SydStart – I stared into the future and I was pleased.

Yesterday I attended SydStart, a startup community event organised by Sydney tech startup scene regular, and investor, Peter Cooper.

The purpose of SydStart was, as the official site said, to put a rocket up the “Sydney Startup Scene”.

I go to a tech community events all the time but what I loved about SydStart was that it was one of the few that I’ve been to recently that has focused on bringing Uni students, aspiring entrepreneurs, actual startup people and investors together. That whole Uni student angle is pretty rare for the local tech startup scene so it was refreshing to see so many new faces.

As I chatted with people, and sat and watched a wide range of presentations, it dawned on me that, because SydStart had a generally younger audience than most other tech community events,  I was looking at the future of the Sydney and Australian Tech startup Industry.

The good news is that I’ve never felt so upbeat about where we’re all heading.

Some obvious standouts I spoke to were Nikki Durkin of 99 Dresses (covered by us previously, here), Kevin Lippy of BrokePacker, Alex and Sheng from OrionVM (who met while building a UAV as part of the Outback Rescue challenge!) and of course the indefatigable Sean Marshall who has been hard at work connecting University entrepreneurs with the wider tech startup community while working on yet another startup of his own.

These, and many of the other kids in attendance, are all hard at work turning their passions into web businesses with an open mind and a willingness to learn that is unbelievably impressive.

These aren’t your geek kids of the past, though (ok  the OrionVM guys are pretty geeky…but they’d probably be the first to admit it). Rather, the room was full of entrepreneurs who intuitively see the web as a place where networks, markets and communities can be nurtured to create new types of businesses with massive potential.

It was a fantastic event, definitely worth attending next time it’s on if you have the chance, but the glimpse into the future of our local tech scene is something that will make me remember SydStart for some time to come.

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img src=”Bart Jellema“