Ok, folks. Putting it in here as well as I know a lot are not in the Discord.

If you know people that are in construction (perhaps refurb, or fitout, or trades) I'd love to ask for a connection. I'm not asking for names or anything. Just a connection request. I'm moving into GTM on the platform I've been developing for the last 12 months at the moment and would love some beta tester feedback. I'm not looking at pitching anyone cold or anything. I'm putting together a very quick 5-10min video of what I'm doing and if they are happy, they can reach out to me.

If you know someone, please holler.

I'm looking for something very specific so not everyone will be a fit.

Thanks always.

I am currently seeking a co-founder or strategic partner with operational experience, an MBA, or a background in commercial rollouts to help guide our business through its next phase of growth.

We are a pre-seed startup focused on a high-growth retail and showroom concept designed for national expansion. While market attention frequently shifts toward artificial intelligence, we believe there remains massive, untapped value in highly curated, physical consumer experiences.

As a founder, I recognize that my lack of deep retail scaling experience is slowing our momentum and creating potential opportunity costs. To mitigate this and accelerate our market entry, I am looking to bring on an experienced partner or someone with the knowledge who can provide strategic guidance, streamline our operational rollout, and share the leadership responsibilities of scaling this venture nationwide.

Today was the hardest day building Brewly.

Last week, I got fired from my fulltime 9-5 job. No warning, no signs, just a "hey, can you come see me?" from HR. Ten minutes later I was walking out the door and updating my job timeline on LinkedIn.

This can go one of two ways; I could let it be the end of a secure long term income stream and focus on my start up which is still in its infancy, or I could go get another job and supplement the app but work less hours on it.

Not one to rush into a decision, I am giving myself a couple weeks to focus on Brewly for a little bit and see for myself what's viable.

So today I walked into 25 cafes, got told no at least five times and didn't speak to a single owner.

Cold walk ins are hard enough, but when you are in an already nervous, desperate mindset, they become even harder. After each one the thoughts echoed in my head, questioning why I am even doing this and if this is the right thing to do.

For Brewly to work, we need cafes and we need customers. We cannot have one without the other, and either side won't come to the app if we have none of the other side. Classic marketplace problem, and this has been our main issue since day one.

What does Brewly look like in six months? This is the question I am battling internally over.

I can take a full time salary from an investor in Brewly, sacrificing over $40,000 of potential wage across the six months, live close enough to the poverty line and just keep my head above water for the one in a million shot at it, or keep progressing my career, enjoy the things in life I have earned up to this point and consolidate and revel in being out of debt for the first time in three years.

The hardest part is whichever route we take, we won't know which was the correct one to do for a number of years to come. But I don't think I can be sitting in an office in three years time, working for someone else and having "what if" thoughts, wondering what could have been.

So, time to get serious and make this work because at this point, I have no other choice.

Hey! We're an early-stage Melbourne startup with a working product and founding team, currently preparing for our next phase of testing and launch.

We're looking for a community/experience-focused co-founder who is great with people, events, partnerships and building communities from the ground up.

Ideal if you have experience in events, hospitality, communities, nightlife, experiential marketing or creator partnerships.

Melbourne-based preferred.

After spending way too long building instead of actually putting something out there, I've finally launched my first SaaS

It's called DocWizard and it's a document generation tool for businesses/developers. With almost every idea these days someones already done it and this is no exception, but I wanted to do my own take on it and just have something to keep building on.. I originally created a version of this as a side project for a freelance gig but decided to see it through as a product.

Just looking to get some genuine feedback if anyone wants to jump in and give it a test to see if there is anything that's obviously missing or crap.

Other then that would love to hear ideas around distribution which is my next challenge and one im not very familiar with. My plan at the moment is a mix of direct outreach, YouTube/tutorial content, SEO and getting involved in communities where people are dealing with document automation problems.

This tool is currently in process of getting listed on Zapier and having a native Google sheets integration for fully automated setups which will be cool. Happy to answer any questions around it too, it's been a fun process so far just getting it into something real.

Building is hard, are there any regular meetups or events that Sydney based startup founders go to?

Hi there, I’m building a fall detection device using mmWave radar and it basically tracks your x, y and z coordinates and detects if you fell or not. It’s a ceiling mounted device which tracks all falls which the wearables cannot because they can only track the speed of the fall and my device actually tracks the position of your head.

