Australia needs to make its own startup luck
We have become a global exporter of ideas and technology. Now we need to fund the conditions that make more outliers possible.
Last weekend, the Socceroos beat Turkey in Vancouver with a quarter of the possession, a fraction of the shots and a 2–0 scoreline anyway.
We were the underdogs, written off by the pundits, clinical with the few chances we got. The country loved it because it’s the story we most enjoy telling about ourselves: a small nation, long odds, scarce resources, punching well above our weight.
Yet we are oddly reluctant to tell the same story about our startups, even when the data tells it for us.
When Donald Horne called Australia “the lucky country” in 1964, he did not mean it kindly. His point was that we coasted on good fortune; on minerals, distance and a pleasant climate rather than ingenuity. The phrase was soon adopted as a tourism slogan, then softened into a comfort blanket. We are lucky, so we need not be ambitious.
