Contribute to the Australian companies working in Virtual Reality

As an Irish exp-pat living in Oz I tend to keep an eye on the Irish start-up scene. Call it home town bias if you like!

One publication I subscribe too (well worth a read if you’re interested in the Irish start-up scene) is the StartUp Dublin blog written by Co-founder of IDIRUS and angel investor  of a New York based accelerator @ERoundtable, Niamh Bushnell who is Dublin Commissioner for Start Ups. And yes, before you ask, Dublin has a population of about 500,000 and yet has a “Commissioner for Start-ups”.  Imagine having the same thing in Melbourne, Sydney or Australia for that matter…

Data is vital

In a recent blog post Bushnell wrote about last year speaking to Shane Reiser of Startup Genome and asking last year why Dublin was not ear marked as a start-up hub internationally. Reiser response apparently was succinct  “because you don’t have good start-up data”.

Bushnell the describes how she decided that this was one of her objectives – to get data on Dublin start-ups. By the way, on a related note, below is the Startup Genome data for Melbourne. It would be great if  VR  was a filter but I couldn’t see where you could do this.

But I digress.

Bushnell then outlined how she came across Start-Up Nation Central, a non profit in Tel Aviv promoting Israeli innovation. From that an idea for a database or directory for Dublin start-ups was born.   You can view the database for StartUp Nation Central here.

The end result for StartUp Dublin was a dynamic Google spreadsheet or ‘pre-release of Dublin Start-ups’ as they are calling it. You can access it here.

A Directory for Australian VR Startups…

These database or directories if you like got me thinking of how this idea could be applied to: 1) Australian tech start-ups 2) the Australian VR start-up industry in particular.

You see I think the VR industry in Australia is in need of “good data”.

The VR industry globally is still relatively quite small. But it won’t stay that way for long. And in order for Australia to ensure its place on the world stage of what only this week  Heather Bellini of Goldman Sachs Research called the “next big computing platform”, Australian VR companies need to be connecting and collaborating.

Who are the companies working in VR in Australia? What are they doing? Who are the founders? What stage of development are the companies at?  Are women as founders represented? All of this information doesn’t appear to be freely available in one place.

So to get the ball rolling and looking I have created a Google Doc that if you are an Australian business working in virtual reality (VR) I invite you to add your details.

Hopefully, the database or directory will become a dynamic list of those working in VR in Australia.  Maybe it will be a way to help Australian businesses working in VR to become aware of and connect with each other, a place to find relevant Australian companies working in VR for collaboration purpose,  and a way to help promote Australian innovation in VR.

I’ve started the process off with Snobal as  the first contribution. I’ve no idea how many (if any) Australian companies will add their names or how many companies in Australia are working in VR. But if you are working in this incredibly exciting space and are Australian based I invite you to add your name, collaborate and connect.

Thanks!

Ann

PS: I still think the start-up directory for Australian start-ups (like Israel’s StartUp National Central) is a great idea, but will leave to more able bodies out there…any takers?!

PSS Thanks to StartUp Nation Central Finder for the inspiration for how to organise the database questions.

[ Note: edited the above post on 17 March 2016 moving the sign up form from Google documents to Trello. This ensures that the data can be viewed and edited organically].