Aspiring entrepreneurs plug into global tech market

Spark Festival Sydney, a week-long event designed for aspiring entrepreneurs in the global tech start-up market, is expected to attract more than 10,000 local and international industry leaders in October. The City of Sydney has committed $35,000 a year to support the event over three years.

Entrepreneurs will be given the opportunity to kickstart their business initiatives through a series of conferences, talks, workshops, exhibitions, tours of local successful businesses, pitching events, design competitions and networking opportunities. Topics for this year’s event include FinTech regulation, cybersecurity, education, health, cleantech, immersive realities, quantum computing artificial intelligence, robotics and social enterprise.

“Sydney is home to Australia’s highest concentration of tech start-ups and we’re developing a global reputation for supporting innovation,” said City of Sydney CEO Monica Barone.

“We’ve developed an action plan for supporting tech start-ups to make sure Sydney is a place where entrepreneurs can quickly scale innovative businesses and create the jobs of the future. Events like Spark Festival Sydney will help us build the skilled and connected community we need to make that happen.

“The three-year funding for Spark Festival Sydney is another step in creating a sustainable, long-term program of events to help us support and attract tech entrepreneurs.”

Spark Festival Sydney is a non-profit initiative that launches this year in Sydney, with plans to take the tech start-up event across Australia. It was developed by the team behind StartupWeek Sydney held in 2015.

Event themes also emphasise the start-up journey, early stages of innovation and entrepreneurship, women in technology, the power of diversity, digital government and smarter cities.

“Spark Festival Sydney is about bringing entrepreneurs together in a way they can connect with people who can help grow their businesses, coach them to success and share their experiences with the next generation,” said Chris Clark, co-founder and director of Spark Festival.

“We want to do whatever we can to encourage the establishment of globally scalable enterprises by helping Australians tap into the tremendous talent available here in Sydney — whether this is potential employees, investors, corporates, academia or government entities.

“The solutions are businesses that are ‘born global’ with foundations here in Sydney.”

As well as providing funding for Spark Festival Sydney, the City has supported its tech start-up ecosystem through sponsorship of the CeBIT business technology conference, the REMIX summit and the Global Coworking Unconference Conference.

Peter Colbert, founder and CEO of Inamo, found last year’s StartupWeek to be an invaluable experience.

“The event provided Inamo with exposure to government, corporate and media contacts that would have been near impossible for a start-up company of my size to obtain on our own.”

The City has provided grants and sponsorship for Sydney-based sustainability start-ups, including WattBlock and Good360, a start-up that connects businesses with excess goods to charities that need them.

Other City-sponsored initiatives include Springboard Australia, an international incubator program to accelerate Australian female-led start-ups. The City also produces the popular Tech Startup 101 free business seminar series.