Why Australian start-ups are rising tech stars, in everything from childcare to finance and training

Many began in a garage, some started in a coffee shop, but Aussie tech start-ups are changing industries and attracting huge dollars.

Apple, Disney and even Amazon started out in garages, and Aussie entrepreneurs are now proving they can follow their lead.

More Australian innovators are making a serious mark on the tech world this year, creating multibillion-dollar businesses, attracting millions in investments and disrupting traditional industries from humble beginnings in spare rooms and coffee shops.

And, unlike other years, they’re pitching for business from home soil rather than moving to Silicon Valley.

Melbourne-based Mark Woodland is one innovator leading the charge, having recently closed a deal to make the Xplor app he created in his mother’s garage the flagship product of a $3 billion merger.

Xplor founder Mark Woodland created his company after leaving the army to help his mother run a childcare centre. Picture: David Caird

The Australian Army veteran said he didn’t begin with ambitions to change the industry, but simply to help out his Mum running a childcare centre in Croydon.

Leaving a combat arms role to take on a desk job was jarring enough, he said, but he quickly realised that he and the educators were swamped with paperwork and other admin tasks rather than being able to spend time with children and parents.

“I just got so frustrated with how this was being done so I started looking around to see if there were other ways to do this heavy administration and there wasn’t,” he said.

“So I made the grand statement of ‘how hard could it be to build software?’ Yes, it’s still a statement I regret to this day.”

Passing up an offer for to build his software for $5000, Mr Woodland instead set up an office in his mum’s garage and taught himself how to code.

The Xplor app he created first helped parents sign their kids in and out of the centre, and later added features to log what children did during the day.

Another childcare group soon approached Mr Woodland about using the management software, and its success quickly grew.

WeMoney founder Dan Jovevski says he created the company after seeing young Aussies get stuck in debt traps.

It’s now used in more than half of Australia’s 14,000 childcare centres, attracted investment from AirTree Ventures, and this year was acquired by private equity firm Advent International and merged into a $3.8 billion firm called Xplor Technologies.

Mr Woodland said he didn’t expect the software to become a global success but Australian start-ups were well-placed for it.

“I think that a lot of that hunger comes because Australia is a smaller market,” he said. “I’m very, very fortunate that I was able to do this here and I think being in Australia forces you to look to be bigger.”

And he’s not the only local entrepreneur enjoying worldwide success.

University of Melbourne graduate and now Airwallex president Lucy Liu said the financial services firm created with fellow students and friends who owned a Melbourne coffee shop now boasted 12 offices across the world.

But the idea behind the firm, which helps companies trade across foreign currencies cheaply, came from a simple, Australian problem: paying too much to import cups for a coffee shop.

Ms Liu said some of its other ideas also stemmed from issues the five founders faced while setting up the company.

Airwallex founders (left to right) Xijing Dai, Jack Zhang, Lucy Liu, and Max Li.

“We couldn’t make a lot of business payments ourselves because we couldn’t get a corporate credit card or corporate debit card from the bank and that was actually one of the products that we launched last year,” she said. “Quite a few product ideas were inspired by our own business difficulties.”

Securing finances no longer seems to be a big issue for the firm after it attracted $129 million investment in March, securing its classification as a ‘tech unicorn’ with a valuation of more than $1 billion.

Business training firm Go1, created in a Brisbane garage by Chris Eigeland, Andrew Barnes, Chris Hood and Vu Tran, has also spread worldwide, now operating in six countries after winning more than $100 million in investment since 2015.

Mr Eigeland, who said the group had aimed to create “the Spotify or Netflix of training” for small and medium business, said other Aussie entrepreneurs looking to launch their own start-ups should be aware that “it’s not necessarily as scary as you think it is,” and it gets easier if you can find a mentor.

Go1 co-founder Chris Eigeland said Aussie entrepreneurs should seek out mentors. Photo: Claudia Baxter

Seasoned start-up founder Dan Jovevski, from Perth, who raised $2 million in seed funding for his second fintech firm, WeMoney, also mentors other Aussie entrepreneurs and said it had become an ingrained part of the culture.

Chatting to other members of the burgeoning Aussie start-up community had also helped secure funding for future enhancements of the WeMoney app, he said, that was created to help young people take back control of their finances, from automatic budgeting to tracking digital subscriptions.

And while investments had become challenging during the pandemic, Mr Jovevski said investors were still looking for smart buys and willing to help.

“When you ask for money, you get advice,” he said. “When you ask for advice, you get money. Everyone I’ve chatted to says when you talk to investors about your business they get to know you and the people who know you are more likely to invest.”

Originally published as Why Australian start-ups are rising tech stars, in everything from childcare to finance and training