Boundlss have put together another report on the state of the national startup scene
Jonah summarised the key points as:
Uber has captured nearly 10% of the Australian taxi market in under 2 years. Based on the best available data, Australia needs to invest at least $13 billion in digital tech companies over the next 10 years. Otherwise we’ll be left behind while foreign vikings use digital battle-axes to take a quarter of Australia’s GDP.
We estimate the economic impact of digital technology on the Australian economy in 2025 will be ~25% of GDP; and 5.5%+ of GDP will be captured by digital tech companies as revenue. Assuming this, and that growth of interest in the sector increases by an average 25% year on year think it is reasonable that the total number of digital tech companies from 2014 to 2025 could increase from 1,500+ to ~16,000 (assuming we successfully fight off the foreign tech vikings).This growth in startups could look something like: 800 seed stage companies increasing to over 10,000 companies at the seed stage; 330+ to 4,000+ at early stage; ~100 to 600+ at later stage; and the number of unicorns at least doubling over the next eleven years from a half dozen to 15+.Based on this we estimate approximately $13 billion needs to be invested over the next ten years in this sector to capture this value (and beat the vikings). With current funding increasing from an average $200M+ per year to a total of $4.5B per year in 2025 — per capita funding rates of $8.54 per person increasing to $182 per person (roughly equal to Israel now).
The full report is here: https://medium.com/the-boundlss-blog/australia-needs-13-billion-to-fend-off-vikings-cd53866e83c6
It’s an interesting read, and the conclusions are logical and straightforward, though the headline figure of $13billion does look a little daunting!