20 Years of Tech Startup Experiences in One Hour · fast.ai

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2021-05-24 07:30:03

I’ve just returned to Australia to live, after a decade as an entrepreneur in San Francisco. For my first in-person talk in Australia, I shared my thoughts on how to build a successful tech startup nearly anywhere in the world. I spent nearly three months researching and preparing for this talk, interviewing dozens of entrepreneurs, investors, and academics. I also drew from my 20+ years of experience as an entrepreneur — ten years in Australia, and ten years in the US.

Creating a tech startup in the San Francisco Bay Area (i.e. San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Oakland) is easier than most other parts of the world (except, perhaps, for a couple of startup hubs such as Israel). When I got to San Francisco I found myself in the midst of a bustling ecosystem of technically sophisticated cashed-up investors, bold founders with big ambitions and a real desire to help each other, entrepreneurial academics who often had multiple startups they were advising and were common destinations for their students for internships and employment, and big forward-thinking customers with innovation labs in the heart of San Francisco.

In Australia, things couldn’t be more different. More is invested in tech startups in a day in the US than in a year in Australia. Short-termism is rife at all levels. Entrepreneurs have to deal with pointless roadblocks put in their way by bureaucratic institutions.

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