We knew from day one that the mission for FLT needed to be two-fold, both covering and shaping the agenda for Australian startup companies.
While that means we’ve spent a lot of time talking to and covering individual companies perhaps the most useful role we play is advocating on behalf of the broader ecosystem — the founders, investors and community that determine the success of our startups. We’re keen on building Australia’s Silicon Beach into an ecosystem that helps more companies become global success stories.
It was great to hear Tyler Crowley speak about the lessons learnt building the Los Angeles and Stockholm startup ecosystems last night at our event at Sydney’s Fishburners. Joining Tyler on the panel was Phil Morle, Rob Antulov and Peter Bradd. The question we asked them: what would make the Australian startup ecosystem better?
Over to you — what do you think we should do to build Silicon Beach?
Awesome conversation with Tyler and insights. My big take-out was that everybody uses their own forums to promote the ecosystem as a whole. Take away actions:
1) Get the community to adopt a brand and a hashtag. Ideas discussed so far are #siliconbeach #siliconbeach_au or #sb. The brand helps us unify and gives visitors a beacon to attach to when they visit us
2) Ask all startup related meetups (from Innovation Bay to Jellys) to adopt the brand and participate in promoting a monthly meetup for #sb
3) Move Silicon Beach drinks to regular monthly sessions and all sub-groups help get people there
4) At all events, give people the opportunity to make cross-community announcements
5) We need to do more to join the cities? Perhaps the Google Hangout type of initiative was helpful and we should do more?
6) Where is the ‘place’ in each city? Is it Fishburners for Sydney?
I think holding more hangouts would be a huge benefit to the community. In Adelaide we sometimes feel secluded, so it was great to interact with events as they happen.