Published on the 02/11/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
Sam Chandler has a blunt message for Government; your intentions may be good, but you must match them with actions – and fast…
Chandler, the Tasmania-born San Francisco resident, founder and CEO of Nitro, is an action man himself, recently announcing the purchase of document analytics business doxIQ that extends the company’s range of products and services intended to boost document and enterprise productivity and make it even more of a competitor for Adobe.
Chandler moved to San Francisco in 2008, and set up the head office of Nitro there in 2009 – although the holding company remains Australian.
Today it boasts around 200 staff, 500,000 business customers, operations in the US, Ireland, Slovakia and Russia. But it has just 15 people in Australia, and the company it just bought was founded in Silicon Valley.
While optimistic about the new Turnbull Government and its innovation agenda Chandler warns that time is running out for the nation to be a serious global competitor.
“In the past we have got it wrong; in the present the intentions are right and I hope it leads to actions in the future. Unfortunately there are no easy solutions for the challenge that Australia is facing to become an innovation economy.
“There is a lot of work to do, an awful lot of economic policy to be considered.”
First the mid to late stage funding environment needs a drastic overhaul he said because; “That’s one of the key reasons that companies like Nitro will leave Australia.” He recommends Australia learn from the Israel experience, intervening to stimulate economic activity essential to establish an “innovation nation”.
The assistant innovation minister Wyatt Roy is currently leading an Australian trade delegation to Israel which may bear fruit. But Chandler warns it will require a different investment approach from Australia.
“Essentially the (Israeli) government was co-investing on attractive terms with primarily US VCs – tier one VCs.
“What the Israeli government realised was that they could not click their fingers and expect a venture capital market to appear in Israel overnight because VC is not just about raising money. Putting that money to work is quite a craft, that experience is highly concentrated; there might only be a couple of hundred good VCs in the world quite frankly.”
Instead Israel partnered with VCs, did not attempt to pick winners, rather co-invested and offered a compelling environment for the world’s leading VCs.
“I hope it’s not too late; I don’t think it’s too late as long as we act now and make some of these economic policy decisions to try and drive and stimulate the capital markets for mid and late stage companies, because if you want to raise late stage round in Australia – you really can’t.”
