He said it had little chance of being fixed and the future of funding would be crowdfunding and listing on the Australian Securities Exchange. "With Freelancer last year, we had a lot of term sheets from venture capitalists and could have sold the business. But I wanted to list it on the Australian stock exchange and stay here because at least one company has to," Mr Barrie said. The range of financing options grew rapidly as the business picked up clients and revenue. When Mr Barrie was attempting to raise funds for the fledgling services marketplace, only two Australian funds organised a meeting to discuss investing in a business that now has a market cap of more than $390 million. "Too many of our start-ups are heading over the US. And many do it way too early when it's a bad idea for their businesses," Mr Barrie said. "I want to live here, I want to build a business here even though only 4 per cent of our revenue is from here. Location doesn't matter much if you're selling completely online."

While some companies such as Atlassian also eschewed early stage funding, many of Australia's most successful tech companies, including Seek, Carsales.com and 99designs, all required significant capital to get to profitability. Bevan Clark, founder of digital coupon site RetailMeNot told the crowd he and cofounder Guy King realised they would need to sell most of the company or move to the US to take the business to the next level. Rather than move their young families, they chose to sell the company in 2010 for almost $100 million. "There are benefits to moving to the United States and I think you should stay here at least for the first few years," Mr Clark said. "But in the early stages of your company, being in Australia certainly helps with the naivety because it shielded us from any external influences."

Other speakers at the conference included founders from start-ups such as Canva, which received more than $3 million from local and US investors before the product even launched, and Atlassian, which raised $US60 million from US-based Accel Partners nine years into its growth. Collis Ta'eed is the founder of Envato, a range of online marketplaces that sell a product every six seconds and has generated almost $200 million since launching. Envato is something of a start-up anomaly. The was built eight years ago with no external funding and the vast majority of the 250 team based in Australia. "If your product is as online as ours, location is kind of irrelevant," Mr Va'eed said. "We don't intend to move, there's no real need for us. This is true for a lot of online marketplaces." Mr Va'eed said the need to move overseas was increasingly lighter as the local venture capital sector and, more importantly, talent pool grew here.

Mr Barrie added the limited Australian venture capital scene wasn't all bad; it meant the companies that made it were led by exceptional people. "All throughout today all, except for maybe one or two companies, are pretty much bootstrapped. And because of that, these founders are world class. It's absolutely amazing," Mr Barrie said.