Above: The fun part of travel: Lars and I at the Facebook Christmas party.
Positives
It’s hard to build a great tech team no matter where you are, but we found it easier to attract top engineering talent in Australia. I looked into recruiting a development team in the US when we closed our first funding round, but we found much higher quality candidates in Sydney.
There’s a certain type of engineer who likes the crazy challenge of a start-up. Australia has some great universities that turn out the talent, and there aren’t nearly as many ambitious and interesting start-ups to compete with.
Negatives
One negative (and I appreciate this comment may draw some criticism) is that our culture isn’t as hard working as in Silicon Valley. When you walk down the back streets of Palo Alto late at night you see offices packed with team members bashing away at a new product.
I’ve been at the Facebook office at 10pm and it seems that half the people are still there. I don’t sense the same level of competition and urgency in Australia, so working at this level isn’t normal. Of course, our team at Posse is an exception – they’re often on board at 10pm and on weekends, especially at the moment. We’re fighting to get the next version of our product out for Christmas!
Negatives
If you want to launch a global company out of Australia, then for the reasons I’ve listed you better be prepared to travel a lot. And I’m not talking business class flights and five star hotels!
When I travel, I take the cheapest flights available and stay with friends or use Airbnb. It’s exhausting, lonely and hard spending so much time away from loved ones at home.
Positives
But through travelling for Posse, some of the most inspiring and wonderful people in the world have become close friends. I’ve learnt so much that I wouldn’t swap a minute of it for a safe job at home, and sometimes it can be super fun – like this week when I scored an invite to the Facebook Office Christmas Party!
I’d say that for Posse, starting in Australia has been more positive than negative. It’s hard to balance running a team and developing a product in Australia with the need to constantly spend time halfway around the world.
I’ve found it vital to travel a lot, involving investors and directors from Silicon Valley. That way, we still reap the learning benefits available to companies based in the US.
Raising money is much harder from Australia, which is frustrating at the time but I think in the end it’s healthy for start-ups to struggle a bit. The entry bar is much higher so you have to get clear about what you’re doing and focus. Nothing is more motivating than knowing the next raise will be harder than the last, so you better show some progress!
