Perth is not that expensive if you're prepared to put up with a 40 minute commute (O horrors).
The town I grew up in, Darwin, is now regularly amongst the most expensive capitals in the world for rent. And food, petrol etc is a helluva lot more expensive there than it is here in Perth.
Getting investment in Perth is tricky though. Investors in Perth understand the mining lifecycle. If you see something interesting on a map, you can round up some geologists and drillers and raise $10 million in a few weeks. It's basically the Silicon Valley of mining.
But god help you if you want to launch a software business. There's one venture fund and so far they've invested in one (1) software venture -- and that was Filter Squad, after Discovr was successful.
All the Australian action is happening over east. And there's nothing much there either.
If I could up stumps, right now, and move to the US, I would.
Disclosure: I work for the funded startup mentioned, Filter Squad.
There may only be one venture fund locally, but there are several around Australia that have invested in startups out of Perth.
Also, That one VC (Yuuwa for those playing along at home) have invested in companies other than Filter Squad (Agworld being one of them - very much a tech startup, despite focusing on very non-traditional web / mobile audiences).
Likewise, Yuuwa invested in a seed round pretty early in Filter Squad (I can't remember exactly when since I wasn't around at that point) - it was just their follow up that was a bit later.
Hey Darcy, nice to see you again. I guess I got it wrong -- I went by the announcement on Yuuwa's blog.
That makes it two (2) software companies they've invested in. The rest are bioscience doodads. Admirable and impressive, but it means I'm competing with university spinoffs with commercialisation offices to back them up.
Perth is not that expensive if you're prepared to put up with a 40 minute commute (O horrors).
The town I grew up in, Darwin, is now regularly amongst the most expensive capitals in the world for rent. And food, petrol etc is a helluva lot more expensive there than it is here in Perth.
Getting investment in Perth is tricky though. Investors in Perth understand the mining lifecycle. If you see something interesting on a map, you can round up some geologists and drillers and raise $10 million in a few weeks. It's basically the Silicon Valley of mining.
But god help you if you want to launch a software business. There's one venture fund and so far they've invested in one (1) software venture -- and that was Filter Squad, after Discovr was successful.
All the Australian action is happening over east. And there's nothing much there either.
If I could up stumps, right now, and move to the US, I would.