The Grabble logo. The week before Perth-based smartphone app maker Filter Squad received $1.1 million in funding. In the past year or so, more than $100 million has flowed in to Australian technology businesses, while technology entrepreneurs made up a quarter of both the BRW Young Rich and Fast 100 lists. Grabble, which allows retailers to take advantage of the smartphone revolution through a point-of-service app, was founded in January last year by Stuart Argue, 29, and Anthony Marcar, 27. Their potential was recognised early by startup incubator Startmate, which supplied the pair with contacts and mentoring. Startmate, along with the other Australian startup hub, Pollenizer, have helped many Australian entrepreneurs take their ideas t o the next level. The Grabble website has now been replaced by a message announcing the acquisition. Argue and Marcar wrote that they planned to move to Silicon Valley to join the WalmartLabs team.

"We're excited about seeing our passion play out on a large stage and especially look forward to working with the team at Walmart," they wrote. But the pair have been immediately folded into the Walmart machine and silenced by the company. After initially agreeing to respond to some questions, they refused to even talk about how their idea was formed or the problem it solved, directing all requests for comment to a PR agency. "Walmart are being very careful around publicity so they've asked us to forward all media inquiries on to one of the PR people," said Marcar. The value of the deal has not been revealed.

Ryan Junee, an Australian who has taken Silicon Valley by storm with several startups, has been a mentor of the Grabble founders and said from the moment he saw their app he "knew they had the kind of big vision that would really fly here in Silicon Valley". "It's been a privilege mentoring Stuart and Anthony through the Startmate program and beyond," said Junee. He said the pair quickly learned how to adapt their pitch from what worked in the Australian market to something that would capture the imagination and chequebooks of investors in Silicon Valley. As a result, Junee said, they were able to attract funding from the "best of the best". "Stuart and Anthony are true entrepreneurs and hackers; I witnessed them spending countless hours coding in front of their computers and hitting the streets talking to prospective customers," he said.

"Their success is incredibly well deserved, and I hope it inspires other Aussies to take the leap and become entrepreneurs themselves." The Australian technology startup scene is going so strong that businesses are now complaining of being unable to find enough qualified staff. Mitch Harper, founder of BigCommerce, said today he felt our universities were "holding us back". Earlier this week at Google's Developer Day in Sydney, members of Google's entrepreneur panel - including Posse founder Rebekah Campbell, Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar and Pollenizer's Mick Liubinskas – stressed the importance of learning from failures and keeping your startup focused. "If you haven't failed at least once you have this impression that you just build a website and the money starts flowing in," said Lubsinskas. Campbell said: "I spent one and a half years trying to raise my first major round of funding and I think I ended up doing a total of 1000 meetings in that time to pitch for investment."

Lubinskas said one of the key things he looked for in startups was a strong team of founders who weren't so hung up on their idea that they were unwilling to change it to be more commercially effective. "Part of our challenge often is when people have a really strong idea and they know it so well and they believe in it so strongly and that's absolutely how it's going to work," he said. He said a simple, focused idea was key. "If ever you have to have more than three moving parts to get the idea to work, chances are you're not going to get those three moving parts working together," he said. Campbell concurred, saying the biggest mistake she had made with her business over the years was being unfocused and trying to incorporate everyone's ideas. "When you're trying to create something new it's so hard to get it right. You can only get one thing right and if you try to get two things right you'll probably only end up getting one thing right," she said.

Loading Google's head of engineering, Alan Noble, who was moderating the panel, said you don't need to "change the world and roll out a new social network". In fact, some of the most successful ideas were an "incremental evolution" of existing ideas but with "superior execution". This reporter is on Twitter: @ashermoses