Startup Festival 2026 Wrap-Up

On Wednesday 23 September, Oak Lawn at UWA was full of students, founders and Perth startups for the first Startup Festival. Over 150 people came through across the afternoon, and the energy stayed high from the opening panel to the closing keynote.

The idea behind the day was simple. Students are often told there's one way to start a career, and we wanted to put them in front of the people who've taken a different route, as well as the startups that are hiring right now.

Beyond Traditional Grad Roles

The afternoon opened with a panel of four Perth founders who have built companies across fintech, healthtech, media and manufacturing:

• Dan Jovevski, Founder and CEO of WeMoney

• Oliver Bazzani, Director of Biodesign Australia and Perth Biodesign

• Nathan Wipane, Co-Founder of Shiine Media and a current UWA student

• Tasveer Mann, Co-Founder of Iron Flow Solutions, which is building the workforce and operations platform Rogr, and part of our 2026 VentureUp cohort

Between them, the panel covered very different paths into founding a company, which gave students a realistic picture of what building a career outside a traditional graduate program can look like.

Startup Alley

From 2 to 4PM, UWA student founders set up stalls to show what they're building, and some were selling their products on the day. The stalls drew great exposure and strong sales, and gave visitors the chance to talk directly to the people behind each product.

It was a good answer to the idea that students can't build startups.

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Startup Careers Fair

From 3 to 5PM, six Perth startups pitched their businesses, their culture and their open roles directly to students:

• Cynthio (FinTech)

• RecruitMate AI (Technology)

• Coursebox (Technology)

• Ratna Flora (Sustainability)

• Omni Biotech (Health/MedTech)

• Purelyte (Retail/E-commerce)

The roles on offer ranged across software engineering, data science, health algorithm engineering, marketing and content, social media, business development and sales. The businesses were able to speak with a large number of students over the two hours, and students could apply for open roles on the day.

Keynote with Michael Malone

The festival closed with a keynote and Q&A from iiNet founder Michael Malone, on the question many students are asking: what do I do next, both while studying and after graduation? Hearing from someone who built one of Australia's biggest internet companies, starting from a garage, was a fitting end to the day.

Drone Games, DJs and Good Food

Alongside the program, the lawn had drone games and VR experiences from Squadrone, live music from the EMAS UWA DJs, and free food and drinks. Plenty of students stayed on between sessions to catch up with the founders and startups.

Thank You

Thank you to our festival partners, the UWA Student Guild, Enactus UWA, Bloom and EMAS UWA, to Squadrone for the drone games, and to our panellists, keynote speaker, startups and student founders for giving their time and energy. And thank you to everyone who came along and got involved.

What's Next

Startup Festival was an exciting first run, and it showed how much interest there is in connecting students with the startup community. We'll be building on it.

If you want to keep the momentum going, you can see what's coming up on the Venture UWA events page, and follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn. If you're working on an idea of your own, our VentureUp incubator and free EIR consultations are open to UWA students.