This week was a busy one for Australian start-ups, with two crowdsourced equity platforms launching in Australia and a couple of big discussions taking place online.
Israeli-based OurCrowd launched on Monday and Artesian Ventures-backed VentureCrowd launched on Thursday.
Our story that received the most comments this week explored why Australian tech start-ups are leaving the country and if we can solve the issues driving them overseas.
But it’s not all doom and gloom for Australian government support for start-ups, with supporting start-ups on the agenda and an election issue in South Australia with both parties targeting them.
In other investment news, an angel investor warned against quick capital rounds, two start-ups have banded together to offer a start-up scholarship for uni students and a Brisbane start-up won $100,000 at Perth’s West Tech Fest.
One of Australia’s leading start-ups, the founders of e-commerce platform Bigcommerce, shared how they had to overcome their fear of taking on external capital and getting big too quickly before they could really take off.
In other growth news, this start-up shared how they grew 200% by eschewing a gung-ho entrepreneurial approach to business and heard from a start-up taking on big players in the science lab supplies space.
For those looking to grow, we reported on three education opportunities including the return of Melbourne’s only private accelerator AngelCube, Australia’s first ever all-female hackathons and Sydney University’s incubator program announcing its latest intake.
We looked to the future and explored three emerging trends that will transform business, and heard from REA’s CIO about why individuals will play a bigger role than ever before.
Getting customers was also a theme of this week with some lead generating advice and Facebook’s head of e-commerce shared his top tips for turning followers into return customers.
We also explored how to keep the customers you have, with tips on how to master customer service, prevent PR disasters online and why this start-up copped flack for their internship ad.
Rose is the current head of growth at Rampersand Ventures. She was formerly a reporter at StartupSmart.
