"Government assistance is important, but at the end of the day if you have people who are passionate and dedicate time to set the meetings up, the only expenses you have are vendor hire and marketing," he said.

Haehnal said support and feedback from the Victoria.NET group in the last year had been overwhelmingly positive.

"Victoria.NET has accumulated over 300 members since forming three years ago, and in the past year alone has secured more than A$400 million (US$298 million) worth of government grants," he said.

However, Haehnal expects those numbers to be dwarfed once Sydney finalizes its .NET cluster.

"We expect to see Sydney exceed 300 members in the first six to 12 months," he said. "NSW is the biggest economy in Australia and without the Sydney cluster, our industry will not really representative the overall Australian .NET picture."