Morning Startup - Perth

In July 2025, SavvyWise was just an idea. By September, the team had launched an MVP. By October, they had their first paying customer.

The months that followed brought a rapid series of milestones: winning the Venture UWA incubator, passing $100k in sales, completing several capital raises, and seeing the company’s valuation grow across each round.

But behind those headline numbers is the more useful story: how the idea came together, how the team found early customers, what they learned from investors, and how they managed the pressure of building while fundraising.

In this session, Drew Pflaum, co-founder and CEO of SavvyWise, will share a candid founder journey from idea to early traction, including the lessons, mistakes, trade-offs, and decisions that shaped the company’s first six months.

About Drew:
Drew Pflaum, CPA, is the co-founder and CEO of SavvyWise. Before starting SavvyWise, Drew was a Director at Perth-based accounting firm Munro’s, and brings a background in accounting, advisory, and business strategy to his work as a startup founder, combining commercial experience with the hands-on realities of building a new company from scratch.

Agenda:

• 7:30 am: Shameless plugs and announcements. Introduce yourself or announce your startup to the Perth startup community!
• 7:45 am: Real-time fundraising adventures with Drew Plfaum from SavvyWise
• 8:30 am: Networking & delicious breakfast treats
• 9:00 am: Finish

Calling all startup founders!

On the first Wednesday of each month, let's get together for a tasty beverage or two, celebrate and/or commiserate the month that was, and share plans and ideas for the month yet to be!

You might even meet your future Co-founder, Engineering Lead, or Senior Vice President of Vibes & Alignment.

As Elon Musk could have once said, "All my success is due to drinking with other startup founders as often as possible".

This is a very casual, monthly, after-work event, in addition to our fortnightly Morning Startup meetups at Spacecubed. So if you're not a morning person, this is for you!

There will be no speakers or formalities. Just a bunch of startups, in a pub, having fun, and learning from each other.

Pizza will be provided courtesy of our amazing Morning Startup sponsors (see below), but make sure you save up ahead of time to cover the cost of your own exotic cocktails and Perth-priced-drinks.

To find us, ask the bar staff for the Founder Sundowner table and they'll point you in the right direction.

Look forward to seeing you there!

Get around our amazing sponsors!

Michael Kuzma spent more than seven years building robotic self-playing guitars before figuring out if anyone would actually want one.

In this session, Michael will share the practical lessons learned while creating and selling a product that sits somewhere between robotics, music, engineering and art. Working largely solo from Perth, he went from having no clear market, to viral attention, to thousands of low-quality enquiries, and eventually to a small number of highly qualified buyers around the world.

The journey forced him to rethink pricing, marketing, storytelling, and what a sustainable business actually looks like when your product does not fit neatly into an existing category.

Michael will unpack how he turned polarising online attention into global exposure, redesigned his sales process to filter serious buyers from curious onlookers, and learned to position a strange, high-end hardware/art product for international customers willing to pay for it.

Attendees will leave with practical insights on positioning unconventional products, attracting the right customers, turning attention into demand, and building a business that supports the life they actually want to live.

You will also hear one of Michael’s self-playing guitars perform a song no human can physically play, with a short live demo during the session!

About Michael
Based in Perth since 2021, Michael Kuzma is an embedded systems engineer, inventor and musician behind Kuzma Self-Playing Guitars.

Michael began the project in 2017 as a way to combine his love of guitar with a desire to learn electrical engineering. After seven years of development, he delivered his first robotic guitar, Artist 01, in 2024 and has since continued creating and hand-delivering these custom artworks around the world.

Outside of engineering and music, Michael enjoys travel, videography and Spikeball.

Agenda:

• 7:30 am: Shameless plugs and announcements. Introduce yourself or announce your startup to the Perth startup community!
• 7:45 am: Building and selling a product that didn’t have a category - with Michael Kuzma.
• 8:30 am: Networking & delicious breakfast treats
• 9:00 am: Finish

Morning Startup is a fortnightly meetup for WA startups, founders and entrepreneurs to help inspire and support entrepreneurship in WA. We're run by founders, for founders and our meetups are 100% free! Come along and connect with the WA startup community!

The details of this specific meetup are yet to be confirmed, but rest assured, if you're a WA startup, you'll walk away with new knowledge, connections, and start the day inspired!

Agenda:

• 7:30 am: Shameless plugs and announcements. Introduce yourself or announce your startup to the Perth startup community!
• 7:45 am: An awesome startup related talk, panel or pitch practice session!
• 8:30 am: Networking & delicious breakfast treats
• 9:00 am: Finish