It was a chance conversation with a family friend that sparked Siobhan Lancaster's lightbulb moment.

"We were having a cup of tea and he was trying to work out how he could possibly get more work for his trucks following the downturn in the mining boom," Ms Lancaster said.

Eighteen months later, the Perth-based entrepreneur and her friend David Blomeley had set up Instatruck, an on-demand transport service that matches customers wanting goods delivered with owner-operator truck drivers.

Since July, the company's 90 drivers have performed more than 900 trips, moving everything from generators and portaloos to televisions around Perth.

Once customers have placed their orders online — through Instatruck's website or smartphone app — they are assigned a truck or ute, depending on the dimensions of the goods they need delivered.

"The actual match happens really quickly," Ms Lancaster said.

"If it's a ute or a van, often it comes within 18 minutes [of the customer's order].

"For the larger trucks, we get the trucks there within an hour, so this is a massive improvement on getting on-demand trucks at the moment."

The seed funding for Instatruck came from Ms Lancaster's savings, followed by $500,000 from angel investors.

The company hopes to raise a further $2 million, which is expected to come largely from Sydney, where the business has plans to move into next year.

"I would love to be able to say that we're a global start-up that's actually been fully funded [out] of Perth," Ms Lancaster said.

"I think there's definitely enough money around for it, it's just the investors are used to investing into non-tech companies."

She said she believed a lack of access to capital is one of the biggest hurdles faced by successful Perth start-ups.

"The difference is once you get past that angel round, the valuation of the company seems to not go up in proportion to [what it would be] in, for example, Silicon Valley or even Sydney," she said.

"It just sort of sits at that angel level for a long time."

WA investors to change attitude to tech sector

Venture capitalist Bill Tai has been visiting Perth for the past six years and says WA's resource-based economy has shaped the way investors regard start-ups.

"[In] most resource-related industries, there's a penchant for investing early to see if somebody's going to hit it and find something and then if it's working, the funding after that's easy," Mr Tai said.

"Start-ups are a little bit different, because you put up the seed but you don't always get something right away, so it takes a little while for the companies to bake, to then attract the next round of capital."

The Silicon Valley angel investor believes WA investors will change their attitude to the tech sector in time.

"People just have to learn through example that if they stay with it a little bit and give a company a little bit of time to get traction, then it might hit and if it does, it can be worth billions.

"I think once something like that hits, as Atlassian did, you'll have a lot more willingness for people to fund things in that space."

Curtin University director of IP commercialisation Rohan McDougall said one option for WA start-ups facing a shortage of capital is to list on the Australian Securities Exchange.

"The valuations if you list on the exchange can be quite healthy, but the danger there is perhaps you're listing too early," he said.

"The exposure, the compliance may be too healthy for a company at that stage and it can run into problems later down the track."

However, Mr McDougall said the mining downturn, which has restricted lending for some businesses, may actually benefit the tech sector.

"In some respects, the downturn in commodities prices has provided [an] opportunity, because people have looked to alternative markets to provide that sort of investment growth," he said.

"I think Perth and WA is going in the right direction, but it's still pretty early days."