Following up my earlier posts of "Winds of Entrepreneurship" I'll try to give a glimpse of an overview about the Australian VC market and entrepreneurship figures.



According to the local GEM report from 2001 Australia is one of the most entrepreneurial countries in the world.
Australia's Total Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA), stands at 16.2 percent, which ranks it third worldwide, just behind Mexico and New Zealand high rates.
As you'd expect in a developed country like Australia, 77 percent of those (people) involved in entrepreneurial activity were motivated by opportunity (rather than necessity).



Surprisingly the report states that

"Social legitimacy of entrepreneurship was still low (rated last of all GEM 2001 countries). The Australian culture was reasonably supportive of starting a small business, but was not supportive of entrepreneurs with high growth ambitions. There were heavy penalties for failure and little respect for success."

Australia's venture capital industry is quite small compared with other GEM countries. Australia ranked 16th (out of 24 countries for which data was available) on venture capital investment as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Only 0.1-0.2% of GDP is invested as Venture Capital.



Some facts about venture capitalin Australia:

• Australia has 113 venture capital managers


• They control 162 venture capital funds


• The 162 funds invested $3.3 billion in 2002


• The $3.3 billion was taken from a pool of $13.8 billion


• The $3.3 billion was invested into 839 investee companies


• 10,732 potential investments were reviewed


• Due diligence was conducted on 1,087 of these (approx. 10%)


• Of the 839 investee companies only 152 were new investments

A good overview about Australia's Venture Capital companies can be found here or here.



At last some very successful start ups from "down under", just to name some:

• Game Developer Microforte


• Paid Search Provider Looksmart

Thanks Roland for helping me with the article.