Twelve years since its inception, Startup Muster will launch its 2025 survey in July to identify the dynamics of the startup ecosystem across Australia and across industries – from FinTech to AgriTech’s and everything in between.
The report’s future was uncertain after the NSW government pulled its backing in 2024, but has returned for 2025 with “largely private funding and modest support from the Commonwealth”, according to Startup Muster founder and managing director Murray Hurps.
Mr Hurps, also an entrepreneur, former Fishburners chieftain, and current University of Technology Sydney’s director of entrepreneurship, has for the first time engaged ‘survey coordinators’ across the country, “ensuring this will be the largest sample of the startup ecosystem to date”.
These local ambassadors include NSW-based Spark Festival director Maxine Sherrin, LaunchVic director Claire Gifford, South Australia’s_SOUTHSTART co-owner and director Danielle Seymour, Queensland based Tropical Innovation Festival event director Kate Montgomery and WA’s Spacecubed head of impact Nate Sturcke.
The lineup now boasts “some of the most connected and loved startup ecosystem leaders from around the country,” according to Mr Hurps, who says his ambition is to add representation from Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory, “and won’t be happy until we do.”
“We needed strong local people to be strong advocates for people to jump on board. The survey has always relied on volunteer help, but it’s not good enough until we have someone on the ground in each state,” Mr Hurps said.
The survey launches in July, and the national report will be released in November as a “super deep dive of all the things people have asked to understand,” said Mr Hurps.
“We often get requests from people to add data that is already covered in the report – there are now more than 140 charts, so there’s a lot of information in it,” he said. “But that’s kinda the point.”
Mr Hurps said the Startup Muster answers “all the other questions” that government survey instruments do not, and is looking forward to learning the “surprising and actionable thing from the data.”
“As an example, the other day I was asked to pull out funding sources for startup support organisations across Australia. Of the 220 startup organisations in 2024, less than 3 per cent had any kind of philanthropic support. It’s random soundbites that end up being useful for understanding specific issues in the ecosystem.”
This year the survey aims to identify how the global situation is changing things in terms of venture capital, appetite for overseas investment, changes in team profiles and skills requirements, the impact of immigration restrictions, and whether addressable markets are changing.
It will also identify how entrepreneurs are interacting with government services, the take-up of industry growth programs and whether there has been more of a focus on national priority areas.
“It’s going to be interesting to map this transition and how it evolves over the next couple of years, particularly how the survey documents effects of AI – we started to see its impact last year, and we expect to see it [grow] massively this year,” said Mr Hurps.
The Startup Muster has been most successful in mobilising the many parts of the national system to provide feedback – from universities to private accelerators to VCs to cooperative research centres to institutional researchers.
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