Melbourne seems to have it all right now. Their live music scene is maturing, while Sydney’s is dying at a rapid rate due to lockout laws. They have the better coffee and it would appear that their tech scene is growing at a rate much greater rate than it seems to be in other capital cities. With the likes of Seek.com.au headquartered in Melbourne as a key veteran to the local scene, Melbourne has cemented itself to a close rival to Sydney’s more mature tech scene. It seems that Melbourne doesn’t even have to try as hard either when it comes to growth, when compared to places such as Brisbane, who launched a million dollar campaign called “Startup in Brisbane” which yielded mild growth at best in their tech sector.

Good coffee will only get you so far, so there must be a plethora of other reasons why the tech scene is growing at a seemingly faster rate. Just because the cafés are just a little bit better than Sydney’s, it doesn’t mean that all the people sitting there working away at their laptops will produce better work (as is so common in the tech world). So what is it then?

So admittedly, Sydney is still the number one tech hub in Australia. There is an undeniable factor that in almost every key measure (revenue, number of startups and capital etc), Sydney still has the number one spot. The depth of the Sydney tech scene seems to lie simply in the fact that they were there first. Sydney had companies such as Atlassian and Canva born and bred there, so it's hard to compare when some of the biggest tech darlings are from Sydney. Where Melbourne appears to be growing so rapidly is where they may be considered “the other destination”. When companies are making a choice as to where to put down roots, many will be faced with a choice of “Sydney or Melbourne”. By virtue of this choice, many will choose Melbourne.

One of the biggest reasons Melbourne’s tech scene seems to be rising at the rate it is, is because of it’s creative culture. Many startups in the tech space are venturing out of the purely technical fields in favour of creating beautiful user interfaces as their greatest selling point. It’s no secret that Melbourne’s architecture favours the brave and new designs, so it’s no wonder that Melbourne’s tech scene would do the same.

I’m not talking just about the fact that the roads are in a grid shape. Melbourne is full of central resource hubs designed to be all inclusive to push the local tech scene forward. Initiatives such as Startup Melbourne has scene a large amount of involvement from all sectors of the Melbourne tech scene. This is in stark contrast to Sydney’s tech scene, which sees international co-working spaces like WeWork and Tank Stream Labs open down the road from each other, or incubators like Fishburners poach rival CEOs to strengthen their profile, while their ousted CEO joins a rival company. Sydney Startup hub has been created to change this culture, but time will tell as to when it actually succeeds.

While Melbourne’s growth can be attributed to being the younger scene in terms of maturity, it is definitely shaping up to have a bright future. Who knows where it may end up in terms of culture, as the scene matures to be more cut-throat and bare a resemblance to the current Sydney environment. Only time will tell.