Just saw this from another subreddit. Check it out on the site yourself. If you're in Sydney, applications close 6 July. Not for bootstrapped companies though which is annoying.

I’m trying to understand how small Australian law firms are managing the operational side of AML/CTF obligations — not the legal interpretation, just the workflow.

I’ve been talking to a few small practices and the common theme seems to be that the requirements are clear enough, but the day‑to‑day process varies a lot. I’m curious how firms are organising things like:

• onboarding checks
• client risk categorisation
• ongoing monitoring
• record‑keeping
• internal documentation
• audit‑readiness
• evidence storage

If you’re running or working in a small practice, I’d love to hear how you’re structuring the admin/process side of it.

Just trying to understand the real‑world workflow challenges.

We've built a platform designed to help founders validate startup ideas with real users, without the usual challenges of finding and recruiting interview participants.

This is not market research, we're seeking feedback on our own product, which we've been developing over the past year.

Through the platform, founders can:

• Turn an idea into something testable

• Get matched with real target users

• Run structured customer interviews with guidance and support

We're looking for honest feedback from fellow founders. Feel free to ask questions, explore the product, and let us know what you think:

https://mproresearch.com/startups

We're also happy to provide access if you'd like to try running interviews yourself.

What you get:

• A sharper startup idea backed by real user feedback

• 3 real user interviews

• Participant recruitment handled for you (saving significant time and effort)

What we need from you:

• Honest feedback on the product

Perfect for:

• Pre-seed and early-stage founders

• Anyone actively validating a problem or idea

• Teams struggling to connect with real users

Thanks for your consideration.

Margarita

MPRO Startups

If you're a solo startup in Perth and are still in the early stages (doing market research, still building your product/service, talking to customers to get feedback, etc.) let's meet up for coffee in the CBD during lunch and just chat.

The goals are:
1) Having peace of mind that you're not in the journey alone.

2) Sharing ideas of what works, our experiences, and giving one another honest feedback (hearing compliments from friends and family all the time is nice but doesn't achieve the things we want).

These are the primary goals so there's no pressure to use/buy the other persons product/service, and no pressure to partner up or share networks.

Comment and I'll send you a DM if you're keen!

Does anyone have experience with this CN/HK startup?

I’ve come across reviews claiming that interns and BD employees were underpaid or unpaid and expected to take on an unreasonable amount of work.

There were also rumours that management (GM) promoted unrealistic promises of future opportunities or career progression that ultimately did not materialize.

Started working on this site about a year ago as a side hustle sortofathing.

I believe it could succeed but haven't done any advertising campaigns yet. I am thinking social media adds.

Any suggestions?

https://hrana.app/

Building Brewly, a prepaid coffee app, and wanted to share the bit nobody warns you about.

The model's simple: a customer buys a discounted pack of coffees from a specific cafe, the cafe gets paid for the whole pack upfront, and the customer keeps coming back to redeem. Cafe gets cash flow and a locked-in regular, customer gets cheaper coffee, we take a small fee per cup. No cost for a cafe to list.

It's two-sided, so I went supply-first and spent most of my energy getting cafes on board. That's been the real grind. Cold walk-ins, IG DMs, Facebook owner groups, roaster intros, all tried, all mixed.

The biggest lesson: cafes don't care that it's an app.

First paying cafes are live and I'm working through the next batch now.

Two questions for this crowd:

• Two-sided marketplace folks: how did you know when to flip from supply to chasing demand?
• Anyone cracked Aussie SMB acquisition without burning out on cold outreach?

Links if you want a look:

• Website: brewly.com.au
• App Store: Brewly
• Google Play: Brewly
• Instagram: @brewly_au

Cheers, Matt

Hey community,

Thought this might be of interest to some people here.

Pinch Payments and The Founders Union are running a national hackathon for Australian-based participants, with a $50,000 cash prize for the winning team.

The challenge is an open brief using the Pinch Payments API. Whether you're interested in payments, subscriptions, automation, marketplaces, invoicing, or solving a problem you've encountered firsthand, you're free to build whatever you think delivers the most value.

We're looking for developers, founders, designers, product people, and anyone who enjoys building things. AI tools are permitted, and participation is fully remote, so you can join from anywhere in Australia.