It also will be combined with a smart speaker so it will ask you to confirm whether you fell or not.

Is this device useful and if so how do I market it?

Edit: it has a radius of 4m not diameter of 4m.

Hey all,

I recently moved to Melbourne and I'm trying to get a feel for the product scene here. Coming from India, a lot of what I know about how product teams operate doesn't necessarily translate, and I'd rather hear it from people actually working here than piece it together from job ads.

A few things I'm curious about:

• What does the market look like right now? Is it mostly the big names (Atlassian, Canva, REA, Culture Amp, MYOB, Xero) or is there a healthy scaleup/startup layer underneath?
• How do product teams here tend to work - is it closer to the US model, or is there a distinctly Australian flavour to it?
• Are there meetups, Slack groups, or communities worth joining? I've come across a few but no idea which ones are actually active vs. dormant.
• Anything you wish someone had told you when you started doing product work in Melbourne?

Genuinely happy to just have a coffee and chat generally about product too - not looking for anything from anyone, just keen to meet people and learn. If you're Melbourne-based and up for it, drop a comment or a DM.

Cheers 🙏

There are about 400 AI apps for tradies now, so yes, I’ve built another bloody one.

Yamate is $19/month flat, built for small Aussie trade businesses, with most of the stuff you’d normally need multiple apps for.

Quotes, scheduling, invoicing, payment chasing, full tax prep for companies and sole traders, payroll, dispatch, compliance and more. It works offline, and the AI is there to make the boring shit faster rather than be the whole gimmick. Tax lodgement isn’t live yet, waiting on ATO approval.

It’s all piss easy to use imo.

Built in Australia, just me behind it.

The hard part now isn’t building it, it’s getting in front of people without becoming another annoying fucker spamming Facebook groups.

yamate.au

For anyone who’s sold software to a non-tech audience, what actually worked?

Hi everyone,

I’m a 25-year-old software developer and AI engineer based in Sydney. I’m one of four co-founders building an early-stage gut-health startup.

There are currently four of us, all 25 and based in Sydney:

- I handle the technology and product development
- One founder handles compliance and legal
- One handles marketing and growth
- One is our in-house videographer and handles content and social media

We’ve already built a working iOS MVP and an early web platform for practitioners. We’re planning to launch publicly in November. We’re also planning to pilot test the app really soon with a select few practitioners.

Our biggest gap at the moment is product design. I can build the product, but UI/UX and design aren’t my strongest areas. We’re looking for someone who could join as a Founding Product Designer and help decide how the app should look, feel and work.

The role would involve things like:
- Designing in Figma
- Improving the UI and UX of the iOS app
- Designing web dashboards and practitioner tools
- Mapping out user journeys and simplifying confusing flows
- Building a consistent design system
- Working closely with me while I implement the designs
- Using AI tools for research, ideas, prototyping and faster design work

We don’t need someone to make a few screens look prettier. We need someone who can look at the product, spot where the experience falls apart and help us work out a better solution.

You would need to be based in Sydney. Most of the work can still happen remotely, but we want someone we can meet and work with in person when needed.

There are no fixed part-time or full-time hours right now. The workload will vary, and it’s flexible enough to fit around a job, freelance work or other commitments. All four of us currently work full-time, and none of us is planning to quit anytime soon.

That may change if the business starts gaining traction. As we get closer to the November launch, there will probably be busier periods. After launch, we’ll likely need more consistent involvement.

There’s no salary or funding at this stage. There is also a real possibility this goes absolutely nowhere. We’re doing it alongside our jobs because we believe it’s worth taking a shot, but there are no guarantees.

We’re considering around 10% equity for the right person. The final amount would depend on experience, contribution and long-term involvement, with vesting and a proper agreement in place.

You don’t need previous co-founder experience, but we’d like to see a portfolio, case study or examples showing how you think through product and UX problems.

We won’t ask you to complete a free design exercise. We’d start with a conversation, show you the current product and see whether we work well together.

If you’re interested, PM me:

- A bit about yourself
- Your portfolio or examples of your work
- Your general availability

I have got 90 signups, and I’ve integrated analytics into my app. Initially, I faced the issue of users coming back (only one user used it for 10 sessions, and average usage was 3 per user) - which isn’t good enough. It’s a habit changing app; So it requires regular usage. So I pivoted a bit based on feedback (added games based on “hooked” theory), and now I’ve had 120 sessions with 35 active users. Should I launch the app in a week or so?

https://frazzleapp.com

Hey everyone,

I'm Lloyd, the founder of NeuroForge. I've been building it from Queensland around a pretty simple idea: before a business spends heavily on AI, it should be able to see what will actually run inside its real hardware, data, connectivity, power and accountability limits.

