How Australian Tech Companies Can Think About Silicon Valley • Hacker News Board

Re: How Australian Tech Companies Can Think About Silicon Valley

#41

Post by stephenr » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 4:36 PM UTC

hyperpallium wrote: post #39

stephenr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide some reference, or even the law/statute name that you're referring to here?

Was a few years ago, I'd have to google it myself. google: US australia tax treaty; search: "royalty" within it (has a particular meaning in the act). The term "component" is not actually used, IIRC. When the IRS audited a US firm I know, they had to sort it out with their non-US component suppliers. I'm not at all sure, but maybe "w8-ben" is the relevant form (though it serves several purposes). Whatever the form is…

All I can find is about if a contract between parties involves royalties, it may be taxed. Maybe that's what you meant?

Re: How Australian Tech Companies Can Think About Silicon Valley

#42

Post by pm » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:13 PM UTC

nopassrecover wrote: post #15

The liveability of places like Adelaide (and even Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth) is such an undersold secret. Personally I'm so torn between wanting to tell everyone how good we have it and wanting to keep it to ourselves. Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth are all in the top 10 cities to live in the world. Taking Adelaide for example (1.2 million people), we can live within 10-15 minutes of the CBD in a roomy t…

Melbourne is liveable; Adelaide is a retirement village. The population has been stagnant for two decades, and the brain drain continues to worsen. I can count the number of people worth working with on both of my hands.

I'm in the US at the moment (Silicon Alley), and it's staggering the funds available compared to Australia. Fairfax County, where I'm currently based, has half the population of Australia. I've always been bullish about the US, but I don't think I can afford to ignore this market once I get started on my own adventures.

Re: How Australian Tech Companies Can Think About Silicon Valley

#43

Post by amyjess » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:43 PM UTC

ianhowson wrote: post #11

Innercode wrote: post #4

While the US will always be dominant, there are some advantages for Australian Tech companies to take advantage of: Cheaper tech teams with less competition. Australia has a lot of talent in the software space, but without the eye watering wage bills. Even in the most expensive cities of Sydney and Melbourne, software developers generally cost a lot less than in the Bay Area. You can get even better value if you can…

This is a great post. I'd like to add: > You can get even better value if you can build your team outside of Sydney/Melbourne. So much this, but talent outside the big cities is rare . I lived in Queensland for a while and would have taken a massive pay cut for any tech work... but there just isn't any. I knew more people working in Sydney (fly-in-fly-out) than working in local companies. You can pick up uni students…

> So much this, but talent outside the big cities is rare. I lived in Queensland for a while and would have taken a massive pay cut for any tech work... but there just isn't any. I knew more people working in Sydney (fly-in-fly-out) than working in local companies.

This is what playing the long game is for. Take a lesson from Texas Instruments. The founders decided to start a tech company in North Texas, where there wasn't much talent. So they decided to grow their own: they started their own university with a strong focus on STEM subjects, located not too far from the corporate headquarters, and once it grew large enough, they turned it over to the state. To this day, the University of Texas at Dallas supplies TI with a lot of fresh grads, and Richardson, TX has grown up to be a large tech hub.

Of course, this takes a lot of time and a lot of money, but a particularly ambitious and rich team of founders can open a university on the outskirts of, say, Brisbane or the Gold Coast, and given enough time, they'll have people to feed their tech company and turn the area into a tech hub.

Re: How Australian Tech Companies Can Think About Silicon Valley

#44

Post by seem_2211 » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 6:05 PM UTC

ianhowson wrote: post #11

Innercode wrote: post #4

While the US will always be dominant, there are some advantages for Australian Tech companies to take advantage of: Cheaper tech teams with less competition. Australia has a lot of talent in the software space, but without the eye watering wage bills. Even in the most expensive cities of Sydney and Melbourne, software developers generally cost a lot less than in the Bay Area. You can get even better value if you can…

This is a great post. I'd like to add: > You can get even better value if you can build your team outside of Sydney/Melbourne. So much this, but talent outside the big cities is rare . I lived in Queensland for a while and would have taken a massive pay cut for any tech work... but there just isn't any. I knew more people working in Sydney (fly-in-fly-out) than working in local companies. You can pick up uni students…

That's an interesting quote on New Zealanders (I am from NZ, but live in SF).

