Morning Startup - Perth

The talk
The startup world celebrates hard work, long hours and relentless ambition. But what if the way you're working is actually limiting your business's ability to grow? What if the very habits we associate with success are creating barriers that prevent our businesses from scaling?

A self-described square peg in a round hole, Flic Manning has spent years working within an ecosystem she loves, but one she believes needs to rethink how it operates to achieve real returns on the time, energy and resources invested. Drawing on experiences across Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship and building businesses while living with chronic illness and disability, Flic shares how being forced to work differently shaped her approach to business, productivity and growth. It's a perspective that challenges the idea that success demands constant personal sacrifice and asks whether the systems we've built are actually designed to support the people and ambitions behind them.

In this thought-provoking and practical session, attendees will explore why scaling a business starts with changing how we work, not simply doing more. Through real-world experiences and three practical shifts in thinking, they'll discover opportunities to rethink familiar habits, reduce unnecessary pressure and build systems that support sustainable growth. Whether building solo or leading a team, attendees will leave with a fresh perspective on how to build a business that can scale without requiring themselves or the people around them to break in the process.

Our speaker, Flic Manning
Flic Manning is a Perth-based entrepreneur, speaker, author, and disability advocate focused on sustainable leadership, human-centred systems, and the future of working and startup ecosystems.
Drawing on her lived experience with chronic illness and disability as well as her hands-on experience in Silicon Valley with leaders like Gary Vaynerchuk and Jason Calacanis. Flic has built businesses, coached founders, and worked across industries as diverse as wellbeing, Agrifood and Internet of Things (iOT) to name a few. Her work challenges grind culture and explores how better systems create more sustainable success for individuals, teams, and organisations.

She is a serial entrepreneur, coach, mentor, the author of Living Human, and an award-winning radio broadcaster whose work has been featured across podcasts, radio, media, print media and advocacy platforms. She is an ambassador for organisations including Crohn’s & Colitis Australia and the Mental Health Foundation of Australia, and serves as an advisor to multiple startups across the nation.

Agenda:

• 7:30 am: Shameless plugs and announcements. Introduce yourself or announce your startup to the Perth startup community!
• 7:45 am: Talk Built to Scale, Not to Break with Flic Manning
• 8:30 am: Networking & delicious breakfast treats
• 9:00 am: Finish

The Session:
As a founder, it can be hard to know where to spend your limited, hard-earned capital—especially when every networking event and online forum seems full of people selling services your startup apparently cannot survive without.

So, what should you do yourself, what should you outsource, and when is it time to call an expert? More importantly: if you only have $1 to spend, which service gets it—and which ones can wait?

Erin Clark will explain how she prioritises services at different stages of a business, including how she weighs up risk, growth, capability and cost. She’ll unpack how to choose the right type of organisation, engage them on the right terms and manage them well—without wasting your precious startup dollars.

A rapid-fire reverse pitch will give selected service providers three minutes each to explain:

• Who they help and what problem they solve
• When a founder should engage them—and when they shouldn’t
• Where their service should sit in a founder’s spending priorities
• How founders can work with them
• How their engagement and payment model works

Expect practical guidance, honest answers and no snake oil in sight.

About your host, Erin Clark
Erin Clark is a founder and entrepreneur who has built and continues to run businesses across consulting, travel technology, tourism, and property management, including Stories Unseen, Mather Farm, and TEC Consulting.

She has bootstrapped ideas, secured government grants and run businesses through startup and scale-up. Because she runs several businesses at once, outsourcing isn’t optional—it’s a big part of how she gets things done.

Erin has engaged everyone from freelancers and fractional specialists to agencies, advisers and major consulting firms. Some have been brilliant; others have become expensive lessons. Along the way, she has learned what founders should keep close, what they can confidently hand over and how to distinguish genuinely useful expertise from polished bullshit.

Erin is also Managing Director of TEC Consulting, an anti-consulting consultancy that works exclusively with corporate clients—not startups. So, to be clear: this session is founder-to-founder, not a disguised sales pitch.

Want to reverse pitch?
Do you provide a genuinely useful service to early-stage founders?
We’re looking for WA-based businesses with a proven track record of supporting startups to take part in our rapid-fire reverse pitch.
You’ll have three minutes to tell founders:

• Who your service is for
• What problem you solve
• When they should—and shouldn’t—engage you
• Where you fit when a founder has competing priorities and limited cash
• How they can work with you and how you charge

This is not a traditional sales pitch. We’re looking for practical, transparent information that helps founders make better decisions—no scare tactics, vague promises or snake oil.

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!

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!