[andrerobot]

Kudos to the aussies for having something similar to YC. The mentorship from TWENTY (woah!) successful founders, the $25.000 (aus?) sound amazing.

What I find it really sad that even in this decade the best way for a web startup to get attention is to go to the Valley. If the web is global shouldn't the support networks be global too?

In the case of my country (Chile) it is very difficult to make your own web startup. Seed investment is centralized in a goverment organization that only cares about patents and how many millions of dollars you are going to make in the first years. Another problem with seed investment around here is that you must spend the money in very specific things like getting incorporated (which is expensive) and build a business plan $$, not getting the work done. It you aren't sure how you are going to monetize your app in a way that is going to give you massive profits, don't bother trying to get an investor (unless you have rich relatives).

Is Australia similar to my country in that innovating on the web is very difficult from a support ecosystem perspective?

[nikiscevak]

To be clear, we wanted to setup the program with a complete handle on reality and to be supportive of many different options on financing - bootstrap or institutional - and where they are based - Sydney or the Valley or in the many cases currently a grey area of being in both.

The two weeks in the Valley at the end of the program is to connect with the Aussie community that is just starting to establish itself, to introduce the startups we are working with to the most useful people we can and then to hold a demo day for early stage investors as well. Plus it's hard not to get drunk on the inspiration of meeting other great startups.