Startup Muster’s fifth Annual Report on the startup ecosystem unveils the progress, opportunities and challenges for Australia’s startup ecosystem, and the strengths and weaknesses of this sector.

The 2018 Annual Report included responses from 777 verified startup founders, 321 future startup founders and 654 supports of startups. Partnering with Data61, Startup Muster’s report investigates a variety of areas such as the identity of founders and the founding team, the identity of the current team, business profiles, funding and the future of startups.  

The Report focuses on collecting and presenting “surprising and actionable” data, which is fundamental in analysing the rapidly changing and growing startup industry. This data draws attention to areas where effort should be made to improve the ecosystem. Most notably, the data demonstrated that the number of active startups had decreased by 12.5% between 2017 and 2018, and the number of female founders had decreased for the first time since 2014.

Although there was a decrease in number of current female founders between 2017-18, there was an overall 6.2% increase between 2014 and 2018. Additionally, 37.1% of future startup founders are female, which indicates a slight increase over 2017 figures.

“As a woman in the startup community I was pleased to see the rise in women founding startups over the past few years. The fact that the proportion has decreased in 2018 is disappointing.  Diversity and inclusivity are a must for building sustainable communities and I hope these statistics will lead to constructive conversations that will move the needle.” – Monica Wulff, Co-founder and Director of Startup Muster

Key insights from the report include:

• Artificial intelligence: As Artificial Intelligence has become a more popular and accessible market, it’s no surprise that AI has become the number 1 industry for startups, increasing from 6% of the market in 2016 to 20.6% this year.
• The power of mentoring: We often hear about the value of mentoring but most feedback is anecdotal. Startup Muster, however, reveals that startup founders find great value in mentoring, with 58% agreeing that their startup benefitted from both structured and unstructured mentoring.
• Students are entrepreneurs too: Although over 50% of current startup founders have achieved either a Bachelor or Masters at University, 20% of future startup founders are still at University.
• First time founders: Despite the many hindrances to creating a startup, 46.1% of current startup founders are first time founders.

To view the full report, visit the Startup Muster here.