Non-profit startup community, Fishburners, has doubled its Queensland presence in its second year, growing to a 205 desk operation within its Capital hub in Brisbane’s CBD.

Fishburners hosts Australia's largest startup community – with 383 startups and 728 entrepreneurs across coworking hubs in Sydney, Brisbane and Shanghai. The successful startup funnel has mentored and grown more than 1,800 entrepreneurs and 1,250 startup entities since opening.

Originally located in Ultimo, Fishburners community grew from one floor to the whole building within four years. In 2018 a new chapter for Fishburners Sydney began in the new coworking space within the Sydney Startup Hub, which has set a new standard for startup spaces in Australia.

Fishburners CEO Pandora Shelley said Fishburners is a community which helps foster and grow startup businesses, offering much more than desk space.

“We’re on a mission to help inspire tech startups to take their first step and to support each stage of their growth journey. This year, Fishburners is itself scaling up, with demand for our services seeing unprecedented growth over the past year,” said Ms Shelley.

The growth follows a successful two-year partnership with the City of Brisbane and a steady increase in the demand for desks within Fishburners’ Brisbane and Sydney operations. Through the City of Brisbane, Fishburners is in the process of launching two new accelerator programs, including a Launchpad for startups looking to scale to Asia.

“There is enormous entrepreneurial energy coming out of Queensland at this time,” said Ms Shelley, “and the Capital is a vibrant and visionary initiative which has really helped fuel local startup growth. We are thrilled to take our partnership with City of Brisbane to the next level with this expansion.”

Brisbane City Council’s Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said he is excited to watch the growth continue as Brisbane transforms into a national innovative hot spot.

“Brisbane is transforming into a business and innovation hub, with our attractive lifestyle offering, links to overseas markets and great employment opportunities, [we are] luring start-ups to build a global business in our own backyard,” said Cr Quirk.

Community is the foundation for Fishburners. All members, known as “Burners”, must agree to Fishburners’ values of collaboration, brilliance and community, namely: “We give back whenever we can”. It is a proud, inclusive and discrimination-free space.

High-profile Fishburners alumni include successful startups such as Koala, GoCatch, graphic design marketplace DesignCrowd, Code Camp, Tinybeans, Madpaws, Jayride and Hyper Anna. Koala, Australia’s highest-rated mattress, raised $15m and generated $14m in revenue in its first year.

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