{"id":39964,"date":"2023-10-20T15:05:30","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/seven-surprising-findings-about-australias-startup-sector-from-startup-musters-annual-report-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:05:30","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:05:30","slug":"seven-surprising-findings-about-australias-startup-sector-from-startup-musters-annual-report-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/seven-surprising-findings-about-australias-startup-sector-from-startup-musters-annual-report-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven surprising findings about Australia’s startup sector from Startup Muster’s annual report – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Startup<\/div>\n

\u201cSeventy-two percent of startups need funding to continue operating\u2014we need to fix that,\u201d says Startup Muster chief executive Monica Wulff.<\/p>\n

In its third annual survey of Australian startups, released this week<\/a>, Startup Muster reveals that while many new founders are taking a mature approach to building new ventures by backing themselves, running lean and thinking global early on, the majority of startups are still at risk of failure.<\/p>\n

Adding to this concern is each Australian startup now employs four full-time people on average.<\/p>\n

Speaking at Pause Fest in Melbourne<\/a>\u00a0on Thursday,\u00a0Wulff said there appears to be a disconnect between the industries that startups are breaking into and the markets that investors are interested in backing in Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there isn\u2019t at least a relationship between what the investors are interested in and what the startups are interested in, there might be issues,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Alignment between startups and the supporters in the ecosystem is critical for the whole sector\u2019s success, says Wulff.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey go hand-in-hand, this ecosystem is not being built just for one,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo startup is an island.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here are six other key findings from the Startup Muster report.<\/p>\n

Fintech is the biggest industry for Australian startups, but not for\u00a0supporters<\/h3>\n

Of the 43% of startup founders with a specific industry focus who participated in the survey, 15.9% work in fintech, followed by 14.8% in retail, and 14.4% in content and media.<\/p>\n

But for supporters of the startup sector, which includes investors, their biggest focus markets are medical, health or bio technology (47.9%) followed by the Internet of Things (45.5%), and fintech (43.1%).<\/p>\n

Government grants are unpopular<\/h3>\n

Wulff notes that many Australian startups are taking a mature and planned approach to raising capital.<\/p>\n

On average, the startups surveyed generated $345,200 in annual revenue and raised $448,300 in investment in the 12 months prior to completing the survey.<\/p>\n

Government grants were found to be largely unpopular, with ineligibility (38.7%) and time-consumption (27.8%) nominated as the biggest barriers for startups.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was interesting to see the uptake of grants at [federal and state] levels was quite low,\u201d says Wulff.<\/p>\n

Australian founders are not young guns and most are highly educated<\/h3>\n

\u201cThe average age of startup founders is 36 to 38,\u201d says Wulff.<\/p>\n

\u201cFifty-five percent are first-time founders,\u00a033% wanted to do their startup because they were dissatisfied with their previous job, [and] 77% wanted to have ownership of the value they were creating.\u201d<\/p>\n

A quarter of Australian founders hold a job outside their startup and over 70% have completed a Bachelor\u2019s degree or higher level of education, according to the report.<\/p>\n

Wulff says women now make up 24% of Australian founders, which means there\u2019s still a long way to go but change is evident. In 2014, the figure was just 16%.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing each year it\u2019s increasing,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Startups are outsourcing to local businesses<\/h3>\n

The survey also found that nearly 90% of Australian startups outsource work and 70% of this is within the country. Wulff says this is helping to create a sustainable and healthy small business and startup sector.<\/p>\n

\u201cStartups like to outsource,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of products startups are creating are B2B. We need to rephrase our thinking around outsourcing means bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Australian startups are thinking global<\/h3>\n

A majority of the Australian startups surveyed plan to go global, with 43% saying they want to expand overseas to drive sales, and 25% wanting to do so to raise international investment.<\/p>\n

\u201cNinety-two percent of our startups had export revenue,\u201d Wulff says.<\/p>\n

\u201cFear\u201d is preventing would-be startup founders<\/h3>\n

The report found the three biggest barriers to potential startup founders starting up are funding, financial risk and technical skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cRisk, fear and responsibility\u201d inhibit those who haven\u2019t yet made a start, says Wulff.<\/p>\n

Learn how to conquer your fears on the Audacity to Fail podcast<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

On the other side of the coin, founders who took the leap said \u201cownership, development and independence\u201d are their favourite parts of the job.<\/p>\n

Wulff says this matches with the top motivational factors that influence soon-to-be founders, which were \u201cdeveloping technology\u201d, \u201cnew skills\u201d, \u201copportunity for financial success\u201d and \u201cbeing my own boss\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cExpectations are aligned,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

About the survey<\/h3>\n

Wulff says more than 2500 respondents and 100,000 answers were screened in Startup Muster\u2019s survey, which is supported by the Commonwealth Department of Industry, Innovation and Science.<\/p>\n

Respondents included founders, soon-to-be founders and other members of the startup ecosystem, including accelerators, incubators, investors, mentors, educators, service providers and government.<\/p>\n

The findings are based on validated respondents.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are independent and incredibly transparent,\u201d says Wulff.<\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on<\/em>\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>\u00a0and iTunes<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cSeventy-two percent of startups need funding to continue operating\u2014we need to fix that,\u201d says Startup Muster chief executive Monica Wulff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39964"}],"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=39964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}