Red Herring reported Friday that Mig33, a company originally based in Perth(Western Australia) but now on the West Coast took $10m in funding Accel Partners and RedPoint Ventures with Technology Venture Partners in for good measure.
Mig33 offers mobile phone users voice over Internet Protocol, instant messaging, SMS-based text messaging, and social-networking services. Mig33 rolls all of its services into one mobile ?¢‚Ǩ?ìcommunity.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù
According to the report, Mig33?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s parent company, Project Goth, is based in WA based but relocating to Burlingame.
Of course from a pure economic viewpoint, moving makes total sense. Serious Web 2.0 startups need to be where it’s all happening.
And yet from a purely parochial view point I can’t help but feel sad, sad that the Federal Government (and indeed the Opposition as well) continues to ignore the massive potential Web 2.0 has for Australia as an industry that is well placed to pick up much of the nations growth once the mining boom eventually ends.
In an ideal world, our leaders would create a climate that would encourage Web 2.0 startups to stay in Australia, keeping their IP and potential profits within our shores.
And yet today, our brightest and smartest continue to flood overseas whilst our leaders remain obsessed with mining and finding as many ways as possible of restricting internet growth in Australia.
Why can’t the lucky country become the lucky country for web development? Why can’t our children go through school knowing that the web provides a wealth of opportunity on top of the obvious benefits our mineral wealth provides.
I’m still cold on voting Liberal at this years election for reasons I’ve previously written about, and yet the ALP just isn’t doing it for me either. Surely there must be some politician out there somewhere that gets it (although preferably one without a pile of leftist baggage)?
