Startups in Oz

Something I have been thinking a lot about is the extent of "startup culture" in my home country and city (Melbourne in Australia incidentally). I don't expect anything like the (perceived) ferociousness of the valley, but I do expect innovation and tech, only because I've seen it around in small doses (well the tech guys anyway).

A quick first pass highlights the RRW review of the Top Web Apps in Australia written by Vishal Sharma in late 2006, and The Top 60 Web 2.0 Applications in Australia written by Ross Dawson in early 2007. The top web applications from both lists are familiar, although provide a good grounding for the uninitiated. Vishal also runs a startup portal with the tag line: Discovering the next generation of startups, innovation & tech trends in Australia. Most interestingly he coordinated a recent Australian Startups Carnival 2008, providing a broad and in-depth coverage of the state of home grown webapps (which also got techcrunched).

Others have asked the question about the visibility of OZ startups, and were bombarded with an assortment of links including: an Australian startups wiki, Sydney BarCamp for meeting up (just passed in early April), and a weigh in by one of the Atlassian guys. A little further digging revealed an interview with Ross Hill, and a Melbourne based entrepreneur group called the hive which looks interesting.

I'm sure there are a lot more Australia/Startup information sources out there, but this small array of pointers provide a good jumpstart for baseline comparisons and starting points for networking.