After reading some messages about Geeksville, a new Sydney based incubator, on the Silicon Beach Australia groups, I wanted to find out more. Yesterday I met with Ian Naylor, mayor of Geeksville, at their offices in the Rocks.

Their offices are clearly a place where a start-up could thrive. All walls and windows seemed to function as whiteboards and not many people could have an office as they were reserved for Foosball tables, which were getting a good workout, and a Guitar Hero setup.

Geeksville officially launched in July as an “Internet Incubator”. Geeksville is part of Geekdom which has 58 employees, which in turn is part of the Photon Group (ASX:PGA) which has about 50 companies encompassing the full spectrum of marketing communication services.

Geeksville is looking to take on 6 investments before the end of the year and they are currently looking for people and companies to invest in. They are ideally looking for smart, fun and determined people that have innovative ideas (B2C, Web 2.0+, Social, Mobile) that can be taken to beta in 3-6 months.

The way the incubation deals are structured is interesting. Besides the $100k-$250k initial investment, they will hire you directly and pay you a salary. They also provide you with a complete business framework including desk space, access to programmers, lawyers, marketing channels, etc.

To select the companies and people they are going to invest in they are planning to run “Geek Idol”. For the first round you give them your 2 minute “elevator pitch”. From these pitches a panel consisting of Troy Rushton, Joe Najem, Randal Leeb-du Toit and Ian pick a set of “potential geeks” that will than give a 20-minute pitch at a Geeksville Day. The first one is scheduled for 28th of August.

All in all it seems that this is a great program for entrepreneurs that are passionate about what they want to build, but that find it financially hard to take the leap.

This will be a good test to see if Sydney actually has enough entrepreneurs with billion dollar ideas. Do you think Sydney is ready for this?