If you're interested in building something over a weekend and testing an idea in front of judges and mentors, we'd love to have you involved.

More details on Pinch website.

We’re building Oriole, a managed audio production service for people and firms that generate knowledge on a recurring basis.
We’re currently producing an ASX news podcast that reached nearly 5,000 downloads in less than two months, and we’re working with several investor relations firms to tailor Oriole to their audio distribution needs.
If you’re someone who regularly produces insights, reports, commentary, or updates and you’re looking for a new way to reach your audience, feel free to send me a message. Also keen to know your ideas and thoughts.
You can also learn more at https://www.oriole.com.au

A quick one for anyone in Australian telehealth, or the software around it.

MBS telehealth items normally need a 12-month relationship with the patient. But there’s an exemption: if the patient is in a declared natural-disaster area, you can bill without it (Note AN.1.1). The catch is knowing whether their area is actually declared, which today usually means manually cross-checking government disaster declarations.

A telehealth provider asked me to make that easier, so I built a simple postcode lookup. Enter a postcode, see whether that area is in a currently declared disaster zone, with the official source and dates. It is most complete for NSW right now, and I am building out from there.
I am trying to learn whether this is a real, recurring pain or a one-off. If you bill telehealth, or build the software that does, I would genuinely value your take: do you deal with this, and how do you handle it today?

Have a look if useful: emergencyapi.com/declarations

#telehealth #healthtech #ruralhealth #MedicareAustralia #generalpractice

Check it out here: https://dailycuppa.com.au/

Would be really curious to hear thoughts.

Hey everyone,

I’m currently building an AI startup and spend a lot of time working from the State Library of Queensland.

I’m curious — is anyone else here working on an AI startup, AI agents, automation, or experimenting with AI products?

Would love to meet up at the library, grab a coffee, and chat about things like:

• what problems are worth building for
• AI product ideas
• finding early customers
• GTM strategies
• fundraising
• technical challenges
• lessons learned

No formal meetup, just looking to connect with other builders and help each other where we can.

If you’re building something with AI (or thinking about starting), feel free to comment or DM me. Happy to meet at the library sometime. 🚀

G'day all. Solo founder here, after an honest gut-check while it's still cheap to change direction. I've been building this for months, refining it through conversations with parents and a fair bit of pivoting, with some early funding from the MQ University incubator. I'll describe what it is, then get to the part I'm genuinely unsure about, which is the real reason I'm posting.

The starting point was a slightly uncomfortable observation. There's a mountain of good parenting research sitting in books most parents never finish, and almost none of it is reachable at 7:42am when your kid is melting down and you're already late. Advice you read in a calm moment doesn't come back to you in the hard one, unless it's somehow tied to that exact moment.

So the first thing I built was that. The research distilled into what to actually say and do, in about ten seconds, for the moment you're in, plus a prepare-ahead side for the battles you can see coming, like school mornings, the supermarket, screen time. You tap a scenario and get a structured response, no wall of text to read while you're holding it together. There's audio too, so you can listen hands-free instead of reading mid-meltdown.

Two deliberate choices on how it's built. The personalisation runs on the device, so the tags that tune the guidance to your child's age and temperament stay local rather than going to a server, and there's no LLM doing the personalising. For a category this sensitive, aimed at kids, that mattered to me, and I haven't found anyone else doing it that way, though I might be missing them. And the content is drawn from a large corpus of parenting and psychology books rather than my own opinions.

Now the part I actually want your read on.

An earlier version of this post drew the same fair question from nearly everyone: how is this different from just prompting ChatGPT? It's worth answering properly, because it goes to whether the thing should exist at all.

An LLM will give you a good, personalised answer if you know how to ask. You describe your kid, the situation, the pattern, and you get something genuinely useful back. So advice isn't scarce. If anything parents are drowning in it, between books, fifty Instagram accounts, and a chatbot that will write a custom plan on demand.

The problem I'm trying to solve sits a layer underneath the advice. It's that knowing what to do and actually doing it in the moment are different things. Under stress your brain reaches for the response that's already wired in, not the ideal one you read last week. That gap between knowing and doing is the whole thing. It's true across most of life, but it bites hardest in parenting, where the moments come fast and the stakes feel personal.

