Plenty going on in Perth

Monica Wulff
Jul 24, 2017 · 5 min read

Things kick off early in Perth, with a presentation and Q&A at Morning Startup, Perth’s largest meetup with over 3000 members. I meet Dave Newmann while on the 2016 Startup Muster tour and knew that on this year’s tour I had to check on the meetup; being able to present a WA cut of the 2016 Startup Muster statistics as well as sharing about our latest enhancements was an extra bonus.

The Q&A was focused on funding. WA is in an interesting position. It’s filled with investors, they just don’t or won’t invest in startups, it’s not the type of investment they’ve undertaken over the past few decades. WA does have more publicly listed businesses per capita than any other state in Australia, and there has been a trend in startups choosing to do an IPO as a means to fund their business. 5.9% of startups in Startup Muster 2016 said they were going IPO in the next 24 months.

To IPO, to not IPO, to raise locally, to raise interstate or overseas is a dynamic decision in Perth, with all sides providing quality examples to back up their position. It seems there’s no one right answer and it’s up to the startup to discern what is the right course of action for their business. Just before I arrive Adeo Ressi put out a LinkedIn blog that implored founders to remain in Australia to build their startup.

My next stop is Bloom, an incubator and coworking space housed with St Catherine’s College at University of Western Australia, a well functioning trifecta relationship. This is such a unique program, as it’s living right in the middle of a student residential precinct. If you knew anyone at university who lived at a college you know that the students form strong and long term bonds while living together, which is the exact thing you want if you’re building a startup. You build trust faster, get to know your housemates/startup team incredibly well, don’t have to worry about meals or transport and have fast access to quality talent who are their to help you succeed. It’s like a non-stop hackathon.

It’s been so successful (over 5000 students have attended their events) that St Catherine’s College and University of Western Australia are expanding it’s footprint on campus, increasing the size of the space and the number of students who can participate in all that Bloom has to offer.

They also hired Darren Lomman as CEO a local repeat offender founder (has founded multiple startups). I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, the Aussie startup community is hyperconnected. While chatting with Darren it came out that he’s worked with Dr Jordan Nguyen on the mind controlled car for Nathan Saban, the exact thing I saw Jordan present on at SouthStart the week before!

Another university doing a lot of things in the innovation, entrepreneurism, technology world is Curtin University. They’ve been avid supporters of the CSIRO ON Accelerate program and also are home to the CSIRO IOT Centre, which had some pretty awesome tech floating around the joint. They also have Curtin Growth Ignition and developed programs and resources to meet any student’s needs irrespective of where they are on the startup lifecycle.

I got a real sense of community while in Perth. I had a free evening so a local founder Loren Trlin put together a casual, low key dinner with some other folks from the community at the Standard in Northbridge. It ended up being a diverse and interesting group, including the fellas from Bloom, as well as Cameron from Ammo Marketing, Angel from DrawHistory and Andrew from StartupWA. We used a new payments app called Finch to split the bill.


The evening after StartupWA hosted an event at Spacecubed focusing on how to grow an innovation ecosystem, the panel came from diverse backgrounds including Linda Cunningham Director of Transform Peel, Dr Richard Hopkins, Chair of AusBiotech WA, Darren Gibson, Collaboration and Innovation Manager, Edith Cowan University and myself.

Startup Muster looks forward to working more closely with StartupWA to ensure that timely, accurate and high quality outputs are being provided to those in the community who are pioneers and game changers.

It’s well documented that I am passionate about young people getting involved in STEM, technology, entrepreneurism and startups and it just so happened that the WA Youth Innovation Summit was on while I was in town. The summit was a collaborative event bringing together all the stakeholders cross the education space and build out some recommendations for increasing the participation of WA’s youth in this community. I was able to share about Techgirls Are Superheroes, the startup run by five 11–12 year old girls Reading Republic and the their biggest advocate and teacher Code Rangers. I loved meeting startups like Big Hand Little Hand, who help new 7th graders integrate into high school. This kind of co-design workshop is the way forward.

A quick coffee and intro to Paula Taylor from West Tech Fest was a great way to finish off the week. I’m looking forward to being back in Perth in early December for West Tech Fest and the OzApp awards, fingers crossed I’ll be able to present the 2017 Startup Muster stats.

Before I head to Brisbane I spend the weekend relaxing with one of my favourite people on this planet, Loren Trlin. A Perth founder who’s on the cusp of launching off into new and foreign places has been a confidant, rock and the source of many good times. In this crazy world you need to surround yourself with people who will be there for you no matter what and if you’re lucky (like I am) that person will be trained in helping people realise their purpose and work towards achieving it.


Startup Muster’s aim is to showcase the progress, challenges and opportunities of the startup ecosystem. These stats are for the community by the community. Your contribution can make a real difference.

Find out more at https://www.startupmuster.com.


Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on July 24, 2017.

Monica Wulff

Written by

Tech|Startups|Data|Founder www.monicawulff.com

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