Need to sow seeds of success with start-ups

AUSTRALIA is not on the global map when it comes to successful tech start-ups, according to a leading academic from Israel's highly respected Ben Gurion University.

Amos Drory, external affairs vice-president at Ben Gurion, believes more needs to be done to change that perception and market the country's success stories overseas.

Australia's economic standing and former prime minister Kevin Rudd's efforts to avert the global financial crisis are well known across the globe, but they are no match for the spirit of innovation among local start-ups.

"Australia in general has a very good reputation. It is known that Australia has been doing quite well economically," Professor Drory said in Sydney last week.

"Specifically, if there's any perception of Australia as a basis for start-ups, I don't think it does have much of a reputation," he said when asked to comment on Australia reputation for start-ups.

"We might not have much of a reputation as a start-up hub as yet, but the growing diaspora and a number of Australian-founded - if not Australian - standout successes is, however, bringing stronger and stronger recognition that our technologists are right up there with the world's best," Freelancer.com founder Matt Barrie said.

Start-up conference SydStart founder Peter Cooper said Australia had been late to the party, but "we are making a real splash now we have arrived".

"(The) start-up genome database says we are 12th overall globally - Tel Aviv is No 2 - but we are first for data-driven start-ups," Mr Cooper said.

He said Australia had a comparable education system and population to California, home to Silicon Valley, and more cultural diversity with 200 nationalities in Sydney alone and 150 languages on the Australian east coast.

Mr Cooper said more needed to be done to encourage the start-up culture. Employee stock option plans needed to be simplified so cash-poor start-ups could share the risk and upside with fellow entrepreneurs, he said.

Mr Cooper said the tax system needed to be simplified, citing the the system for entrepreneurs, which runs into hundreds of pages.

Superannuation should be key in start-ups, with 0.01 per cent of inflows stepping up to 0.1 per cent over 10 years, he said.

"We currently have $1.5 trillion in traditional assets when the top companies globally are technology (companies) - Google and Atlassian were in garages only 10 to 12 years ago," Mr Cooper said.  Melanie Perkins, chief executive of Sydney-based start-up Canva, said the media had a vital role to play in raising start-up awareness. "The media has a strong role to play with increasing the profiles of start-ups and putting that on the (news) agenda," Ms Perkins said. She said that in San Francisco "everyone knows about start-ups".

"When you're at school or university, you decide on whether to get a job, join a start-up or start one."  Ms Perkins said Australia needed to create an environment where the younger generation had such options.

Canva will unveil an online design platform in coming months after it raised $US3 million ($2.9m) in funding from serial investor Bill Tai and Google Maps founder Lars Rasmussen, and a swag of venture capital firms including US-based Matrix Partners.

Professor Drory said education, especially at a young age, was key to creating a start-up culture. He said in Israel high school students studied computer programming and even primary school students were exposed to it - a move Ms Perkins and Mr Barrie champion.

"To me, the most important thing Australia absolutely has to do is build a world-class technology curriculum in our K-12 system," Mr Barrie said. "Instead we lump in a couple of horrendous subjects about technology with woodwork and home economics.

"Meanwhile, in Estonia, 100 per cent of publicly educated students will learn how to code starting at age 7 or 8 in first grade, and continue all the way to age 16 in their final year of school."

Mr Barrie is a vocal critic of the education system, saying the falling number of students studying IT is alarming.  "Most worrying to me is the number of students studying IT in Australia has fallen by over 60 per cent in the last decade."

He said enrolments in maths, physics and chemistry had also followed suit.

"There is an absolutely incredible opportunity before us right now. I can't think of one industry that isn't rapidly turning into a software business. We're in the grips of a technology gold rush and we are missing out," he said.