The co-founder of HootSuite has shared his thoughts on the Australian start-up scene\u2019s lack of investor capital after embarking on a global tour for his new start-up Quietly.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n HootSuite is a social media management system for businesses and organisations to execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one secure, web-based dashboard.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was founded in Vancouver in 2008 by Ryan Holmes, who developed the platform alongside a team including Dario Meli.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meli, who has since moved on from HootSuite, is launching a new company called Quietly \u2013 a network for connecting trendsetters, travellers, curators, writers and brands.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Quietly allows users to receive highly accurate recommendations from their friends and trusted brands.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meli \u2013 who founded Quietly in December with Sean Tyson \u2013 is on a global tour to raise awareness of the service ahead of its launch to the public. This is expected to happen in March.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Having already visited Columbia and Peru, Meli is currently in Sydney, where he is looking to connect with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, bloggers, and anyone in media and publishing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meli points out the Quietly team consists of just four people, so there are no immediate plans to hire Australia-based staff. However, he describes Australia\u2019s start-up scene as \u201cquite good\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve met with people who operate a few start-ups and have another meeting tonight that I\u2019m going to be attending,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m presenting at Fishburners tomorrow, so I\u2019ll be meeting many [more] entrepreneurs and many start-ups. The reception has been great.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When compared to the United States, Meli believes there is \u201cnot necessarily a lot of access to capital\u201d in Australia. He also believes Australia has a relatively smaller consumer scene, which makes it hard to scale.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meanwhile, Meli insists his association with HootSuite has limited benefits.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThat really is in reputation only. Quietly is brand new\u2026 The entire journey is a fresh start,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe point of this trip is not to talk about HootSuite at all. HootSuite is doing its own thing. I\u2019m not involved in operations any longer.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meli and Tyson have already raised a small seed round for Quietly, but they haven\u2019t ruled out raising additional funding further down the track.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The ultimate plan for Quietly, says Meli, is to go global, hence the worldwide tour.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re taking a global perspective and it\u2019s an unknown. That\u2019s why we\u2019re going to Bangkok and Rome and Prague and Amsterdam,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The co-founder of HootSuite has shared his thoughts on the Australian start-up scene\u2019s lack of investor capital after embarking on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42514"}],"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=42514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}