Envited allows you to easily host and share events with your friends, family and colleagues across any social media. Imagine if Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Messenger, Twitter, Discord or Group Chats had events.
Q1: What did you do before starting Envited?
Mihailo: I was at UWA finishing my Bachelor of Commerce degree.
Jordan: I was a student at UWA studying economics and data science.
Q2: How did Envited get started?
I (Mihailo) came up with the idea after chatting to a few first year students at orientation day at UWA last year (2021). They asked me how they could follow uni events and I told them on Facebook, but they said they didn’t have Facebook and only had Instagram and Snapchat. I asked them how they hosted & got invited to events and they said they didn’t really have a way other than group chats. It made me realise there was no alternative to Facebook events for people who didn’t use Facebook. This idea kept festering in my mind for a few weeks, and I told my girlfriend, Anica, about it and she suggested I meet up with her friend Jordan because he was technical and could code it. Jordan and I went for a burger & beer at Varisty Bar - next to UWA - we hit it off, and that night envited was born!
Q3: What’s been the most challenging thing about starting a startup in Western Australia?
Mihailo: It’s very difficult to get funding in WA, especially as a very early stage company. WA Government grants are nowhere nearly as founder-friendly as the one’s in NSW and VIC, none of the big Australian VC funds have offices here, and WA investors tend to have a bias towards investing in mining and property as that’s what we’re known for, so as a non-mining, non-property tech company the conservative nature of WA’s startup funding ecosystem meant that we had to raise money from a Sydney-based VC fund. I would love to see this change in years to come with investors being more risk-tolerant, diversifying their portfolio companies, and offering to match higher valuations that companies who raise on the East Coast tend to get.
Jordan: I found the scale of the start-up community in WA to be quite small. We have met some amazing people from the start-up community here in Perth, that have helped us immensely along the way. However, I found that with the community being so much larger over east the opportunity to meet and interact with people who work in or are passionate about start-ups is so much higher. In saying that, I have noticed a huge increase in the number of people who are interested in the start-up world since we started this journey around a year ago. I look forward to seeing how this community in Perth grows and develops and what the next generation of WA entrepreneurs do to shape the world.
Q4: What piece of advice do you give aspiring entrepreneurs in Western Australia?
Mihailo: Australia’s most successful tech startup, Canva, started at a home in Duncraig. Goes to show you WA is a pretty great place to start. The hardest thing, however, is starting. Most people will have a billion dollar idea in their lifetime. Less than 1% will ever actually turn that idea into reality. Be that 1%.
Jordan: I would say just go for it. No matter what people think or how little resources you have, you will never have a successful company until you start one. The hardest part is starting, you’ll figure the rest out as you go.
👉 Support your local startup by creating your next event with Envited 🎉