West Tech Fest
Get Tickets
/ About

About the festival.

West Tech Fest is Western Australia’s flagship technology festival — built to put the West’s founders, entrepreneurs and investors on the world stage.

01 / The story

Fifteen years of backing the West.

West Tech Fest began in 2012 with a simple idea — that Western Australia’s founders, entrepreneurs and investors deserved a stage as ambitious as they are. Fifteen years on, it’s the largest technology festival in Australia. The festival exists to connect WA’s ecosystem to the world, and the world to WA: global keynotes alongside breakout local founders, investors meeting their next deal, and a community that shows up for each other all year round. Today West Tech Fest, with support from the Department of Energy and Economic Diversification’s New Industries and Innovation Fund, welcomes visitors from all over WA, Australia and the world, showcasing the very best of Western Australia’s technology and innovation community and highlighting the lessons that can be learned from creating a startup in Western Australia. West Tech Fest was initiated by Curtin University and co-founded by Bill Tai, Larry Lopez, Rohan McDougall, and Paula Taylor.

Giant WTF letters with Noongar artwork in the West Tech Fest venue foyer
02 / Our objectives

What the festival sets out to do.

  • Raising awarenessRaise the public profile and awareness of Western Australia’s technology and innovation capabilities, and support the positioning of Western Australia as an innovation hub.
  • Celebrating WAChampion West Australian startups and their successes.
  • Building capabilityAttract investment for West Australian startups and innovators.
  • Building connectionsFoster effective collaboration within the startup ecosystem between universities, government and industry.
03 / Our principles

The principles behind it.

  • Founders FirstWe are dedicated to spotlighting the achievements of local startups, offering a stage to share their stories and inspire others.
  • Invest in WAWe provide a dynamic environment where innovators and investors come together, enabling future partnerships and investment.
  • Connective HubThe festival acts as a unifying platform, where startups, risk capital, academia, government and corporates collaborate to advance innovation in Perth.
  • Globally InspiredWe provide a platform to explore and engage with innovative ideas from around the world, all in one fantastic location — Perth.
15Years running
5,000+Annual attendees
80+Speakers a year
$MillionsRaised by alumni
04 / The team

The people behind it.

The people who make West Tech Fest happen.

Festival Team
Danelle Cross
Danelle CrossCurtin UniversityFestival Director
Sarah Kahle
Sarah KahleCurtin University Festival Manager
Kali Norman
Kali NormanWest Tech FestHead of Programming
Tamara Cook — West Tech Fest
Tamara CookKnown Associates AustraliaCEO + Events Director
Charlotte Hickman
Charlotte HickmanKnown Associates AustraliaEvent Associate
Festival Founders
Bill Tai — West Tech Fest
Bill TaiWest Tech FestSilicon Valley Venture Capitalist
Larry Lopez
Larry LopezAtherton Ventures ManagementPartner + Chair of Organising Committee
Paula Taylor
Paula Taylor32 Degrees SouthFounder + Co-Chair of Organising Committee
Rohan McDougall
Rohan McDougallCurtin UniversityExecutive Director of Commercialisation
Organising Committee
Alan Bradley
Alan BradleyPollinators IncGeneral Manager/Strategic Lead
Charlie Gunningham — West Tech Fest
Charlie GunninghamMeshpoints & Startup WA Head of Ecosystem Engagement & Chair
Jeremy Chetty — West Tech Fest
Jeremy ChettyStudent EdgeChief Evangelist
Kylie Gerrard — West Tech Fest
Kylie GerrardPurpose VenturesCo-Founder & General Partner
Leslie Delaforce
Leslie DelaforceMinderoo Foundation & StartupWAHead of Indigenous Entrepreneurship & Board Member
Natasha Teakle — West Tech Fest
Natasha TeakleAgriStartManaging Director & Commercialisation Facilitator, Entrepreneurs' Programme
Ophelie Cutier
Ophelie CutierSpacecubedChief Operating Officer
Rob Nathan
Rob NathanAustralian Tenders & Freo Startup FestFounder & Co-Founder
Tim Brewer
Tim BrewerFunctionlyCEO & Co-Founder
Toby Swingler
Toby SwinglerCERIInterim CEO
Raquel Todd
Raquel ToddBlak LineManaging Director
James Edwards
James EdwardsRAC WAGeneral Manager - Strategic Innovation / Chief Executive Officer at BetterLabs
West Tech Next Youth Committee
Aneeqa Mahmood — West Tech Next Youth Committee
Aneeqa MahmoodCurtin UniversityBachelor of Commerce — Finance & International Relations
Read profile
Aneeqa Mahmood — West Tech Next Youth Committee

