After a spending while on a sort of technological ‘walkabout’, Australia is experiencing something of a mini-tech boom. For a long time the biggest thing you could name out of the country was Atlassian. Now other startups are joining the roster, and VC investment is ticking up.
The latest sign of this is the news that local VC AirTree Ventures has added UK-based VC James Cameron, formerly of Accel Partners, to its team.
“It’s clear to me that the Australian ecosystem has hit an inflection point” he said in a statement. “At Accel we’ve been fortunate enough to back some great Aussie and Kiwi founders who have been part of a new generation of world-class, globally-focused startups to emerge from the region.”
Joining him at AirTree is Julia French, former founder of CoveredCo, a marketing firm which gained a long reputation in the Valley. Julia has long had an association with the Australian ecosystem having helped support the US expansion and marketing efforts of a variety of Australian companies including Atlasssian.
There is around AUS$2 billion dollars in venture capital funding now available for Australian startups, with AirTree Ventures over the last few months closing the country’s largest-ever VC fund at AUS$250 million.