One of the biggest and most important aspects of the work that StartupWA does is to advocate for the growth of the sector. It’s usually done behind the scenes and isn’t publicly spoken about.
Last week, StartupWA Board Members Jason Balchand, Dr Jo Hawkins, and Patrick Jodas attended Parliament House to provide insights on the WA startup ecosystem to the Legislative Council’s Inquiry into Innovation in Western Australia. The Inquiry was spearheaded late last year by several members of parliament — Hon. Pierre Yang MLC, Hon. Colin de Grussa MLC, Hon. Darren West MLC, Hon. Sandra Carr MLC, and Hon. Wilson Tucker MLC. The first stage of the Inquiry requested written submissions from the public on:
- the current state of the innovation ecosystem
- the role of the Western Australian government in supporting entrepreneurship, start-ups, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
- any other matters that the Committee considers relevant.
Early this year, some of those submissions were invited to provide evidence directly to the Committee at Parliament House. Other organisations that gave evidence include the Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation, FundWA, Spacecubed, and Evolv3.
Find out more about the inquiry and watch the Hansard recording of the hearing here.
StartupWA’s recommendations
During the Inquiry, StartupWA made several recommendations outlining what it believes to be needed to speed up WA’s growth as a global startup hub that attracts the world’s best startups and innovators.
Government procurement as a first customer
Better leveraging government procurement by allocating a percentage of the State Government’s annual procurement budget to startups and innovators. StartupWA suggests this will go a long way to growing the sector and diversifying the state’s economy.
“We suggested a model called CivTech, originally started in Scotland and now used by many governments around the world, including some in Australia — Victoria (CivVic) and South Australia (Go2Gov),” StartupWA Chair, Jason Balchand told Startup News.
Using government procurement to advance gender equality
Government Procurement activities can be used as a lever to help grow underrepresented cohorts within the startup sector — in this case, female founders. StartupWA suggested the creation of a policy similar to the Aboriginal Procurement Policy that gives a small weighting/preference to companies that have at least 40% female founders or senior leadership team members.
The aim of this would be to encourage increased participation in the sector and also signal to the market that the Government sees gender equality of high importance.
Success stories
WA needs to be a lot more vocal about the successes that have been fostered in its local ecosystem. There are many large companies that WA has grown; ones that few people know about nationally and internationally. Being more vocal about these founder stories will not only help to inspire the next wave of founders and innovators, it will also help to attract more investment into the state. Less than two per cent of the venture capital deployed in Australia goes to WA startups, despite the size of our population and economy.
Startup News has a new podcast and editorial series launching soon that focuses specifically on telling some of these stories.
Grants, grants, grants.
The WA Government has done an excellent job in the last few years of increasing the size and number of grants available and simplifying the application process. If WA is to become a world-leading startup hub, it will need those grants to continue to grow in size and number, addressing specific future needs and targeting verticals where WA has an advantage and growth is wanted. The Green Tech Hub and accompanying grants announced late last year at West Tech Fest by Minister Dawson are a good example of this.
About StartupWA
StartupWA is a not-for-profit membership-based organisation that acts as the peak industry body for startups and innovative tech companies in WA. As well as advocacy work, it also runs a number of events throughout the year aimed at bringing the ecosystem together and creating opportunities for collaboration.
Its advocacy direction and messages are derived from its members and the ecosystem in general through events such as roundtable discussions.
Membership to StartupWA is free and is available here.
