{"id":38272,"date":"2023-10-20T14:55:20","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/muru-ds-new-entrepreneur-in-residence-ben-sand-wants-more-world-number-one-companies-coming-out-of-australia-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T14:55:20","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:55:20","slug":"muru-ds-new-entrepreneur-in-residence-ben-sand-wants-more-world-number-one-companies-coming-out-of-australia-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/muru-ds-new-entrepreneur-in-residence-ben-sand-wants-more-world-number-one-companies-coming-out-of-australia-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Muru-D’s new entrepreneur-in-residence Ben Sand wants more “world number one” companies coming out of Australia – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cYou don\u2019t have to grow slowly, you don\u2019t have to reserve your ambitions,\u201d says prominent tech entrepreneur Ben Sand.<\/p>\n

After humble beginnings on a farm in regional Australia, Sand went on to build an augmented reality headset startup<\/a> in Silicon Valley, which is now valued at $300 million.<\/p>\n

His journey from an “awful” house in Chippendale to making it big in the Valley serves as an important lesson for emerging entrepreneurs across Australia, he says.<\/p>\n

With muru-D applications for its Sydney accelerator\u00a0opening this week, Sand is on the lookout for founders with great ambition.<\/p>\n

Taking over from Mick Liubinskas as muru-D’s entrepreneur-in-residence, Sand says he’ll be paying particular attention to startups working for more than financial profit.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to have a strong sense of purpose about what you\u2019re doing,\u201d Sand tells StartupSmart.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you going to do make the world a better place?\u201d<\/p>\n

Sand says he\u2019s intensely drawn to founders creating solutions and innovative products that serve deeper causes like disease prevention.<\/p>\n

He says companies like Planet Labs, which uses geospatial imaging to prevent illegal logging of rainforests, are setting a new benchmark for tech developers and entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat technology could have just as easily been used into monitoring military troop movements,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Computer vision is another emerging trend Sand is excited about because of its potential to transform everything from medical diagnoses to\u00a0virtual reality experiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a really important technology and it\u2019s fundamental to everything that\u2019s happening into the future,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something that Australians are extremely good at.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sand believes local entrepreneurs can leverage this talent pool and help Australia become a leader in this space.<\/p>\n

\u201cA person with computer vision expertise applied to self-driving cars is worth $10 million to a company,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAustralia is really good at training these people and developing them [but] a lot of them are heading overseas because opportunities are so lucrative there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sand hopes that by working with emerging entrepreneurs, muru-D will be able to create more opportunities for such talent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to see world number ones consistently coming out of Australia and I want the companies applying to muru-D to have that kind of ambition at their hearts,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

As he resettles into Australia, Sand says there\u2019s little difference in potential and talent between the startup sector here and in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople just don\u2019t believe they\u2019re capable of achieving at these levels,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Helping more local founders realise they can build high-impact ventures from Down Under will be a matter of eliminating self-doubt, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cSilicon Valley is fantastic but it\u2019s no longer a life or death scenario for those big visions,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on<\/em>\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>\u00a0and iTunes<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to grow slowly, you don\u2019t have to reserve your ambitions,\u201d says prominent tech entrepreneur Ben Sand. After<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38272"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}