Aneeqa Mahmood

Curtin UniversityBachelor of Commerce — Finance & International Relations
Focus areas
  • Event Ops & Logistics
  • Partnerships & Community
  • Program Design

Aneeqa led Game-On Girls, a startup tackling the drop-off in girls’ sport participation through high school. She built the concept from ABS data and on-the-ground interviews, brought in partners including UWA, WA Football, Tennis WA, Willetton Basketball Association and the Bachar Houli Foundation, and pitched as a finalist at the Just Start-It Gala.

She works casually with WA Football and The Athlete’s Foot alongside her degree, and is active in multicultural inclusion work across sport and civic life.

Her ambition for WA is an ecosystem that reflects how multicultural Perth actually is, and high school students who build real knowledge of innovation and investment early enough to see themselves as future founders.

Their idea for the festivalYouth Idea Wall + Panel

A youth-run stand with a wall where anyone can write down an idea, big or small, and put it up. No pitch deck, no experience needed. Young people then read the ideas aloud on a panel with industry experts in the room, making connections and pointing them at what happens next — the wall, the mic and the room all handed over.

Colin Ferreira — West Tech Next Youth Committee
Colin FerreiraUniversity of Western AustraliaBachelor of Philosophy (Hons) — Finance & Accounting, Fogarty Scholar
Read profile
Colin Ferreira — West Tech Next Youth Committee

Colin Ferreira

University of Western AustraliaBachelor of Philosophy (Hons) — Finance & Accounting, Fogarty Scholar
Focus areas
  • Partnerships & Community
  • Program Design

Colin moved to Perth from regional WA having spent years building startups and digital projects on his own. The biggest of them is Grade Tracker Pro, an academic analytics platform that began as a spreadsheet to map his own ATAR after one bad maths test, and grew into a product used by students and schools across the state.

He also runs a web agency, Romeo, and a media agency, Fez Video Productions. He was Head Boy at school and an elected Honorary Takeover Captain on the Leeuwin II.

He argues WA is good at building products and less deliberate about building self-aware founders — and wants an ecosystem that normalises ambition and celebrates grit over the myth of natural genius.

Their idea for the festivalThe Great Wall of Innovation

A live wall where anyone pins an A5 card: what they are building, the problem it solves, what they need. Passers-by answer with colour-coded notes — love it, challenge it, or I can help — so the wall becomes a real-time heatmap of what is resonating. The most-backed ideas get pulled off the wall for a one-minute microphone drop.

Eliana Trenerry — West Tech Next Youth Committee
Eliana TrenerryCurtin UniversityBachelor of Science — Space & Planetary Science
Read profile
Eliana Trenerry — West Tech Next Youth Committee

Eliana Trenerry

Curtin UniversityBachelor of Science — Space & Planetary Science
Focus areas
  • Program Design
  • Partnerships & Community

Eliana is a Science Communicator at Scitech and studies Space and Planetary Science at Curtin — a field where innovation, investment and startups decide how far WA’s space industry gets.

At nine she organised “Run For Rett, Gather for Goldie”, a lap-athon for her cousin Goldie, who has Rett Syndrome. She chased sponsorship and prizes herself, ran the day, spoke at it, and raised over $6,000 towards assistive technology. It set off a run of fundraisers in her community.

She wants environmental sustainability much closer to the centre of WA’s innovation ecosystem — with the funding and the visibility to match.

Their idea for the festivalReverse Panel: Youth Set the Agenda

Flip the format. Young people take the panel and put a problem they actually face to the room, and the speakers, founders and investors pitch solutions back to them. It closes in small groups, so the advice runs both ways and the connections outlast the session.

