Australia’s Silicon Valley: Next big tech firm joins who’s who at Silicon Yarra
A POCKET of inner Melbourne has emerged as Australia’s Silicon Valley, luring yet another digital heavyweight that will join a who’s who of tech titans.
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A precinct of inner Melbourne has cemented its status as Australia’s Silicon Valley, luring yet another tech titan, writes Claire Heaney.
IN the late 1850s, a pocket of land in Melbourne’s east was home to a giant amusement park called Cremorne Gardens.
Modelled on English pleasure gardens, the site was the setting-off point for the first balloon flight in Australia.
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By 1863, the entrepreneur who developed the gardens, George Coppin, was broke and the land was turned over for an asylum before giving way to modest working-class housing.
Coppin’s grand plan had fallen flat, but the seeds of entrepreneurialism had been planted.
By the turn of the century, large industrial establishments such as Rosella and Bryant & May Redhead matches were among the big employers in this pocket of Struggletown.
More than 100 years on, Cremorne — previously a part of bigger suburban Richmond but officially deemed a suburb in its own right in 1999 — has an entirely different identity.
The spirit of enterprise, though, still runs deep.
Today, it is a magnet for digital and disruptive businesses and is widely regarded as Australia’s Silicon Valley. Within the industry, it is known variously as Silicon Richmond, Silicon Yarra and Silicon Alleys.
While the national broadband network isn’t due in Cremorne until mid next year, it has not slowed the march of the mini suburb bound by Punt Rd, Swan St, Church St and the Yarra River.
Industry players note a succession of big hitters in the Australian technology sector already call the suburb home, while rising stars and start-ups are taking root there.
Online job advertising platform Seek has just won a planning battle against neighbours for a multistorey headquarters on Cremorne St that will eventually house 800 workers.
Nearby is heavyweight car advertising group Carsales.com, in a purpose-built site facing Punt Rd, while just blocks away across Church St in Richmond is Australia’s top online property advertising platform, REA Group, owner of realestate.com.au.
Now another major Australian digital company is consolidating its operations in Cremorne.
Up the road from Seek, MYOB, the Australian-grown accounting software business, will find a new home at the bottom of the Nylex silos that are being revamped.
Split at the moment between Cremorne and Glen Waverley in Melbourne’s southeast, MYOB will consolidate its 1200-strong workforce at Cremorne by 2021.
MYOB chief employee experience officer Helen Lea says the group has 500 staff in Cremorne and will boost its workforce there by another 700.
“We will be the largest employer in Richmond when the shift is completed,” she says.
MYOB has established links with other businesses through accelerator programs, events and information sessions pitched at women, university students and start-ups.
“It is a very positive environment and we are cementing our position in the heart of Silicon Yarra,” Ms Lea says.
Cremorne-based early-stage venture capital firm Rampersand has invested in various start-ups, including Sendle, Expert 360 and Amazing Co which has Richmond Football Club captain Trent Cotchin as an investor.
Rampersand managing partner Paul Naphtali says that when he returned to Melbourne from California’s Silicon Valley in 2012, he shifted into a warehouse in Cremorne.
“The last six years we have seen the most incredible development in co-working, start-ups and venture capital in the area,” he says.
“From limited and humble beginnings, it is now a really vibrant start-up hub.”
The business park in Church St, bordering on CityLink, has been home to the likes of Solomon Lew’s Just Group, Country Road Group and other prominent rag traders.
Mr Lew’s Smiggle, Dotti, Portmans, Peter Alexander, Jacqui E, Just Jeans and Jay Jays will be replaced in February by 7-Eleven Group, which is keen to boost its digital activity by setting up at the heart of the district with cotenants such as Walt Disney, Tesla and others. Country Road Group, which owns brands such as Politix and Trenery, is moving to the Botanicca Corporate Park, further east in Burnley, where it will join stablemate David Jones and another retailer, Harris Scarfe.
The former Rosella site is home to a mix of dynamic businesses, public relations agencies and fast-growing companies such as online wine merchant Vinomofo.
Incubators — companies that help nurture start-ups — and co-working hubs such as LaunchPad, Inspire9 and Creative Cubes are scattered around the suburb.
Mr Naphtali says while Cremorne is nowhere near the size of San Francisco, it is similar to San Fran’s South of Market, or SoMA, where a start-up ecosystem has been created around eatery The Creamery.
In Cremorne, he says, people meet, make deals, and collaborate at The Cherry Tree pub, once frequented in the 1980s by notorious drug dealer Dennis Allen.
They might also talk business at cafes such as LaManna & Co or Coe & Coe, where a basketball hoop provides for a change of pace.
“There is that kind of vibe now in Cremorne,” he says.
While the term “ecosystems” can be overused, it applies to the developing area, he says.
“More and more companies are using Cremorne as a branding point,” he says.
The next generation of flag bearers for Australian digital enterprise has taken root, following the trail blazed by Seek, REA Group, Carsales and MYOB.
George Coppin’s English pleasure gardens didn’t flourish, but 160 years later, Cremorne is proving fertile ground indeed.
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