Sydney start-up ecosystem matures

Sydney Inventor James Bailey

The Sydney market for start-up businesses has grown to a level of maturity to offer innovative and exceptional quality support.

Sydney’s start-up culture is quickly becoming recognised as a world leader for local and international entrepreneurs.

According to startupdaily.net, in late 2017, there were an estimated 2,100 active tech start-ups in Sydney with an overall value of $US6.6 billion.

With Silicon Valley and New York’s overall ecosystem valued at $US264 and $US71 billion respectively at that time, Sydney has an opportunity for exponential growth.

In 2018, Sydney was labelled as the fourth best city for connectedness and as an ecosystem to watch for developing fintech companies in the Start-up Genome global ecosystem rankings.

Ruwin Perera moved his start-up from San Francisco to take advantage of what he says is a large and dynamic market, with venture capital and generous government incentives (Financial Review 2018).

Business Connector highlights 10 of the best accelerator and incubator programs in Sydney, claiming the city has well-established systems to support a broad range of start-ups. At one point many of the start-ups would fall into the on online solutions or app category but that is starting to change.

One of the residents at INCUBATE, the University of Sydney’s accelerator, is entrepreneur and experienced inventor James Bailey. James chose to join Incubate to accelerate his latest project, a pocket-sized high definition display, as it is the first of his inventions designed for the consumer product market. His invention will revolutionise how we use projectors.

Previous small projectors were low quality in design and display, and only worked in very dark rooms but this projector offers both professionals and home users a unique opportunity to use a video projector anywhere – even on a campsite! It is like having a cinema in your pocket.

Pocket.Graphics to be launched through crowdfunding

Bailey’s advice for those looking to design a new product is to outsource aspects of the project to the experienced – in his case, using Sydney based industrial design and product development consultancy D+I.

The projector reportedly weighs just 100 grams and is smaller than a smartphone. It connects to any mobile or laptop device in under 5 seconds.

The fact that Bailey, an experienced inventor, chose to join the INCUBATE community at the University of Sydney, demonstrates how far the Sydney start-up ecosystem has come, which is now well placed to support world class hardware start-ups.

INCUBATE, which was founded by James Alexander, launches high-potential start-ups through accelerated programs and now has a community of more than 4000 entrepreneurs. It has accelerated 107 start-ups and received more than 30 million dollars in funding, creating more 60 million dollars of value and more than 300 jobs.

If you are interested to hear more about how the Pocket.Graphics’ journey progresses and be one of the first people to get your hands on a world first pocket sized projectors add your e mail address here.

James will be using crowdfunding to launch his product to market.  He is working with another Sydney based organisation, ReadyFundGo.

ReadyFundGo offer crowdfunding management services to Australian start-ups to assist with their campaigns and get their projects to market. Their campaign management team have been involved with several $1 million + global Kickstarter campaigns.

Crowdfunding enables an inventor to take pre-orders and raise funds in advance of production. Often the early tech adopters jump go on to become a product’s greatest advocates.

The Pocket.Graphics crowdfunding campaign will be focussed on the global market however, we are hoping that members of the strongly connected Sydney start-up ecosystem will get behind James to support a Sydney inventor with talent and a global ambition.

When we checked in with Lucas Hakewill at INCUBATE we discovered that James is not only a genius inventor but also a very valuable member of the community, still finding time to help others on their start-up journeys,

“James continues to be a really valuable member of the INCUBATE community. He has contributed above and beyond what we could have expected.

If I have a technical question related to hardware, James is usually my first port of call; he has been generous with his expertise, even while he continues to work hard on building PocketGraphics.”


If you'd like to see more of our essential tips for managing and promoting your crowdfunding project, you can grab our Guide To Crowdfunding here.

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About ReadyFundGo

ReadyFundGo is a crowdfunding platform and community of social entrepreneurs, business owners, change makers and innovators who have a great idea they want to get off the ground or grow. If you are interested in the world of innovation and ideas, or want to find strategies for raising funds for your own project or expansion, ReadyFundGo can help. To begin your own crowdfunding campaign, start your draft here.