On Friday 24th October 2014 the startup community in Perth came together at the Whipper Snapper Distillery to fraternise with alcohol and celebrate the community with a festival style event called Startup West (StartupWest.org.au).
If you didn’t make it, you missed a great party!
There were over 150 people from all around the startup community there, people who have been part of the scene for years and people who were interested in this “startup” thing but didn’t know anything about it (welcome folks, come on in and say hi!).
The Rt Honourable the Lord Mayor Lisa-M. Scaffidi opened the event, and was awesome as usual, she spoke about her support for the startup scene, and as the City of Perth is one of the few government organisations actually funding anything in the startup scene, we can believe it.
Officially the event was part of the national #StartupAus Startup Spring event, in fact this was Perth’s contribution to the national event as far as we know – it’ll be interesting to see if anything happens next year. We definitely plan to hold a similar event next year.
A quick shout out to our special people:
Our MC, Justin Davies, who did an excellent job of marshalling the proceedings.
Our speakers: Sam Birmingham (who needs no introduction), Brodie McCulloch (in a celebratory mood from the successful Spacecubed crowdfunder) and Mikey Kailis of OzApps.
We had six people pitch the crowd with their launch pitches:
- Estelle Olivera of Eternal Eve
- Nick Van Den Berg of Simply Wall St
- Ben Thomas of Vine Collective
- Robbie Adams of Mobilyser
- Blaise Thomas of Total Pets
- Jon Cahill of Orowa
The slide deck for the night, including the slides for the pitches, can be found at: http://pz.tt/startupwest
Brett Jones (of Pin Payments) took some of these photos and shared them with us, thanks Brett!
Food was provided by festival food providers Ole Paella and Jumplings, 9/10 would eat again! and the drink was a range of local grog: Whipper Snapper Distillery’s own Crazy Uncle Moonshine, Castelli Estate Wines, Feral Brewery Beer and Core Ciders. Surprisingly there was some left.
Estelle Olivera, who launched Eternal Eve on the same weekend, said: “The Startup West Party was filled with passionate, encouraging and courageous individuals. The night refuelled my drive and passion to ensure Eternal Eve is a success for Western Australia”
Laurie Smithdale of Seabreeze.com.au said: “Great event – informal and relaxed, mobs of fresh viewpoints, new ideas, and enthusiasm flowing freely – well worth attending.”
Christophe Baudia, founder of GeoMoby.com commented: “It is impressive to see how fast the Perth startup ecosystem has grown in the last couple of years with startup founders and ideas getting stronger. Startup West found the perfect location for the Perth’s very first startup festival, it was fantastic to network with our fellow entrepreneurs as there is always something new to learn! “
Grant Bissett, CEO of Pin Payments said: “A really fun demonstration of the size and enthusiasm of the local startup scene. “
The event was sponsored by Elance/oDesk and Beacham Group, as well as a range of local community organisations and startups:
- Atomic Sky
- Bam Creative
- Nestspace
- Spacecubed
- eGroup
- LaunchcodePR
- Uber Perth
- Blonde Gorilla
- Fletcher Law
- Tantra technology
- Pin payments
- Freedom wifi
- Morning Startup Perth
- Sixty 27
- Video Cha Cha
- //Startup News
Finally, a huge thanks to the organising team, who worked hard to make it all happen: Shahirah Gardner (who sadly wasn’t there on the actual night but did an amazing job of handling PR and marketing for us), Samantha Bushell, Rob Nathan, Andy Lamb, Simon MacFarlane, Cesilia Faustina Sinur, Ross Currie, myself Marcus Holmes and Patrick Green who first came up with a crazy idea called Startup Ovation.
