Silicon Beach

The report is the first time Australian tech startups have been compared to those in other markets. Deloitte Private partnered with Pollenizer, Australian startup publication From Little Things and the global Startup Genome Project to compare more than 1,000 Australian tech startup companies to more than 50,000 companies being tracked worldwide. The research project aims to help startup founders, investors, policy makers and industry leaders understand what factors contribute to creating a healthy startup ecosystem.

Key findings:

• Fewer than 5% of Australian startups are scaling into sustainable, global businesses
• U.S. companies are raising 4.8 times more capital in the early stages and 100 times more when they are ready to scale their operations
• Sydney is the largest
• Australian startup hub - 55% larger than Melbourne, six times larger than Brisbane and eight times larger than Perth
• Australian entrepreneurs are less ambitious than those in Silicon Valley and New York, and tend to tackle much smaller markets. They tackle niche markets 14% more often than entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley
• There are very few female founders starting companies, accounting for just 4.3% of those included in the study
• Silicon Valley startups create 2.6 times more jobs than Australian startups in the early stages of development
• Sydney entrepreneurs are 86% less likely to want to get rich, 45% less likely to want to change the world, and 37% more likely to want to build a great product, than their counterparts in Silicon Valley.