West Tech Fest Main + Freo Startup Fest 2025: Venture UWA Wrap

Two big days, one clear theme: WA’s innovation community is building — and students are in the mix. The Venture UWA team was out in force at West Tech Fest Main and Freo Startup Fest, catching sharp talks from industry leaders, connecting with founders and operators, and cheering on our own incubator teams as they took the stage.

Founder teams first

Our incubator teams had a standout week. SavvyWise — an AI assistant helping accountants speed up tax research and produce client-ready notes — pitched live on the West Tech Main stage. Catalyst (the students behind Campus Crush) pitched for the Golden Ticket at Freo Startup Fest, and even managed to test their solution during WTF, turning event conversations into real-time learning. We’re proud to back them, and it was brilliant to have the Venture UWA committee and interns in the room to support.

Highlights from West Tech Main

Design for Human — Leadership for a Changing World (Dom Price)

A reminder that technology scales, but people lead. Dom Price’s message landed: in a workplace reshaped by AI and new tools, empathy, curiosity and authenticity aren’t soft skills — they’re leadership essentials. The takeaway was simple: build resilient teams by designing for humans, not just systems.

Building, Backing & Believing in WA

Rohan Workman, Trent Bagnall, Kylie Gerrard, Stephanie Morris, Pia Turcinov AMA frank look at what it takes to found and fund in WA. The signal was clear: belief + local capital + founder pipelines = momentum. It was encouraging to see funds and operators doubling down on WA talent, and to hear practical pathways for getting from first cheque to sustainable growth.

Quantum & AI Converge: From Sci-Fi to Scalable Reality (Petra Andrén)

Where frontier tech meets the product roadmap. Petra Andrén mapped how quantum and AI are moving from research hype to buildable, scalable use-cases. The message: watch for convergence moments — the points where two maturing technologies unlock new categories of value.

The AI Equation — Innovation, Investment & Integrity

Rayn Ong, Amanda Terry, Kevin Brown, Akshat Agarwal, Susannah Soon.

A timely conversation about the grey areas of scaling AI: data sovereignty, ethics, governance, and speed vs safety. The through-line: progress with guardrails. If you’re building or backing AI, design for trust from day one — build AI you can defend.

Young Entrepreneurs Showcase

One of our favourite threads of the day. A strong showing from student and youth founders with early products and real customer problems. New voices, new markets — pipelines start here.

Freo Startup Fest — energy, discovery, next steps

Freo brought the usual buzz: founders swapping stories, new tech on show across sectors, and plenty of “that’s clever” demos. Catalyst pitched for the Golden Ticket and kept iterating off the back of conversations they’d started at WTF — the kind of talk → test → iterate loop we want students to experience early and often. It’s also where we met new collaborators for 2026 programs, exactly why these events matter for Venture UWA’s community.

Why it matters

Students aren’t just watching — they’re on stage and working alongside industry. Events like these create fast feedback loops where ideas are talked through, tested and iterated quickly, and the WA ecosystem keeps opening doors to first customers, partners and hires.

Thank you

Huge thanks to the organisers, speakers and everyone we met across the week. And to our founders, mentors, committee and interns — thanks for doing the work between the moments. If we connected at either event and want to take an idea further, reach out to the Venture UWA team.