[scheff]

Good work,

I came to the same conclusion after 4 years of trying to get traction with my startup in Australia. The Australian government has futile support for tech innovation, which is a major failing considering our talent and adoption of technology is world-leading in some cases.

We need to be innovating as heavily as we can if we plan to have an economy post-mining boom. Currently our talent disappears overseas where they are respected and appreciated, whereas they could be doing miraculous things in Oz instead. You look at the buzz of energy and productivity in Silicon Valley and realise that just a couple of skilled people can create jobs for hundreds and boost the economy.

My own experience - I wrote to the then Tourism Minister, Fran Bailey, explaining that Australia needed to innovate its tourism marketing or perish, and that I had an innovative solution ready to go. The response was "Sorry, we can't help you." And today, after one failed marketing campaign after another, Tourism Australia has come around to the idea I put forward - get tourists to spread the word themselves (see http://www.nothinglikeaustralia.com.au)

Therein lies the value of innovation - several failed multi-million dollar marketing campaigns VS a lean startup reaching the same conclusion and offering the same solution.

I injected all of my time and money into the venture, but didn't have the necessary support to make it a genuine business operation.

I have lost patience with this government, but I haven't given up with startup ventures, I just won't depend on our govt to achieve success.

[cbs]

>Therein lies the value of innovation - several failed multi-million dollar marketing campaigns VS a lean startup reaching the same conclusion and offering the same solution.

Hindsight is awesome, isn't it? They had now way to know that your startup wasn't destine to fail, but now that your idea has been successfully executed by someone else you feel vindicated. Great, but that doesn't retroactively make you less of a risk back then nor does it prove that you would have executed on your idea as well as the people they went with.

[scheff]

I knew with foresight that it was the correct premise because I saw it working already in other formats. The only question remaining was "what is the best format/execution to make it work?" and that is the uncertainty of which you speak. Innovation allows us to rapidly fail and learn so as to come up with the correct solution. Tourism Australia's answer was to keep creating multi-million dollar marketing campaigns, which teaches us little and wastes millions of dollars, and takes months of retrospective analysis to learn anything. All that we've learnt from the marketing campaigns is "People aren't as interested in Australia as they were 20 years ago." With a tech startup solution we would have learnt a number of things through observation of how the target demographic interact with each other and with tourism operators, plus what they best respond to, and therefore how best to promote Australian tourism products to them.

[abrimo]

Thanks, great job on trying to change Tourism Australia - some of the campaigns I've seen from them are just embarrassing. It really does feel that those startups which have been successful have done so in spite of being in Australia, not because of it. I, like you, am determined to try and do it on my own.

[scheff]

The only other successful startup I have spoken to in Australia was Zendesk. The founder I spoke with went 2 years without a salary and the startup was self-funded.