LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION NO. <strong>STARTUP</strong>S BY SUBURB Perth CBD West Perth Subiaco South Perth Northbridge Leederville Unknown Como Victoria Park Perth Osborne Park Malaga Fremantle Scarborough East Victoria Park Belmont Bayswater Balcatta Applecross Ascot “Place is supplanting the industrial corporation as the key economic and social organizing unit of capitalism. Density, the clustering of creative people – in cities, regions, and neighborhoods – provides a key spur to innovation and competitiveness.” Richard Florida 89 FLORENCE, PARIS & PERTH From the studios of Florence, to the coffee houses of Paris and the skunkworks at Google [x], vibrant environments in which people from wide and varied backgrounds can freely interact have always been the engines of economic growth and innovation. Social, cultural and environmental infrastructure can support and encourage social density, a critical mass of interactions and connections between people that create a cocktail of creativity, intelligence and courage. 90 As you would expect we found a clustering of early stage companies and supporting infrastructure within the Perth CBD and its surrounding suburbs. Startups appear more frequently in the CBD, West Perth, Subiaco, Leederville, Northbridge and South Perth. While formal office locations are useful indicators of where entrepreneurial teams are based, they spend a reasonable amount of the time outside their registered office addresses (assuming 29 9 7 5 5 5 4 4 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 they have one at all) in what Richard Florida calls the “4th space”: central, easily accessible places where people can network in a leisurely but intensively productive manner. Co-working spaces, incubators and cafés are examples of this trend. Inner city cafes, bars, pubs and co-working spaces such as Spacecubed also feature highly as the most frequented places for technology and entrepreneurship related meetup groups. Startup offices also tend to be located in suburbs that have a range of these spaces within easy reach. The Technology Park in Bentley also ranks highly on Meetup for the number of members attending events but it does not not rank highly for startup location, we assume this is due to a number of factors such as poor transportation, lack of social infrastructure such as restaurants, bars and cafes SUBURBS BY NO. MEMBERS Perth CBD Leederville Northbridge West Perth Como Bentley Wangara Kardinya Osborne Park Wanneroo Currambine Hillarys Plaistowe Mews Kings Park Claremont Bibra Lake Craigie Joondalup Cottesloe Floreat Nedlands Carine Beeliar Warwirk Willeton O’Connor Rockingham Inglewood East Victoria Park Mt Lawley 11230 4425 2918 1553 1304 879 791 653 555 555 555 555 462 329 287 236 236 213 183 183 158 157 157 157 142 129 108 66 51 51 that appear to be attractive to startup teams. Additionally the structure of the Technology Park seems more suitable for later stage companies. However there are some notable startups such as Heisis, brainchip and the VC firm Yuuwa that are based within the Bentley Technology Park. “Despite all the predictions that technology — from the telephone and the automobile to the computer and the Internet — would lead to the death of cities, the creative economy is taking shape around them. Urban density, the clustering of people and firms, is a basic engine of economic life. Place is the factor that organically brings together the economic opportunity and talent, the jobs and the people required for creativity, innovation, and growth.” Richard Florida 90 TOP 30 VENUES BY NO. GROUPS Spacecubed Bankwest Place Sync Labs Atomic Sky Tech Hub The Frontier Group The Windsor Hotel Rydges Hotel Central Institute of Technology Ignia The Nest 43 Below Caffissimo West End Frisk Espresso Hillman Hall Holiday Inn Perth CBD PICA Professionals Ultimate Rigby’s Bar Rosie O’Grady’s Terrazza Applecross The Oxford Hotel TIBCO Software =30+ 31 13 9 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 AgWorld, Ajilon Offices, Belgian Beer Cafe, Bouncing Orange, Canton Lounge Bar, Code Drop, Deloitte Offices, Doghouse Media, Dome, Enigma Digital, Greens & Co, Hula Bula Bar, IBM, Institute of Chartered Accounts, K&L Gates, Lalla Rookh Bar, Mooba Espresso Bar and Cafe, Permeance Technologies, Precedent, RAC Head Office, Seasons Perth Hotel, The Cheeky Sparrow, The Grosvenor Hotel, The Lucky Shag, The Saint George Hotel, The Village Bar, This is a Webinar, ThoughtWorks, University Club of Western Australia, Western Australian Museum 42
“ THERE’S A TEMPTATION IN OUR NETWORKED AGE TO THINK THAT IDEAS CAN BE DEVELOPED BY EMAIL AND ICHAT. THAT’S CRAZY. CREATIVITY COMES FROM SPONTANEOUS MEETINGS, FROM RANDOM DISCUSSIONS. YOU RUN INTO SOMEONE, YOU ASK WHAT THEY’RE DOING, YOU SAY ‘WOW,’ AND SOON YOU’RE COOKING UP ALL SORTS OF IDEAS.” STEVE JOBS
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