The Glitz, The Glam, The Buzz, The Bull
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday May 3, 2000
It was a term covering optimistic schoolboys with smart software or Web design businesses. A year later, the Australian Internet entrepreneur has grown up. They have graduated from shoe-string budgets and cheap publicity stunts to multi-million-dollar TV advertising campaigns.
In waves, we've seen entrepreneurs spout bright ideas for youth and women's portals, vortals, Net radio, online music, toy and florist shops. Click online and you'll see most of them are out there now. It's real.
Bankrolling the new technology entrepreneur has been what Mr Roger Allen of VC firm Allen & Buckeridge describes as ``the second coming" of the venture capital industry in Australia. In the final quarter of 1999, more than $350 million, spread over 150 deals was invested in Australian start-ups, according to the Federal Government. That is only $30 million less than the amount invested during all of 1998.
During the year angels emerged, with high-profile business identities clamouring to get a piece of the dot.com future. The glitziest, TinSHED, introduced Sydney to California's pitch-a-rama with its KickStart for Start-Ups conference this March. Other lower-profile outfits such as Harbour Angels and East Coast Angels began vetting Internet proposals from entrepreneurs groomed in the art of the 10-minute pitch and two-page business plan.
In November Sydney discovered the Net-working event, with Britain's First Tuesday social forum opening its doors. Coloured dots separated the Internet wannabes from financiers looking for the next big idea. By February, entrepreneurs decided they wanted their own space to mingle and mentor and the online forum Entrepreneurs Only was born.
Last year a handful of local e-tailers quaked at the prospect of big US Web brands such as CDNow arriving for Christmas and crushing their fledgling business. It didn't happen. Instead, in most cases the likes of dstore and Wishlist mustered millions of dollars to fund homegrown Amazon.coms.
Dstore founder and former LookSmart executive David Gold, 29, raised $6.6 million to embark on an acquisitive trail that began in the weeks before Christmas with the take-out of rival toybox.com.au.
In 1999 28-year-old Wishlist co-founder Huy Truong complained about the spectre of Coles Myer arriving online and throwing millions around as he struggled to market ``guerilla-style". But Wishlist proved the star of the first Internet Christmas, delivering gifts to 30,000 homes. Now with $15 million of its own to spend, Wishlist's VC backers are describing the site as among the leaders in its field worldwide.
© 2000 Sydney Morning Herald