As an Australian who only got part way through the hassle of getting signed up with a US cryonics option I am following this topic with interest.
Something which makes me nervous about relying on a less established institution is (obviously) that all else being equal it is more likely to fail than a more established institution. As a corpsicle it is rather difficult to make new arrangements if one's cryonics facility goes under. What would be perfect is to be able to purchase insurance such that if SSA failed financially or administratively your frozen remains are guaranteed to be sent and preserved at an alternative facility (Alcor or CI, etc.) Is that sort of thing likely to be possible?
The short answer is... Such a thing is likely to be possible.
When we were developing the business plan for SSA we tried to look at the history of Cryonics, particularly in relation to its failures, in order to try and avoid any obvious mistakes. This is one of the reasons we decided to look for 10 investors for the project. Our reasoning is that if we can find 10 people willing to put up the money for their own suspension at the very beginning, this strongly indicates a level of interest to make the facility viable in the long term, as opposed to 1 or 2 in...
Potentially of interest to my fellow antipodean LessWrongers. Stasis Systems Australia is a company seeking to start a cryonics facility in Australia. Their website is pretty sparse, but they just sent out a mailing list update on how they are going, and it doesn't appear that the information therein is located in any news section of the website, so I thought I'd post it here.