[pedalpete]

"if there are two startups, one in Australia and one in the USA, both targeting the USA market, which do you think is going to win?”

99Designs vs. Crowdspring, http://www.google.com/trends/?q=crowdspring,+99designs&c..., leads me to believe that 99Designs is more popular, even though it was also later to market.

[tfm]

I don't entirely trust these particular Google Trends figures as they show a minuscule amount of USA-based traffic.

Regardless, though, of the particular instance, or indeed the reality -- the problem for any would-be head-to-head of this type is not generally which startup would "win in a fair fight", but rather which startup any potential investors believe would win. The problem for such Australian startups may be just that the question of "which is going to win?" is being asked at all.