My take on it is that places like NZ are great in that if you can make the jump internationally, you're highly likely to be extremely successful overseas as investing isn't really a thing and the market is so small. The downside is that any investors want more than a pound of flesh for dollar sums that would be seen as laughable in the valley. It's going to be interesting seeing how the sector does over the next ten years - and while it's been great seeing the success of Xero and Pushpay, I'm really excited about the current cohort coming through.

Re: How Australian Tech Companies Can Think About Silicon Valley

#45

Post by brongondwana » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 6:22 PM UTC

oldandtired wrote: post #23

jlangenauer wrote: post #13

One of the strange things about Australia's startup scene over the last decade or so is the sheer number of what I like to call "meta-entrepreneurs" - people who help other people become entrepreneurs, and present themselves as experts on technology, business, Silicon Valley etc, but have declined to actually do the hard work of setting up a business, let alone growing it to success. So when Australians give advice a…

I find your comments about technical competency of Australians being less than elsewhere interesting. My own experience over the decades is the opposite. I have had to deal professionally with various fly-in gurus (from the US and Europe) and they have had little success in understanding how we implemented the projects we were involved in. what was more ridiculous was the major discrepancy in pay. If US or European,…

Likewise - I spent 6 months back in 2004 working in the US office at a large company doing data management as part of a big team. I was the only person in the entire group who tried to understand how our whole team fit together and what my inputs and outputs in the data chain did - and why they needed what they needed. Everyone else was a narrow specialist in their little bit, and the project managers were specialist project managers who knew how to gantt, but didn't understand what we all did.

I'd been used to working in a smaller company where I HAD to understand everything because I was building tooling for the entire chain. Obviously I didn't know enough to do everyone else's job, but I understood what their job meant and what kind of problems they existed to solve.

Re: How Australian Tech Companies Can Think About Silicon Valley

#46

Post by wenc » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 6:42 PM UTC

amyjess wrote: post #43

ianhowson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great post. I'd like to add: > You can get even better value if you can build your team outside of Sydney/Melbourne. So much this, but talent outside the big cities is rare . I lived in Queensland for a while and would have taken a massive pay cut for any tech work... but there just isn't any. I knew more people working in Sydney (fly-in-fly-out) than working in local companies. You can pick up uni students…

> So much this, but talent outside the big cities is rare. I lived in Queensland for a while and would have taken a massive pay cut for any tech work... but there just isn't any. I knew more people working in Sydney (fly-in-fly-out) than working in local companies. This is what playing the long game is for. Take a lesson from Texas Instruments. The founders decided to start a tech company in North Texas, where there…

The trouble though is that UT-Dallas is still not a spectacular school, so the talent does not rank among the best. It's serviceable for what TI needs, but not the best. And few people will relocate to Dallas just to go UT-Dallas. TI may have gotten by with that level of talent in the past, but if you're a company that is pushing the boundaries, that level of talent may not be sufficient.

If you locate near an already great university in an already attractive city (e.g. UT-Austin), you can tap into a talent magnet that already draws people from around the world. Remember, the talent pool is now global and tech companies that aim from anything short of that would be depriving themselves.

Talent pool size is a real problem. To cite an example: for years, many French-speaking universities in Montreal had a hard time drawing global talent due to the language of instruction; on that basis alone they were less competitive than English-speaking universities in the same city (e.g. global English-speaking universities like McGill draw a from a larger and much more competitive pool of students from around the world) simply because their pool of students are constrained to French speakers. Just as an example: most Asian students will probably not bother to learn French, but many are already learning English in grade school. This means French-only universities lose out on the two biggest pools of engineering graduate students: those from India and those from China. To make things worse, French students from France rarely want to study in Quebec because most of them believe their own grande-ecoles to be better (there is also an element of French snobbery involved when it comes to Quebec).