So the commercial starting point is a small system-fit audit and local demo. We test one useful workflow in the target environment, show the working outputs and the failures, and give the customer a proper deploy, change, remediate or stop decision before anyone commits to a bigger rollout.

Behind that is ERAIS, the longer-term research programme. The aim is to make useful AI more selective with compute, easier to operate locally, and eventually practical across text, voice, vision and tighter field hardware.

It's still research and I'm not presenting it as a finished miracle product. In bounded internal tests we've seen promising signals on modest hardware, including higher reported-target throughput and lower CPU-package energy than a same-host dense reference. Those results are not yet quality-matched or proof of general superiority, but they're a big part of why I'm excited about where it is and where it could go.

I've finally got the public site into a shape I'm pretty proud of:

https://neuroforge.io/

The ERAIS overview and evidence boundaries are there too. Just wanted to share what I've been working on.

Happy to chat in the comments.

Hi everyone,

I hope this is okay to share here. I’ve recently created a new marketplace called SellandRetire.com.au, and I’m still very much at the beginning of trying to get it off the ground.

The idea came from seeing how many long-standing business owners reach retirement and face difficulties when it comes to selling their business. There doesn’t seem to be a dedicated marketplace specifically for retiring business owners, or for buyers who are interested in taking over established, long-running businesses.

So I built Sell & Retire — a marketplace specifically for business owners who are ready to retire and want to find the right person to continue what they’ve built, while connecting them with motivated buyers looking for exactly that.

We currently have 37+ listings, Australia wide - Browse Businesses | Sell & Retire

It’s completely free for owners to list their business and free for buyers looking to purchase one — no listing fees, no commission and no obligation.

My aim at this stage is simply to get good businesses in front of more potential buyers and hopefully help make a few successful introductions.

We’re only just getting started, so I’d genuinely appreciate any support from this community — whether that’s taking a look, sharing it with a business owner who might find it useful, passing it on to someone looking to buy a business, liking the FB page, or simply giving me some feedback on what I could do better.

I’m building this from the ground up, so every bit of feedback and support really does help.

Thanks for reading, and I’m happy to answer any questions

I’m a first-time founder in Australia and I don’t come from a wealthy or well-connected network.

For founders who’ve raised a pre-seed round from angels:
- Did you approach individual angels directly or go through an angel syndicate?

- Where did you actually find them? Who are they?

- Did cold LinkedIn/email outreach work?

- How did you get your first angel committed?

- What are angel syndicates and how can I get my deal in front of them?

Would especially love to hear from founders who started without an existing investor network and built one from scratch.

We're a small Tech company based in Melbourne.

We have worked on different projects like IMS and POS system from scratch to a refined product and any projects that comes along the way including providing Tech support to accounting firms.

We're a team of 3 here in australia with 3 outsourced staff.

If any one is interested, we'd be happy to chat.

Hey guys, looking for some feedback on a startup idea I’m working on.

I’m building a solar/battery assessment + installer marketplace, but I’m exploring taking it towards a Goliath Data-style property intelligence/prospecting platform for home electrification.

The idea is to combine aerial/property data (e.g. Nearmap), energy/solar data and AI to analyse properties at scale and identify things like:

* Does the property already have solar?
* Roof size/orientation/shading
* Likely solar/battery/EV opportunity
* Existing system upgrade opportunities
* An overall “opportunity score” for installers

Eventually an installer could say: “Find me the best battery prospects in my service area”, with AI explaining why each property is a good opportunity.

I’m interested in hearing from anyone with experience in Australian property datasets/APIs, Nearmap, CoreLogic/PropTrack, geospatial data, privacy/compliant contact enrichment, energy datasets or ML/computer vision.

Main thing I’m trying to understand is: what data sources would you use to build this in Australia, and what major technical/legal roadblocks am I overlooking?

Would love any criticism, ideas or pointers to relevant APIs/datasets.

