17-year-old millionaire tech entrepreneur Nick D’Aloisio

“If you start learning computer science and programming at a young age, you can create real tangible businesses and have successes”, said Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin, the founder of Sydney technology incubator BlueChilli. 

A good example of that is the 17-year old entrepreneur Nick D’Aloisio, a highschool graduate in London who made and sold an iPhone app that summarises Yahoo! Articles. It is reported that app was bought for $29 million. He lived in Australia from ages one to seven, and started his million dollar project at the age of 15.

Niki Sceva, the founder of tech incubator StartMate said that tech entrepreneurs don’t need to relocate to Silicon Valley to attain global success. Sceva is also a managing partner f fund of Blackbird Ventures.

This success story proves two things, age doesn’t matter, and that tech success for entrepreneurs doesn’t really need Silicon Valley to reach global success. [Financial Review]

Google is looking for the ‘Holy Grail’ of Tech Startups in Australia

Google launched a project to keep track of Australia’s startup and business community to further analyse what prevents Australia from being the next Silicon Valley.

Alan Noble, the Engineering Director of Google Australia said that it is all about increasing awareness.

Greater awareness could lead to more accommodating policies, greater enthusiasm of investors to put in more money into new companies and a greater recognition by society that it was a valid career path to become an entrepreneur.

We all know it isn’t that easy to be an entrepreneur given all the things the entrepreneur has to go through to jumpstart and grow his business.

By encouring more people to study tech related courses, such as computer science, coupled with great support from the community, it might not be that long before the holy grail of tech startups be discovered.

Read the rest of the article here.

Australian startup Ollo Mobile entered talks with SingTel and Optus for a global release

Ollo Mobile is a Brisbane startup that creates a wearbale 3G device that is useful for senior citizens and children.

The device functions as a panic line for emergencies. When the wearer will be caught in an accident of some sort, he can hit the button on the device and it will automatically call the family. It ca be set to make a conference call to family members or just call a set of number in a sequence and only talk to the first person who will answer the call.

It can also send an SMS link to a web page that will show a map with the location of the wearer. 

Read the rest of the article here.

Aussie entrepreneurs willing to risk all  

They call themselves the Aussie mafia and, fed up with the lack of funding for entrepreneurs in Australia, they’re pooling together at least $20 million to invest in themselves.

The success of Australians in Silicon Valley - there are at least 65 Aussie tech startups over there - has created a new crop of millionaires who are sharing their knowledge, capital and couches with the next generation of hopeful founders.

Shared via The Age. Read the rest of the article here. 

Children of the revolution 

More in relation to The Age article we shared the other day.

It’s midnight in San Francisco and i’m out on the tiles with one of the most successful Australian entrepreneurs you’ve never heard of. Most of the city is shutting down on this cold and dreary Tuesday, but Gower Smith is determined to kick on. And so here we are at the Penthouse strip club and steakhouse, a palace of sleaze where New York strip comes with a side of lap dance.

Smith, the founder of ZoomSystems, has a shiny bald head, porn-star moustache and the cheeky, confident smile of someone living the dream. He cashed out of four successful companies in Australia and moved to the heart of the tech world 10 years ago to launch Zoom, raising $100 million from investors soon after arriving. His fully automated Zoom shops - don’t call them vending machines - dispense the latest high-end gadgets from the likes of Apple and HP in almost every major US airport and in department stores like Macy’s. Now the company is going global and Smith is leading the charge into Asia.

Shared via The Age. Read the rest of the article here.

Australia’s IT startup scene: blooming or dying?  

This morning the Sydney Morning Herald published a series of articles claiming that Australia’s technology startup ecosystem is unable to support local entrepreneurs, causing them to increasingly heading to the US in search of the financial backing they are unable to attract in Australia. The only problem is, the evidence doesn’t support this assertion.

If there is one thing which Australians love, it is to have a big fat whinge about why they can’t access the same goods and services locally that residents of larger first-world countries such as the United States can. In the nation’s technology sector, this kind of complaint is an ongoing theme with respect to a number of disparate issues.

From the inflated cost of gadgets, software and video games locally to the availability of high-speed broadband, from the delayed launches to geo-IP-blocked content, Australians simply love to criticise the powers for be for not giving them everything the Americans have, and we love to do it loudly and proudly.

Shared via Delimiter. Read the rest of the article here. 

Why entrepreneurs are heading abroad  

“We’ve created crack for women,” says 20-year-old entrepreneur Nikki Durkin of her online fashion startup 99dresses. The trouble is, Australian financiers don’t want to get the habit. Ms Durkin’s aim is clear: “I want to build a billion-dollar company.” But she says Australia won’t let her, so she’s joining thousands of other Australians pursuing their dreams in the US.

Over in Silicon Valley, failure is celebrated and seen as a chance to learn, but Ms Durkin, who grew up in Sydney, had the opposite experience in Australia when she had to shut down her site to tweak her idea.

“In Australia failure’s seen as a bad thing … generally I think it’s a bit of tall poppy syndrome happening,” she says.

Ms Durkin has been an entrepreneur since she was 15, when she was pulling in $500 a week designing and selling t-shirts online. Now she’s developing 99dresses – an “infinite wardrobe” allowing people to trade clothes with each other.

Ms Durkin has just spent three months in Silicon Valley being mentored at the number one startup accelerator in the world, YCombinator. Out of about 60 entrants, she was a favourite among the venture capitalists. She’s about to close a round of funding and move to the US.

There are more than 65 technology startups in Silicon Valley that were created by Australians, and this number is growing rapidly. Many who feature in a major video series launching on smh.com.au on Monday are highly critical of both the government and the venture capital industry in Australia. They say Australia is asleep at the wheel and risks being left behind.

Shared via The Age. Read the rest of the article here.