Anyway, my sense is by setting up shop in a city that already draws global talent, the premium you pay in salaries over the long run is going to be far less than setting up your own university (considering how expensive it is to run a really good university). The payoff is much greater. University reputations are expensive and slow to build, and as can be seen in the UT-Dallas case, one is uncertain to succeed even with sizable investments.

p.s. of course, this argument breaks down if your company does not require a very high level talent.

Re: How Australian Tech Companies Can Think About Silicon Valley

#47

Post by eli_gottlieb » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 7:27 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #29

jacques_chester wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real strength of Australians is our cheerful cynicism and laconic humour; these allow for honest appraisal. We are optimistic ("she'll be right"), but it is a different species from American optimism ("I'm going to build the impossible"). I work in NYC and my office has, at any time, between 5 and 10 Australians working there, out of ~100. It is a tremendous comfort to have that common sense of humour at…

Australians tend to lack confidence on their own in the greater world, but when put together as a team they think they can beat everyone (and often do). One thing we don't make is good managers of Americans - cynicism and laconic humour does not come across well with American employees.

>One thing we don't make is good managers of Americans - cynicism and laconic humour does not come across well with American employees.

So how does cynicism come across to Americans? As a New Yorker by birth/upbringing/family, I often wonder if this is part of the gap between my family and "Americans".

Re: How Australian Tech Companies Can Think About Silicon Valley

#48

Post by jwilliams » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 7:34 PM UTC

garagemc2 wrote: post #7

jwilliams wrote: post #2

One of the common mistakes I see Australian (and other incoming) startups make is "hiring/setting up a sales person in SF". It seems like a highly leveraged thing to do. Surely someone in-market, full-time, with sales experience should do 10x. But you learn so much in the sales process. If you have someone remote, new and purely incentivized on sales you lose much of that information. Quite often the sales person "fa…

So what is the correct thing to do here? Do the selling yourself or go along to sales meetings?

Really depends on your business, but getting on a plane is the easy solution. It's relatively cheap to fly AU-US nowadays.

If it's a bigger deal, you can probably justify it. Or you stack smaller deals in to one 2-4 week trip.

Sounds inefficient, but you can pack a lot in - plus you'd be surprised how convincing getting on a plane and flying around the world to a customer is. "I'm coming in from Australia" is also a great door-opener.

Doesn't work in all businesses - but for a lot of B2B it is effective.

Re: How Australian Tech Companies Can Think About Silicon Valley

#49

Post by abrak » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 8:11 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #10

adventured wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cheaper tech teams with less competition. Australia has a lot of talent in the software space, but without the eye watering wage bills. Since you're referring to all of Australia - those advantages are all neutralized by choosing any of two dozen other US cities to start in. You get the advantages of the vast US market, other cities have far lower real estate costs than you see in most of Australia, you can choose…

You do gain something keeping the tech team in Australia which is Australians are much more “team” orientated than Americans. “Mateship” really is a thing here that means something. A tight team with focus will beat a group of talented individuals every time.

According to Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory, the USA and Australia have very similar cultures, although 'mateship' is not a dimension considered I will admit. :D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensio... https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison/austral...

I would suggest that all national cultures value loyal friendship and working as a team. That said, 'mateship' has a sense of egalitarianism to it, and while Australia and the USA are egalitarian cultures, that is lacking in other nations, e.g., China.

https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison/austral...

Re: How Australian Tech Companies Can Think About Silicon Valley

#50

Post by adampwells » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 8:51 PM UTC

lukego wrote: post #19

stephen_g wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where in Queensland? There is plenty of tech going on in Brisbane if you look for it... I suppose it depends on your specialisation though.

Just curious: what is some cool stuff happening in Brisbane these days? I grew up there but I moved away to find more interesting work a long time ago. It would be nice to hear about interesting things happen there nowadays.

Megaport is headquartered in Brisbane and we are hiring! Looking for senior and intermediate Java/Kotlin/Sacala devs