Joanna Dutosme — West Tech Next Youth Committee
Joanna DutosmeCurtin UniversityCommunications & Engagement Coordinator
Read profile
Joanna Dutosme — West Tech Next Youth Committee

Joanna Dutosme

Curtin UniversityCommunications & Engagement Coordinator
Focus areas
  • Marketing & Content
  • Program Design
  • Partnerships & Community

Joanna is a Communications and Engagement Coordinator at Curtin, contributes to Young Investors Circle, and is building her own marketing agency.

She led the communications and engagement strategy end to end for the Global Sustainability Challenge, across Singapore in 2024 and Dubai in 2025 — coordinating students, industry partners and global organisations across time zones while keeping the participant experience coherent.

Her read on WA is that the talent is here and the access is not. She wants an ecosystem open and human enough that people can step in before they have everything figured out.

Their idea for the festivalPass the Mic

An open space where young people take two minutes to share something real — an idea they are working on, a failure they learned from, a moment that changed their direction. No panel, no hierarchy, just people who came to watch turning into people who took part.

Natasha May Hudson — West Tech Next Youth Committee
Natasha May HudsonCurtin UniversityBachelor of Laws / Bachelor of Commerce
Read profile
Natasha May Hudson — West Tech Next Youth Committee

Natasha May Hudson

Curtin UniversityBachelor of Laws / Bachelor of Commerce
Focus areas
  • Program Design
  • Partnerships & Community

Natasha grew up around family businesses and started early — selling slime and craft projects at school while planning an export company with her uncle’s seafood business.

She is an executive member of two Curtin clubs, part of the ENACTUS project, works for the Faculty of Business and Law, and helped deliver Women in Business’s annual Spring Markets, where the club covered stall insurance for two student traders.

Her focus is regional youth: maker spaces, online mentoring and direct lines to Perth mentors, so young innovators outside the city do not have to travel to be taken seriously.

Their idea for the festivalSustainability Light-Up Mural

3D tiles printed from filament made out of single-use plastic diverted from WA landfill. Every young attendee gets a tile to draw on, hands it back, and it goes up on the wall wired to light up in a colour they choose — with a QR code on the back to say what their artwork means. The youth of WA lighting up as one.

Pershant Prem Kumar — West Tech Next Youth Committee
Pershant Prem KumarCurtin UniversityBachelor of Computing — Computer Science
Read profile
Pershant Prem Kumar — West Tech Next Youth Committee

Pershant Prem Kumar

Curtin UniversityBachelor of Computing — Computer Science
Focus areas
  • Program Design
  • Event Ops & Logistics

Pershant is in his final year of Computer Science at Curtin, interning at pre-seed computer vision startup Indrus, and building an AI-powered hospital scheduling platform as a solo founder. It pairs a constraint solver that generates legally compliant fortnightly rosters in seconds with an agent layer managers can talk to in plain language — work that previously took hours by hand.

He is a member of Startmate’s Launch Club, and sits right on the crossover between the student network and the startup world.

He sees two compounding gaps in WA: the visibility gap between having a technical idea and having a funded company, and the builder gap between engineers who spectate and engineers who ship.

Their idea for the festival60-Second Pitch Circle

A circle of chairs in the busiest foyer, a borrowed speaker, and 60 seconds each. Anyone under 25 can sit down and pitch anything — a startup, a side project, or a question they cannot stop thinking about. The audience is whoever walks past, and the hallway conversations afterwards are the point.

Sarah Legg — West Tech Next Youth Committee
Sarah LeggUniversity of Western AustraliaBachelor of Business — Global Business & Business Law
Read profile
Sarah Legg — West Tech Next Youth Committee

Sarah Legg

University of Western AustraliaBachelor of Business — Global Business & Business Law
Focus areas
  • Partnerships & Community
  • Marketing & Content

Sarah spent five years in the media industry and is now moving into tech and marketing through her business degree.

Straight out of high school in 2020 she directed and produced her first feature film — a steep lesson in production management, marketing and morale. It is now on Amazon and took her to an international awards ceremony in Amsterdam. She sits on the WIFT committee.

Her mission is a company that puts AI and people to work together to create jobs rather than cut them, starting with the industry she came from.

Their idea for the festivalChatbot Confessions

Hand the campaign to the crowd. A competition for the best poster for the youth segment, with the winning artwork used as the cover image — or a street-style video asking young people the last thing they asked a chatbot, and recording every silly thing they reveal.

Partners & SponsorsContactFAQsFestival Pass & Tickets