The barbecue’s sizzling, the beers are flowing, and a bunch of young techies are talking start-ups, IPOs, apps, and platforms. The remarkable thing is, they all have Australian accents! Welcome to another backyard bash in San Francisco where the guest list amounts to an “Aussie mafia,” all of whom are working to be the Next Big Thing. Sydney-sider Jindou Lee is one of them. He’s built an app that makes it easier for real estate managers to conduct and file home inspection reports—a marginal business idea in Australia, but in the U.S. there are 500,000 property management companies, and that means enormous potential.
Venture capitalist George Zachary, a tremendously successful investor behind Twitter and other companies, brings additional insight to this eye-opening program, which includes entrepreneurs from other countries as well as Australia. They may not be American citizens, but theirs is a very American story.