Access and inclusion: who could enter Australia's startup ecosystem?

Access could begin with information, before it became belonging

Peter Davison remembers the early internet as a route around one part of the startup world's social infrastructure. Without an established pedigree or a place inside its networks, he could search for companies and people and begin forming his own view of where opportunity sat. The University of Melbourne records a much earlier enabling milestone: it developed and managed Australia's domain-name allocation system and established the country's first TCP/IP internet connection on 23 June 1989. That chronology establishes infrastructure, not equal access. Davison's account remains personal evidence of how one prospective participant used it.

“So I mean, the reason why a guy like me with no background, no sort of pedigree in this area could succeed was because of the internet. You could poke around the corners of the internet looking for good companies, looking for good people. You didn't have to be a part of the networks. So I really leveraged that a lot.”

Visibility widened when founders defined the audience

Annie Parker remembers Robyn Exton returning to an accelerator with a more specific proposition: a dating and communications product designed around lesbian, bisexual and queer women. Y Combinator's current company profile confirms Exton as HER's founder and CEO, the company spelling and the audience it describes. It does not establish that the accelerator caused HER's later growth, and Parker's judgement about the company's success remains her own. Yolanda Redrup then widens the lens. In her account, representation cannot be reduced to placing one man and one woman at a table; socioeconomic background, culture and other lived experience also shape which perspectives are present. Her belief that those perspectives improve a business is an attributed argument, not an independently tested result here.

“That person, she's called Robyn Exton, and she's now the founder of an incredibly successful company called HER. It's an application designed to specifically be a dating and communications tool for lesbian and bi-curious women. When we first met Robyn, her idea for the dating app was there, but it wasn't specific to an audience. It didn't have that uniqueness. What was the unfair advantage? So she didn't actually get into the first intake. It was the second intake when she came back and she'd refined her pitch. She'd made it super punchy and obviously, like I say, had found the niche that she wanted to go into.”

“And it's also why diversity goes a lot further than just gender. Really what you need to be getting at here is not having a man and a woman around the table; it's by having different perspectives, people from different walks of life, people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, different cultural experiences. All of that feeds into building a better business.”

Networks mattered when they carried practical support

A network can provide introductions and status, but Julie Trell describes something more operational: a setting in which founders could admit difficulty and ask other women for practical help, including loans, equity or investment. Coralus, formerly known as SheEO, now describes its venture model as year-round collective support paired with opportunities for community capital and support. The first-party page shows that the organisation still presents community and finance as connected parts of its model. It does not independently verify Trell's historical account, the reach of that support or its performance.

“They know that they can reach out. They know they can be vulnerable and be authentic and say, I'm having trouble here. The pandemic has just wiped out all of my funding. And there's other women that will literally roll up their sleeves and it's like, here's a loan, or here's some equity, I want to take equity in your company, here's an investment.”

Capital access was structural as well as personal

Arthur Sinodinos describes capital access as a property of markets as well as individual fundraising skill. He contrasts the depth of United States capital markets with Australia's smaller market and presents that depth as one reason Australian companies look to the US. The Australian Government's Early Stage Venture Capital Limited Partnership program illustrates a domestic policy response on the supply side: partnership registration and tax benefits are intended to stimulate early-stage venture capital, attract pooled capital and connect investors with eligible businesses. The program page establishes design and purpose. It does not show who ultimately receives funding, measure the gap between markets or establish equitable access within either one.

“One of the things that strikes me about the US is very deep and liquid capital markets, the deepest, most liquid capital markets in the world, and therefore you get great access to funding here. And that's why this is such an attractive market for Australian companies and enterprises.”

Inclusion changed who decision-makers looked for

Colette Grgic frames inclusion as a change in the aperture of ecosystem decision-making: who is treated as welcome and which skills and backgrounds are recognised as valuable. The Australian Government's Pathway to Diversity in STEM Review uses a similarly multidimensional frame when discussing underrepresentation. It identifies barriers that can intersect across place, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, race, culture and disability. That review is about STEM rather than a census of startup founders, and it is not a legal finding about a person or institution. Its value here is narrower: it supports the proposition that a single representation measure can conceal materially different conditions.

“And I think there's a massive opportunity for us, not just within gender, but within many different backgrounds, to start building out more diversity in our ecosystem. And we can only do that when we take an inclusive approach, when we go, "Everybody is actually welcome here, and everybody with their different skill sets have something to add."”

Targeted programs made the gaps explicit

Chad Renando remembers a shift from broad startup programs towards efforts designed for people and life stages he believed earlier models had missed, including Indigenous and female entrepreneurs, younger people and mature-aged participants. Two official records show how targeted intervention has been expressed, without proving that the gaps were solved. A 2024 Department of Industry briefing says Boosting Female Founders was announced in 2018 to address finance and support barriers; it also records an early departmental finding of direct support for recipients but no measurable impact on the wider startup ecosystem. Indigenous Business Australia currently offers eligible Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander entrepreneurs and Indigenous-owned businesses finance, tailored support and business-skills workshops. These records establish purpose, services and eligibility, not reach, equality of access or outcomes.

“And you also have dedicated programs for people that might have been missed out in the beginning, such as Indigenous or female entrepreneurship, or youth entrepreneurship or mature-aged.”

Place and circumstance shaped what people noticed

Samantha Finnegan connects her attention to regional producers and makers with her own background in country and regional Victoria and her work in tourism. It is a useful reminder that accounts of an ecosystem are situated: people notice different forms of enterprise because of where they have lived and worked. Her interview does not establish a national pattern of regional startup access or disadvantage. It gives a bounded personal account of why the makers outside major metropolitan startup centres were visible to her.

“Yes, so personally I am from the country as well and I grew up in country and regional Victoria, but we also have a house up near Daylesford, and during the first lockdown we were lucky enough to be able to stay there. For the first lockdown and the second lockdown, we were in the city. But again, my background is in championing tourism for various roles that I've had, and so I guess I'm a bit more aware about how important the regions are from a tourism perspective. And it's really the producers and makers that make up the personality of a place.”

Progress still depended on conditions outside the startup program

Zoe Piper argues that participation cannot be separated from the conditions around a career. She identifies childcare as a parental issue with consequences for what work is possible and presents greater access and affordability as a step towards change. Historical Australian Bureau of Statistics evidence provides limited context: in 2016–17, caring for children was the most common perceived labour-force participation barrier among women who wanted to start work or work more. The ABS release is not current, is not startup-specific and does not test Piper's policy recommendation. It does show why a discussion confined to accelerators, investment committees and founder programs can miss constraints operating outside them.

“And I think it's important to focus not just directly on the issue, but what's happening behind the scenes as well. So if you look at something like childcare, which should be a parental issue as opposed to just an issue for women, but that can have a really, really big impact on careers and what's possible. So I think greater access to childcare and making that more affordable would be a huge step in the right direction.”