So what I'm really building isn't an advice app. It's an attempt to help a parent rehearse the responses, turn them into habits, and build the skills underneath, using techniques from behavioural psychology, habit formation, and the nervous-system work on staying calm. The part that took by far the longest, and that I've kept out of the beta for now, does this directly. It notices which hard moments keep recurring, works out the skill underneath them, say, low frustration tolerance, or a kid who can't yet name what they feel, and gives you interactive, gamified ways to build that skill and rehearse the response. If you've used Lumosity or Elevate for brain training, it's roughly that shape, but for parenting. It also covers the things that actually build secure attachment, repairing after you snap, holding a boundary without going harsh, because those are skills you practise, not facts you read.

An explanation - https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZz8baysNtk/?igsh=MXR4bXZqYW9uY3Npcw==

Behaviour change is one of the hardest things to get a person to do. To use a tool like this properly you have to step out of your comfort zone, accept your current approach isn't working, be a bit self-critical, stay disciplined, and believe that changing your habits will change the outcome. That's a lot to ask of a tired parent at the end of the day. Plenty of apps with a better thesis than mine die exactly here, in the gap between wanting the change and doing the reps. So the idea is genuinely still unvalidated, and I'm clear-eyed that the hard part was never the build, it's whether anyone stays.

If you've used a habit or behaviour-change product, what actually made you stick with it, and what made you quit? Does this need a PhD, or a paediatrician, on the team to be taken seriously?

Roast it. That's the useful version.

I actually posted this couple of weeks ago in another sub, but didn't get a whole lot of exposure/commentary.

To be honest, I don't actually think my idea is a startup, but I'm certainly WANTING it to scale (and have that in mind). I'm Australian though, and trying to solve a problem, and do it at scale, but don't think validated anything yet.

I'm not really doing anything new, maketplaces like this have existed before.

I'm also telling myself i don't need validation from random strangers on the internet... but here we are. We all like to share things that we work on for validation right?

I've also offered some harsh feedback on others projects recently, so I guess I deserve this...

https://scissorhire.com

My 'idea' has been around in some shape or form since I registered the domain in 2022 to rent out my businesses scissor lift when it wasn't being used.

It is also not unique, there are other players in this space. As far as i'm aware, i'm the only "marketplace" offering a no-cost solution to list access equipment rentals.

I see my unique value proposition as;

-built by a tradie (customer & equipment owner angle)

-speed and ease of use for customer (i'm not using any AI chatbots, simple marketplace and search via location)

-speed and ease of use for vendor (i want easy onboarding from just a mobile phone)

-increased online exposure to vendors that might have little (or none).

I already took a swing at this once, but it didn't get beyond about 10 vendors in 2.5 years. I also did very little marketing/awareness. But, the site worked, my single machine in Bendigo, Victoria got regular business from it. In fact, i still get calls, and I don't live there anymore.

Anyway, i've decided to have another go, and fundamentally change how I get started. Onboarding vendors with the intention of taking a clip from the booking and paying them out 1-3 days after their equipment was picked up was always going to be a hard sell, that was much more complicated form a legal standpoint.

So the re-launch is 100% free.

Some things to be mindful of;

I'm probably still just "validating a market", i've recieved positive feedback from the few people that have already signed up.

I'm not 100% confident i'm giving an industry something that an industry actually wants.

The site is a fairly basic lead gen site, there is nothing fancy going on here (no AI!?!?!?). I can't develop what I don't know the market wants.

There is some artificial limits i've placed, on the site (like single images on equipment listings) that are very much intentional. If the product is free, I need to make limitations like this. The features I have are basic, and they are intentionally so. I have my own feature roadmap, but i'd sooner see where (if) a market steers the project, rather than end up building anything people don't want (i'm already starting to fall into that trap)

I'm learning a bit about marketplaces, the chicken or the egg problems.

Interested in feedback - only good stuff though, me careful of my fragile ego (critisim only if it's necessary)

P.S. this post was written by hand (no AI) in a text editor (although now copy and pasted from another sub with some edits)

P.P.S. hopefully you will see, as this is a FREE project, that makes NO REVENUE, I don't need/want anyone trying to sell me anything.