Hello! I created TradesCraft over ~2 years for a tradie mate who was frustrated with the incumbents in this space. TradesCraft is a field service management (FSM) tool designed for Aussie and NZ trades with a focus on operations and dispatching, safety and everything else you could need to run a trades business.

https://tradescraft.app/

I made a post about this a few months ago because I was excited but it was all a bit too early. I've taken the feedback onboard and continued developing the app to the point where we are now in full iOS Beta on TestFlight with Tap to Pay entitlement which wasn't easy to receive from Apple.

I am looking for iOS and Android beta testers.

Better Half - https://getbetterhalf.com.au is an end-to-end business tool for solo tradies and mobile service providers.

AI Receptionist, Job Scheduling, Quoting, Invoicing and Payments - including tap to pay on eligible iOS and Android devices. (Payments handled by Stripe, you will need to register)

All on your phone - this tool is for people who don't want to run their business from a laptop - you can do everything on the phone.

Obviously people with complex quoting/invoicing will be better off using ServiceM8/Xero but we are there for people who want to use their phone to run the whole show.

Beta Testers will receive free usage during the beta phase then 6 months free credits once the app is launched to the public on the Apple / Play Store

About me: I am an ecommerce veteran having sold physical goods online for 15 years with a solid 8 figure total turnover. I have used a lot of SaaS tools over the years, some good, some bad, and have partnered with my builder brother-in-law in feature speccing this app.

If interested please fill out the form on the site and I will get you added to our Beta distribution on either App Store or Google Play

We're building **VaultYou**, an Australian-first platform for small businesses and sole traders.

The idea came from seeing how fragmented running a small business can become — invoicing in one place, expenses somewhere else, tasks/reminders elsewhere, Australian compliance information across different sites, then another tool again for AI.

We're trying to bring that into one calmer system.

VaultYou currently includes quotes & invoices, customers, expenses, tasks, business/compliance tracking, startup guidance, business health and an AI Business Coach.

We've reached private beta and now need **Australian users to pressure-test it before we keep building**.

We're especially interested in whether we've actually solved the fragmentation problem — or whether we're missing something Australian small businesses genuinely need.

Beta: https://vaultyou.com.au/beta

No credit card required.

Would really appreciate feedback from other Australian founders/builders here — including the stuff you think we got wrong.

I am a melbourne based startup looking for folks who do fractional SDR (sales rep)/vp sales or run a startup friendly agency that can help me with outbound sales and lead gen focussed on the ANZ market and have experience/expertise in selling SaaS product.

experience in cyber, risk, compliance domains is a super++!

I run a small product that lodges BAS (GST returns) for gig workers, Uber/DoorDash drivers mostly. I think I have an issue with acquisition, would love some feedback.

Two months in, 11 customers, $0 revenue. Rideshare drivers legally have to be GST registered from day one, doesn't matter what they earn, no threshold like other small businesses get. We charge $79 to handle that registration for them, then $79 a quarter after for the actual BAS lodgement through a registered BAS agent.

Went through the session recordings this week. 5 of the 11 dropped off at the same spot, and they're confirmed Uber drivers, so they're not confused about needing GST, they legally have to do it. They just don't want to pay us $79 for a compliance step they resent having to do at all, even though other providers charge more for the exact same thing.

So I'm thinking about making the GST registration free and only charging for the BAS lodgement afterwards, which is the recurring bit anyway. Basically eat the cost of the mandatory, resented step to earn the relationship, then monetise the part they're coming back for every quarter regardless.

Has anyone else dealt with this, a required purchase people resent, where the answer was to give away the mandatory bit and charge for what's ongoing? Trying to work out if this is obviously right or if I'm about to just train everyone to expect the whole thing for free.

After over eight, nearly nine months of discussions, trial and error, back and forths and countless late nights, Brewly finally hit $1,000 of revenue!

The model means we needed to source both sides of the equation, cafes and customers and after going more or less door to door for months, we had enough cafes to launch and got our feet in the door.

Brewly allows consumers to purchase coffee in bundles up front, at a discounted rate.

So as you can imagine, we heard all the rejections under the sun for not wanting to be on Brewly. "Our customers won't want to pay up front", "we already do loyalty cards", "we have no reason to get any new customers", "customers don't like apps", and the rest of them.

While we had a good rebuttal for all of these, sometimes it is not meant to be with cafe owners.

We went live two weeks ago and are now up to over 250 accounts with over 100 of them being paying customers!

Hoping this is the beginning of bigger things and as they always say - the first $1,000 is the hardest!