NatureMapr meets with Senator David Pocock

Yesterday, Lewis and I had the pleasure of chatting with Senator David Pocock about how government can benefit from ingesting high quality, expert verified biodiversity data from NatureMapr.

David looks pretty tough in an XL NatureMapr 10 YEARS t-shirt!

The other thing we talked about was how government should be doing a lot more to support local, home grown tech SMEs and how government actually stand to benefit by doing so.

David is doing some extremely important work in this space sticking up for local tech SMEs who's important innovations are key to growing the Australian economy.

Home grown, innovative tech companies are sick of grants - instead, we want to win the government as a real, paying customer.

Generous schemes like the ACT Government's ICON scheme help local tech companies get moving until they have enough of a product offering to apply for the next grant.

We were very fortunate to be an ICON recipient 9 years ago and that $10,000 of tax payer funds was absolutely critical to us at the time.

10 years in, with significant runs on the board as a successful, award winning home grown innovation that government relies on, here we are still applying for grants with no sign of legitimate support from the commonwealth. Meanwhile, they're of course happy to continue to ingest our high quality, expert verified biodiversity data.

They love what we're doing, but it doesn't have a value and they don't know what to do with it.

We've been EXTREMELY fortunate, to receive the unwavering support of the ACT Government, who have a strong history of recognising and supporting the work we are doing. They are amazing.

We could not have asked for a better and more supportive government partner than ACT Government and their support is the only reason that NatureMapr still exists.

The crucial support we received from the ACT Government's Connecting Nature, Connecting People project is largely the reason why you have seen so many improvements to the platform this year.

But receiving a string of grants, is very different to being able to invoice the government as a legitimate customer that relies on a quality service. Having paying customers allows companies to invest, hire staff, plan and grow.

And that's exactly where services like NatureMapr need to be if they are to continue to operate sustainably over the long term.

Building a platform like NatureMapr takes years of blood, sweat and tears, missed Christmas's with family, substantial time away from paid employment and lost income into the hundreds of thousands. NatureMapr has been significantly subsidised by our IT business, at3am IT Pty Ltd, as well as the generosity of our hard working team.

We estimate that approx. $5m of development effort has gone into NatureMapr if was procured in the open market - much of this work completed at midnight outside of other day jobs.

Running our servers is approaching $100k / year now just to keep the lights on.

Do not even try to put an estimate on the amount of hours from our community of incredible expert moderators!

Government are not setup to innovate - they are setup to be a steady ship - but they can partner with local services who are innovating and would be proud and excited to have them as a legitimate customer. Maybe one day, these services can even be exported to other jurisdictions and countries, bolstering the Australian economy.

We have applied for significant philanthropic investment from billion dollar funds who have all provided the same response:

What you are doing is incredible, we would be very happy to invest only once we see increased support and commitment from government.

The message is pretty clear.