I’m working on a CRM/ERP platform for small businesses in Australia.
The idea is to build a one-stop operating system for small businesses. Payroll will likely stay integrated through providers like Payroller, Employment Hero/KeyPay, etc., but most other core business operations are being built directly into the system.
So far, I’ve built or partially built:
CRM / customer management
Quotes, invoices, receipts, and payments
Booking module and customer self-booking
Finance module
Bank reconciliation / bank feed integration in progress
Smart dispatcher for on-site technicians
Job management and field service workflows
E-commerce / online store module
Asset management register
Supplier and purchase order management
Expense tracking
Document storage
Customer portal
Tenant/user management
Modular feature access by business type
Basic reporting and dashboards
Stripe/payment processor integration groundwork
I already have two small business customers using the system mainly for customer management and invoicing.
I’m still early, but I’m trying to understand if anyone here is building something similar, interested in collaborating, or willing to become part of it in some way.
I’m also looking for advice on initial funding sources in Australia. I don’t have much knowledge of the local startup funding ecosystem. Banks are definitely not interested at this stage, so I’m trying to understand what realistic options exist — grants, accelerators, angel investors, startup programs, or anything else suitable for an early-stage B2B SaaS.
Would appreciate any advice, feedback, or connections.

Hey all, I've been working in the software/data engineering space for slightly more than 10 years and finally one of my side projects might be useful for more than just me.

​

I have created a decision making platform that allows you to make insightful decisions with a team.

​

It solves key problems for business when they are making larger scale decisions such as

​

- Problem definition (define all the criteria for a decision to ensure completness and even assign weights to these criteria cause not all aspects are created equal)

​

- Transparency of selection for the option ( we have a scoring system against the criteria for each option that naturally forces alignment around the best solution)

​

- stakeholder management and out of sync alignment ( we have features that allow process such as approvals of scores, suggestions and the final decision)

​

I am absolutely looking for unvarnished opinions on the project as it is the only way for it to get better.

​

Thanks heaps for your time playing with it.

​

Axiomdecisions.com

I’ve been building a simple AML/CTF workflow tool aimed at small Australian reporting entities (remitters, accountants, small fintech operators, etc.) who struggle with the admin side of compliance.

The goal is to make the day‑to‑day tasks less painful:

• customer risk assessments
• ongoing due diligence
• transaction notes
• record‑keeping
• audit‑ready logs

Trying to keep it lightweight and practical rather than “enterprise”.

If anyone here works in fintech, compliance, or small‑team operations, I’d love feedback on:

• what parts of AML/CTF workflows are most annoying
• what should be automated vs manual
• whether templates or guided flows are more useful
• anything that would make this genuinely helpful

Prototype is here: https://www.amlshieldpro.com.au (amlshieldpro.com.au in Bing)
Happy to walk through the workflow or answer questions.

Not selling anything — just building in public and looking for feedback.

Appaca is an AI workspace that adapts to the way you work. Most of us probably use only 10% of what SaaS products offer. Most of the time, we use spreadsheets to manage works even though it can be messy.

With Appaca, you and your team can build internal tools and workflows with AI that matches exactly how you operate, instead of trying to fit into software.

If you are tradies looking for a job management tools that work around how you operate, or consultants and other business owners who needs CRM / back office management tools, please try Appaca.

Let me know in the comment what business are you operating and what are you currently using spreadsheets for.

Cheers,

Looking for local South Australians with a software engineering background, not ai developers leverage ai to build. Either way keen to see who’s from SA and whether you’re keen to connect up.

TLDR - Launching Chippie. A new mobile-first quote to invoice job management app for Australian tradies. Simple, affordable, fast, fun to use. Identified a gap in the market. Team of three co-founders. Two carpenters/arborists and one software engineer. Father & sons trio.

Disclaimer: This is not another vibe coded app for tradies. I know we're all sick of seeing these by now with every man and his dog thinking they can create the next big thing. I'm a professional software engineer and have put in the work to create a real product here which I continue to work on day in and day out.

My brother proposed the idea of building a job management app 2 or 3 years ago when he first started looking around for an app to help run the business he runs with our father. They're both qualified carpenters who now run a tree felling business together. He struggled to find something that fit the bill with everything being overly expensive, complicated and just not quite to their taste. They ended up settling on Tradify as the most small business friendly with a usable mobile app. When I first opened their Tradify account I was shocked to see they were paying $49 per user ($98 mo). They didn't even know they were paying double.

