Silicon Valley and the 'Brain Drain'

In May, SMH's technology editor Asher Moses published a piece entitled 'Brain Drain: why young entrepreneurs leave home'.

Through interviews with young Aussie entrepreneurs and various key venture capitalists, the article paints a picture of an Australian entrepreneurial market that is lacking in investments and therefore not keeping up with the rest of the world.

Accompanying the article was a link to Asher's new web documentary series, 'Digital Dreamers' where he follows a group of young Australian entrepreneurs on a 'start up bus' around America seeking investments for their tech development ideas. The message, as Moses states, is that 'Australia ignores its innovators at its peril', as many of Australia's brightest young entrepreneurs are jumping ship to America to try their luck at the 'mecca' of technological design and investment, Silicon Valley.

This article provided us with key ideas and background info to start us off on our research. Firstly we decided to look closer into this phenomenon of young Australian entrepreneurs leaving home for America. If this was a real trend, then the feature would make more sense to focus on only successful Australian (rather than international) entrepreneurs and how they succeeded without leaving home. Therefore the feature would take on broader aspect of researching why the Australian entrepreneurial field is not up to scratch and then more specifically how it is possible to make it from home and, acting as an important resource for young entrepreneurs looking for tips, examples, common pitfalls etc in the entrepreneurial field.

Nikki Durkin, founder of 99Dresses

A little more digging around however, and we found that Moses' conception of the Australian entrepreneurial field was not held across the board. An article in BRW entitled 'Why Australian technology start-ups don't need to go to Silicon Valley' offered a slightly more balanced picture. It appears that Nikki Durkin, the poster girl for Moses's article and creator of online fashion powerhouse 99Dresses, has returned home after a brief stint in Silicon Valley stating it was 'too expensive' for a start up such as hers.

The article goes on to explore how in many ways, making the jump to America is not always the wisest choice compared to staying home-grown. Companies such as Atlassian, Australia's most succesful tech start-up, prove how staying home-grown or incorporated a blended approach of American and Australian based business models can be effective. Just ten years after starting the company as uni students at UNSW,with just $10,000 in credit card debt, Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes' companyAtlassian is regarded internationally as a powerhouse in enterprise software. In July 2010, the duo turned heads globally after taking $60 million from Silicon Valley venture capital. All without leaving home.

The article goes on to list many other smaller yet successful startups that are Australian based businesses such as Shoes of Prey (founded by 3 out of 4 of the people behind our case study Sneaking Duck!), Bubble Gum Interactive, rome2rio and BugHerd.

Conclusion- the entrepreneurial field in Australia has it's benefits and it's drawbacks and it's not a simple case of entrepreneurial exodus to America or stagnation. There are a bunch of great startup companies growing even just in the past few years and we need to start getting out there and talking to them!