r/AustralianStartups

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.

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.

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

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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.

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!

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

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.

Hi everyone,

I run a software development agency in Australia. We have a solid delivery team, and until now, most of our focus has been on delivering projects and managing operations.

The business has grown mainly through referrals and word of mouth. However, business development hasn’t been our strength, and we don’t have a consistent sales or lead-generation process.

I feel like we’re ready to move to the next stage, but I’m honestly unsure what the right next step is.

Would hiring an experienced BDM help, or would it be better to first work with a paid mentor who has actually scaled a software agency or B2B technology business? I’m also wondering whether I should continue handling sales myself, with guidance from the right person.

Has anyone here been in a similar position? What worked for you? If you know a suitable mentor or adviser, I’d really appreciate a recommendation.

Cheers!

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.

I'm curious how much everyone spent on their startup before generating any revenue (or how much you've spent so far if you're still pre-revenue).

I've recently started working on a startup and have already spent a few hundred dollars on market research, a domain name, and a website. Is that normal?

I come from a technical background, so I can build most of the product myself and won't have significant development costs. However, I expect I'll need to spend more later on for things like design, branding, and marketing.

I'd love to hear about other founders' experiences. Were you able to get your startup off the ground with minimal investment, or did you need to spend a meaningful amount before seeing any revenue? What were your biggest early expenses?

Edit: grammar

TLDR: love letter to founder life in Australia. It sucks balls, but it's worth it. I love this life. I love this country. Founder, life here sucks balls, but I choose it every day of the week and every life in every lifetime.

NOTE: This isn't AI-generated. I just turned on wispr flow and had a crack. This is written by someone who trained legs as the sun rose, just finished running a half marathon as the sun set and sank piss with the boys after, ten beers in after steak night at the local hotel.

---

Being a founder is hard anywhere. You can carry uncertainty in your body, and you absolutely do. Payroll becomes personal. Problems do not politely wait until Monday morning. There's always something breaking, something late, something expensive that pops up right before Saturday rolls around. Something you shouldn't have seen earlier pops up, especially when you think things are going well.

Being a founder in Australia has a little bit of spice. We talk a big game about "giving it a fair go", but we are weirdly suspicious of people who take big swings. Ambition gets treated like arrogance. Profit gets treated like something dirty. If you lose, people think you're reckless. If you win, people wonder who you exploited.

The government? Look, I'm not anti-tax or anything like that, and I think the support systems in Australia are leaps and bounds better than the majority of places around the world. I want the country to work to be productive as hard as I do because we are the lucky country. We've been so lucky that we've made it as far as we have with how we go about living life.

Too often, it feels like the system is built to extract as much as possible from the pie instead of helping people grow the pie:

• More compliance
• More reporting
• More friction
• More tax
• More people taking a slice before the thing has even had a chance to stand up properly

Even if you mix sourdough well, once it's in the oven, you're going to have to let it rise. If you take it out before it's ready, you're left with a sad, sad, sad piece of goop. How am I going to put my butter and Vegemite on it? Or butter with sprinkles for my missus?

Founder life sucks balls.

Founder life in Australia can feel like building with one hand while using the other to constantly justify why you're allowed to want more. Still, I would choose this over any other profession any day of the week, any day of the year, and in every single lifetime.

No job has ever made me feel as alive as building a company. Nothing compares to the feeling of taking an idea that only existed in my head and turning it into something using my hard work. Nothing compares to the first customer who pays, the first hire who believes, or the first problem that finally breaks after months of carrying it around in your skull, in your noggin, in your dome.

There's nothing more fulfilling than imagining something or dreaming of something once upon a time and just conjuring it up from nothing to something. Nothing compares to the feeling of taking an idea that only existed in your head and forcing it into this world. Nothing compares to:

• the first customer who pays
• the first hire who believes
• the first piece of feedback that tells you you've changed their life
• the first problem that finally breaks after months of carrying it around in your skull

There's a kind of fulfilment in this life that's hard to explain to people who have not felt it. I have friends who, like me, at the time before I went all in, worked on things on the side: side projects, hustles.

Since going all in, it's quite hard to find people who just get it, who understand what it's like: the highs and lows, the absolute ecstasy of having a win, and the devastation of a loss, especially when it affects your missus or the people you're serving. Not many people get it, but the thing is, it's not exactly happiness.

A lot of the time, it's stress, doubt, exhaustion, and wondering whether or not you're actually insane, especially when you explain to your parents why you've decided to not get paid for a while, sacrificing stability for upside.

Underneath all of this, there's meaning, though.

You're in the arena, you're in the Colosseum, you're in the G. You're betting on yourself, you're building something that would not exist if you didn't decide that it should exist. That's the addictive thing, and that's the most addictive thing in the deepest possible way.

a safe job can give you:

• comfort
• money
• status
• weekends
• holidays
• time off
• time with your family and children, if you're lucky
• probably a cleaner nervous system with much fewer mental health issues
• much more expendable income
• more stability over your lifetime
• likely more respect from the in-laws

I understand why people chase it. For most people, it's a life they've lived once upon a time. For most founders, it's a life most of us have lived and sacrificed for the pursuit of this path

But for me, safety is too small a prize. Few are privileged enough to take big swings. By virtue of being born into a country where the government takes care of you, the minimum wage is high, and you can dine in the same restaurants as billionaires while working as a barista. I think it's our prerogative to take big swings. Safety is too small a prize

I'd rather chase something great than get punched in the face by reality. I'd rather have the pressure, the chaos, the sleepless nights, the stress, the impossible days, problems and issues, and the rare moments where it all works

Founder life is brutal. Founder life in Australia is even harder. Even in a state or a country where the government ensures that the pie doesn't grow, I will make sure it does, and I will force it to do so in my own way. Even by the smallest margin, I will make sure that the sourdough rises, at least for those who follow in my footsteps and stewardship as they work in this company

Founder, life sucks balls, but I would still choose it in every lifetime

Quick context so you know I'm not another idea guy:

I've generated 15M+ views on my own content and worked with creator teams that have done 2B+ views across multiple brands and accounts. Distribution is the part most startups die on, and it's the part I've actually done at scale. I'm also willing to be the face of the brand and do unconventional things to get this out

An AI content engine for brands and creators. It reverse-engineers what's already going viral in your niche, extracts the style from real footage, and spins out on-brand clip variants in volume. Brands don't have a content problem

**Where it's at**

- Front end and landing page are already built

- Early traction

- Seed money in the bank, so there's runway for ads etc

**Who I'm looking for**

- strong full engineer stack engineer

- Has shipped a real product before, not just side projects that never left localhost, I want to see something people actually used

- Comfortable moving fast and shipping rough, then fixing

- Sydney (Australia) preferred so we can work in person, but I'll make it work for the right person remotely

- Someone in a life stage where you can go all-in for the next 18 months

Compensation

- Equal equity split until we raise funds (then salary draw down)

At the moment there is few competitors but I have confident I can make the product slightly different and beat them in distribution.