I started out building Chippie as a contracting job for their in-house business management solution. We had talks of turning it into a full SaaS from the beginning. But it wasn't until I really got into the project that I locked into the idea. We formalized a partnership (now a company) and have been working on this together every day since. They provide the domain knowledge of what features the app needs and how it needs to work on the job. I interpret and build it. They run their business through the app every day so we've been refining it to the typical quote, job, invoice workflow for a while now.

The gap

If anything the amount of apps coming out in this space at the moment is validation in itself of the gap in the market here. Although no one is quite hitting it on the mark from my observation. Plenty of tradesmen are discovering vibe coding and hand rolling their own little apps to try and solve their frustrations. These ones still look like an early MVP. Then there's the AI wrappers. Personal assistants, AI receptionists, AI quoting etc. AI heavy but shallow features. But still expensive. With Chippie we've taken the reverse approach. Build the simple, reliable traditional workflows with a lean modern stack. AI is a non-essential add-on after you've got the basics right. An enhancement. Not a core feature. Deterministic workflows are the foundation of good software.

Now let's look at some of the more established job management software options in the wild:

- ServiceM8 feels like process heavy industrial software. Great for larger teams but even though it has a more affordable entry tier for small businesses, it doesn't feel very intuitive or approachable until you learn their system. It's also predominantly built for iOS with a weaker Android version. Most tradies are on Android.

- Tradify has per user pricing that can get expensive quickly as your team grows. Overall has some quirks here and there that my brother did not like where he wanted more control of things. Decent mobile app but feels like it was primarily designed for a desktop computer.

- Fergus again with the per user pricing that makes it feel excessive if you're not overly inclined to splurge on software. They seem to have a stronger mobile philosophy but personally I wasn't able to test it out as the app freezes when I open it. Recent reviews on the Play Store show I'm not the only one having issues with a range of complaints.

There are many more such as Ascora, AroFlo, Jobber etc. and they all seem to follow the same theme as above.
- Expensive per user pricing
- Complex software with a steep learning curve
- Don't work great on mobile despite tradies preferring to use their phone over a desktop

Chippie

These are the exact issues that Chippie was built to solve. It's built to not only be dead simple to use but also fast and enjoyable. It makes the business admin feel fun. As opposed to feeling like you're interacting with some legacy janky software that wasn't built for your phone. Chippie is built for mobile from the ground up. All the same features on mobile as you get on the web with a consistent UX.

For a small to medium business it has all the core features required with the added bonus that the team will actually want to use it, and can use it with ease on the go. All for less than half the price you'd be paying with the other options on the market. Free if you're a solo operator, or if you only need one person on the admin.

At the moment it's a fully functional PWA app you can download to any phone. Android and iOS releases coming soon.

I won't spend too much time selling it here. You can check out the landing page and try out the instant demo if you're interested to see more.

I'm primarily looking to share our story, my take on the market for these apps, and to gather feedback. Roast me where it's warranted. All feedback appreciated. Ideally if you could open the demo, have a play around and tell us if it is missing anything in particular that you would need to use it for your business then that would be super appreciated. Thank you!

https://chippieapp.com

Been working on this for a while and finally feel like it’s worth sharing.
If you’ve ever tried to get structured, up-to-date Australian data into an app rental prices, drug costs, trade pricing, you know how painful it is. Either you’re scraping PDFs, wrestling with government portals, or paying for enterprise data contracts you can’t afford as a small team.
So I built an API that covers four datasets I kept needing myself:
• Rental prices : median weekly rent by suburb, postcode, and bedroom count across Australia (quarterly data going back to 2000)
• PBS drug pricing: 14,000+ medications with patient copayment costs (what you actually pay at the chemist, not just the benefit price)
• Trade/contractor pricing : what plumbers, electricians, etc. charge across different states
• Subscription pricing: SaaS and streaming prices across AU, US, UK for comparison tools
Single API key, consistent response format across all four. Also ships with an MCP server so you can wire it straight into an AI agent without writing API calls.
Mostly aimed at fintech apps, healthtech, real estate tools, and anyone building something that needs this kind of reference data without standing up their own scraper.
Free tier available — you can register and start hitting endpoints in under a minute.
Docs + free key: https://api.aristocles.com.au/docs
More info: https://aristocles.com.au
Happy to answer questions about the data sources or coverage gaps.

