Building and selling a product that didn’t have a category - with Michael Kuzma.

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

Live stream
This event will also be live streamed by the amazing folks at Perthvideo.com.au, thanks to the Department of Energy and Economic Diversification.

Access the live stream and all our post-event recordings here:
https://perthvideo.com.au/morning-startup-perth/

Coffee, Food and Sponsors
Tell Joey Zaza's you're heading to Morning Startup on the way in for a free coffee courtesy of Purpose Ventures, and enjoy some of their delicious breakfast treats courtesy of Typeset and IdeaToLife!

Thanks to the awesome team at Beacham Group for covering our meetup fees and keeping this meetup alive 🙏 ❤️