‘Wynyard is the hub’: Start-up founders resist move to Tech Central

The NSW government will soon move the city’s emerging businesses to its shiny new Tech Central precinct, billed as Australia’s largest innovation hub – but Sydney’s start-up founders say they don’t want to leave their current space.

Start-ups, investors and coworking communities at the much-loved Sydney Startup Hub, due to close in August, said the change would fracture Sydney’s “start-up ecosystem”, with businesses unable to find appropriate space at Tech Central, or unwilling to move.

An impression of Atlassian’s planned building, the centrepiece of the city’s new tech hub.

The government insists Sydney Startup Hub, an office space near Wynyard with subsidised desk rentals, isn’t commercially viable.

Construction is under way on the 39-storey Atlassian headquarters beside Central Station, which will be the centrepiece of Tech Central.

But many people who use the Startup Hub said they were confused by what was on offer at the new precinct, amid concerns there would be fewer desks for start-ups.

Anish Sinha arrived at the Startup Hub with an idea for his insurance company, Upcover. For Sinha, the appeal of the hub was the “graduation” system, where founders come in with an idea and graduate through the floors to use different resources as their company grows.

Anish Sinha grew his start-up from the Sydney Startup Hub.Credit: Sitthixay Ditthavong

He met his co-founder at the hub, growing the business from an idea to a company with employees.

“We got our start pitching at the Startup Hub. Once you shift it, it gets dispersed and takes three to five years to get it up to where it is today, it’s a destruction of the momentum,” he said.

“We don’t want to go … Wynyard is the hub where people come to, we don’t want to move to Tech Central, it’s not the same ecosystem.”

Loading

One of the hub’s anchor tenants, tech hub Stone and Chalk, has moved to Tech Central. But another major tenant, co-working provider Tank Stream Labs, is unlikely to move.

Mike Abbott, a partner at venture capital firm Antler who helps early-stage start-ups find funding and coaches founders at the Startup Hub, said he hasn’t been able to find a big enough space at Tech Central for the start-ups he wants to invest in.

“The Sydney Startup Hub is where magic happens – it’s a melting pot where ambitious founders, experienced operators, and investors collide daily. You can’t replicate that community in scattered locations,” he said.

The government has committed to providing 25,000 square metres of subsidised space for start-ups at Tech Central, and as part of its ten-year Innovation Blueprint says the precinct will support start-ups at all stages, amid “changing appetites for co-working spaces” after the pandemic.

But Coalition assistant innovation spokesperson Jacqui Munro said the government had failed to show how Tech Central would replace the existing hub.

“You don’t get to a Canva or Atlassian overnight. You need a functional ecosystem of hubs with fellow founders, [research and development], talent, investors and customers to thrive. Labor is risking a decade of investment and ecosystem growth with the ill-considered shutdown of the Sydney Startup Hub and no equivalent to replace it,” she said.

A spokesperson for the minister for innovation, science and technology Anoulack Chanthivong didn’t answer detailed questions, saying in a statement that the government was spending $38.5 million to “turbocharge” Tech Central and “help build Australia’s largest technology and innovation hub”.

The government is also funding a $20 million Emerging Technology Commercialisation fund, a $6 million extension of the Minimum Viable Products Ventures program for early-stage start-ups and $4 million for diversity programs.

Most Viewed in Politics

Loading