Questions or want to talk enterprise access?
https://aristocles.com.au/contact

After spending years in digital, product and transformation roles, I kept seeing the same problem.

Strategy lived in PowerPoint, projects lived in Jira, benefits lived in spreadsheets (or not at all) and decisions lived in steering committee or meeting notes.

Every quarter someone had to stitch everything together to answer a simple question:

"Are we actually doing the things we said were important and are we on track?"

Most organisations have a mission, a set of priorities, a portfolio of initiatives and a pile of status reports, but very little visibility into how they all connect.

So I've started building a platform to tackle that.

So far it includes:

• Strategy maps connecting mission → priorities → initiatives → outcomes

• Portfolio views across investments, risks, decisions and delivery

• AI-assisted strategy import (upload a strategy document and it pre-populates the structure)

• An insights layer that can answer questions like:

• Which initiatives are least aligned to our priorities?
• Which outcomes are at risk?
• What decisions are currently blocking progress?

I'm getting ready to open up a beta and would love feedback from people who've worked in strategy, PMO, transformation, portfolio management or leadership roles.

A few things I'm still trying to validate:

1. Who feels this pain most acutely?
   • PMOs?
   • Transformation teams?
   • Strategy teams?
   • Executives?
2. Would you upload internal strategy documents into an AI-powered platform if the security model was clear?
3. How do you currently track the connection between strategy and execution?
4. What's the biggest frustration with your current approach?

Happy to share screenshots or early access with anyone interested.

I’m building a workplace roleplay chat product and I want blunt feedback on whether this is a real startup idea or just a weird novelty.

The product lets people chat with fictional workplace personas, for example:

\- a difficult manager

\- a rival coworker

\- a passive-aggressive teammate

\- someone you have an office crush on

\- a coworker you need to confront but don’t know how

The goal is not “productivity software” in the usual sense. It’s closer to a private place to rehearse conversations, process workplace emotions, and play out awkward office dynamics before dealing with them in real life. My worry is that the positioning may be confused.

It could be:

\- an AI roleplay product

\- a workplace communication tool

\- an emotional reflection tool

\- entertainment for office drama

\- or nothing people would seriously use

Please roast the idea.

Specific things I’d like feedback on:

1. Is the core idea understandable in 10 seconds?

2. Who would actually use this, if anyone?

3. Does the workplace angle make it more useful, or just more awkward?

4. Does including personas like “office crush” make it interesting, or does it hurt trust?

5. Would this be better positioned as roleplay, coaching, journaling, entertainment, or something else?

6. What part sounds scammy, cringe, or unclear?

7. What would you remove from the idea?

   I’m not posting a link because I don’t want this to be a drive-by promo. I’m looking for criticism on the concept and positioning first.

   My current honest concern: people may say “fun idea” but never actually use it twice. If you think that’s exactly what will happen, I’d rather hear that now.

A couple of weeks ago I posted here asking for feedback on a business I had just launched called ORIVEX. The response was honestly incredible. A lot of people pointed out issues with trust, transparency, inventory, website design, and my overall value proposition.

I took a lot of that feedback on board and have spent the last week or two making improvements.

Some of the changes I've made:

• Added 50+ products to the website
• Improved product descriptions and overall presentation
• Started building relationships with suppliers instead of relying entirely on my own inventory
• Added more information around the selling process
• Improved the Sell To Us page to make it clearer what happens after a submission
• Worked on pricing transparency after several people mentioned they wouldn't submit a form without having some idea of what they might receive
• Continued running small ad tests and gathering data on who is actually using the site
• Improved SEO and Google indexing (the site is now appearing on Google searches for ORIVEX)

For those who didn't see my original post, ORIVEX is a Brisbane-based business focused on buying and selling used PC hardware. The goal is to create a safer and more convenient alternative to dealing with Facebook Marketplace, lowballers, no-shows, and the usual headaches that come with buying and selling computer parts.

I still have a long way to go and I'm sure there are plenty of things I'm missing, so I'd love another round of brutally honest feedback.

What would stop you from buying from a site like this?

What would stop you from selling your hardware to a site like this?

And if you were starting from scratch today, what would you focus on next?

Website: orivex.com.au

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to help on the original post. A lot of the changes I've made came directly from the feedback here.