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Whatsapp Melbourne's start-up scene is quietly growing, with several accelerators established in recent years

It's hard to escape talk of innovation, agility and the start-up economy these days. But beyond the buzzwords, what's life like for those actually trying to start small technology companies? Courtney Carthy reports from a Melbourne co-working space.

Dave's eyes are watering and I can't remember ever seeing him blink.

The HR department is Siri taped to a teddy bear.

'Don't you get sick?' I ask.

'Well I nearly threw up this morning because I was so exhausted but I had a Berocca and then I was ok.'

Dave speaks quickly—the intensity and animation in his speech are typical of the start-up founders I talked to about their businesses.

Dave Cherrie, 24, started a company with James McLaren, 21, and Anthony Indraus, somewhere in between.

When we spoke in late 2015 it had been one year since they started their 'journey'. After all the 80-plus-hour weeks, phone calls from debt collectors and misunderstandings with their families, they'd finally launched Arcade, a gamification company.

'To launch a start-up you need a hustler, a hipster and a hacker,' Anthony tells me when Dave stops talking. Anthony is the hipster/designer, James is the hacker/coder and effervescent, sometimes nauseous Dave is the hustler/salesperson.

Arcade was conceived in 2014 in the AngelCube accelerator, a start-up co-working space in Richmond, Melbourne founded with venture capitalist money. It accepts a handful of early stage companies each year, and provides them with a desk, some funds and expertise, while taking some equity

The AngelCube accelerator has been around for just five years but is the oldest of the Melbourne start-up accelerators. Others exist and invest, nurture and promote fledgling companies in their own ways.

Rojand Noroozi, who was part of the 2015 program at AngelCube, repeats the wisdom Dave shared earlier: 'We need a hipster,' he says.

Rojand is the hustler and co-founder, Hossein Tayebi is the hacker. This three-part structure isn't fixed, but it helps immensely in small tech start-ups. The three skills combine to build, design and sell a tech product.

Start-up remains the umbrella term for new companies whose founding goal is to scale up and raise a whole lot of money. Many also want to contribute to the start-up ecosystem for mutual benefit: contacts, funding, knowledge, marketing and friendship.

accelerators allow a diversity of ideas, industries and personalities to come together. One company can be working on new payroll software while on the trestle table opposite another firm is building a new marketplace for international education.

The start-up founders I spoke to all use a particular lexicon.

'Bootstrapping' making the most of your own finances (and those of your friends or family) rather than raising money from external investors.

'MVP' is a minimum viable product, the most basic version of your product that you can release and customers can use.

Companies may 'pivot' when they find things aren't working out and decide a different business model will be more profitable.

When founders and investors plan on getting out of a business—either by floating on the stock market or selling to another company—they use the term 'exit strategy'.

The founders are all chasing the dream of 'hockey stick growth' (think of an ice hockey stick lying on its side with the blade pointing up), self-employment and their own slice of a market.

Dave, Anthony and James have all left university to go into debt. Anthony tells me that one of the perks of being an entrepreneur is 'getting to choose which 80 hours a week you work'.

The compounded pressures and so-close-but-so-far prospect of success have seen them find their own coping mechanism.

'The HR department,' says James, 'is Siri taped to a teddy bear.'

'It's so you've got something to hug and talk to ... you need to vent sometimes,' says Dave.

'We're out there to change the world with this...

'I think that's why you do a start-up. Yeah it sucks— who would do 90 hours a week for nothing and go into debt for a whole year with absolutely no kind of road map?

'Why would you ever do that unless you were going to make a huge impact?'

'It's like that Coldplay song, you know?'

He sways back singing: 'Nobody said it was eeeeeaaasaaaayyy!

'...but nobody tells you it'll be so hard!'