree wholeheartedly with the title. The article focuses on "tyranny of distance" issues which I agree are a serious pain.<p>Another problem in Australia is that the entire investment community is focused on sucking on the government teat* and tax minimization<i></i>. I was involved in meetings with Australian "VCs" that were far more concerned with how they'd write off the loss from their investment than actually delivering a successful product.<p>* The Australian government has a terrible habit of trying to "pick winners" and invest in projects directly. A classic example of this was a huge fund created in the early 90s to fund "multimedia" development. This probably did more to kill the Australian "multimedia" industry than any other single act.<p><i></i> Also in the mid-80s the government at the time came up with a well-intentioned but retarded idea of encouraging research by offering >100% tax write-offs for R&D expenditure. This is a classic example of paying peanuts and getting monkeys -- most companies simply figured out tricks to reclassify stuff they already did, like photocopying, as R&D.
Suggest all Aussie startups check out <a href="http://www.startmate.com.au/" rel="nofollow">http://www.startmate.com.au/</a> they're doing heaps to build the startup community back in Oz as well as forming strong ties to the US. They've just opened their 2011 intake.<p>Startmate was a massive help to us at Chorus (<a href="http://www.getchorus.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.getchorus.com</a>). With their help we launched our product and successfully flipped our company up to the US. Today we're operating out of Mountain View, CA.
This may seem a bit naive, but given how many people complain about banking services in non-US countries, specifically as it related to merchant accounts and SaaS offerings, isn't there a business to be made solving that problem for those people?<p>Couple issues I can see:<p>1. Maybe it's that the market is too small, but if you made it easier, I'd bet you'd have more customers.<p>2. Working within the legal/financial systems in those countries may be <i>too</i> difficult???
Perhaps Envato my can help, that's the company behind themeforest, audiojungle and the whole tuts network of sites.
They may be able to provide suggestions, there are an Aussie based startup who are profitable, have experience (been in business for 5 years) and they only sell digital based products and subscriptions.
ha! this is exactly where we are now<p>we're in the process of getting a merchant account going but it's a long drawn out pain. We're using eWay for the gateway as I've used them in the past and they've been fantastic. The bank, however, is having a hell of a job getting it's head around the idea that we want to sell a service over the internet (we're building a saas product).<p>last call from the bank was yesterday when they decided they wanted full login and usage rights to our app (so they could verify it?) - kind of hard when it's not built yet. We seem to be in a bit of a chicken/egg situation where we have to actually launch before they'll let us receive payments... Prior to that they wanted revenue history for the last few years! agh!<p>Luckily we anticipated this taking so long which is why we started the ball rolling months ago.<p>tl;dr: use eWay
In Australia we build companies so that we don't have to work for someone else, and we scoff at big ideas.<p>In the US we build companies to change the world, and we scoff at small ideas.<p>(from an Aussie who recently made the move to Silicon Valley)
Have you tried a non-local bank with Aussie branches, or just the Big Four? HSBC is pretty big, and has a fair few Aussie branches. Though maybe it's a subsidiary, not a branch. There's also Barclays Capital - I've heard of them so they must be big. If you go to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banks_in_Australia" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banks_in_Australia</a>, there's quite a few subsidiaries and branches of foreign banks.
Quick thoughts -<p>Here's an ebook that might help folks understand the gateway/processor dynamic: <a href="http://feefighters.com/ebooks/what-is-credit-card-processing?force_download=true" rel="nofollow">http://feefighters.com/ebooks/what-is-credit-card-processing...</a> (written with US audience in mind, but most of it holds true worldwide)<p>To get a US merchant account, you need a US Tax ID/Bank account (acquirable with Delaware company) AND a US Social Security number for someone who has ownership in the company. Unfortunately that is the minimum that underwriters will accept... AFAIK you need the same stuff with Stripe, Samurai, and Braintree.<p>One thing to realize is that for us startups serving startups, we would love to do the rest of the world but there are a bunch of complications that come with doing so (timezones, currencies, partners, taxes).<p>We (<a href="http://samurai.feefighters.com" rel="nofollow">http://samurai.feefighters.com</a>) hope to be in Australia in the near future. If interested in Samurai for Europe or Australia, give us your email address here:
<a href="https://docs.google.com/a/transfs.com/spreadsheet/embeddedform?formkey=dDZrMVI1YVVGT0NhSmpQbl80Q0o5Z2c6MQ&ndplr=1" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/a/transfs.com/spreadsheet/embeddedfo...</a><p>If interested in Canada, use this form:
<a href="https://docs.google.com/a/transfs.com/spreadsheet/embeddedform?formkey=dGh0bHdEMlZ1cVZsbE50djhVbjlHN2c6MQ" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/a/transfs.com/spreadsheet/embeddedfo...</a><p>As for the beaches, I hope to find out soon :)
Nice article, I guess, but overly complex; it really is a very simple set of reasons. Here goes:<p><pre><code> 1. There is a large startup community in the US
2. Many people interested in startups already went to
the US because of (1)
3. The barrier to moving to the US because of (1) is far
lower than trying to recreate the environment locally
4. This is a strongly self-reinforcing phenomenon
</code></pre>
Wash, rinse, repeat. You can say the exact same thing for films and music.<p>Spoken as an Australian who is likely moving to NYC in the coming months. The startup environment just does not exist in AU. I have the petri dish, I have the bacteria, what I need now is agar, and there is precious little to be found down under.
Being an Australian startup early on is great because there's a number of programs to get easy cash, including AusIndustry CommercialReady which can get you a CPI-indexed loan for $1-2m.
1) You can do subscriptions with Paypal
2) Moneybookers is an alternative which is easier to set up and cheaper<p>When you get big you can use someone like GlobalCollect or Cybersource.