Oscar Morrison

The seventh episode of Notion in Practice just dropped, I’m so proud Tim and Jerwin are giving a voice and platform to builders who are quietly building amazing things and sharing knowledge that matters. This episode feels like a birthday present to me, but if you’re a founder, VC, or anyone writing reports, there’s some really solid wisdom here.

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Had a bad time hiring offshore developers? The problem probably wasn't the talent. Most companies go one of three routes: Freelance platforms - you're drowning in applications, half ghost you after the first week, and you've got no idea if their portfolio is even real. BPOs - they assign you whoever's available, mark up every hour, and the person doing the work changes every few months. Outsourcing firms - you hand off a project, lose all control, and pray it comes back working. When it doesn't, good luck getting anyone on the phone. None of these models are built for you to actually build a team. They're built to bill you. Here's what actually works: Hire the developer directly. They work for you, on your team, in your workflows. One-off placement fee. No ongoing markups. You're in control. https://lnkd.in/eR6yDajF

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Over the years, I’ve seen many founders building strong software products and missing out on the R&D Tax Incentive because they weren’t clear on what actually qualifies. If you’re building software or an app in Australia, you may be eligible for up to 43.5% back. But eligibility comes down to one thing: Did your team resolve genuine technical uncertainty through structured experimentation? In this short video, I explain the basics and on March 17, Jasper Steel (Grant Help) and I will unpack it properly. If you're building this year, it’s worth understanding the difference between routine development and eligible R&D. Registration link is in the comments!

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PSA: Funding for R&D in NZ is still very much alive The Callaghan Innovation announcement earlier this year clearly caused come confusion. I know multiple early stage founders who assumed it meant R&D support had evaporated. We've just completed a successful R&D funding application for Sapiant, and the whole process was smooth and transparent - Thanks David Claridge and the Callaghan Funding Engagement team. If you’re building new tech in NZ (or applying it in a novel way), triple check what support you might quality for. You might be surprised.

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This week at BlueprintLab 🚀 👥 Wrapped up 5 user interviews with fellow startups 🛠️ Finalised our beta launch plan and early pilot structure 📝 Made progress on our NSW MVP Ventures grant application ✨ We’re starting to notice that for early-stage teams, it’s less about having another project management tool and more about having someone (or something) to catch what falls through the cracks and keeps everyone accountable. ❓If your team is 2–50 people, I’d love to hear how you currently keep track of tasks — do you lean more on tools, or on memory? #Startups #BetaLaunch #ProductDevelopment #Collaboration #FutureOfWork

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I thought I might start sharing some simple illustrations that could proactively inoculate you from climate change deniers' and delayers' misleading claims. My first one was going to be 🇦🇺 "Do Australia's Emissions Matter?" 🏭 But as soon as I started doing the research, I found the excellent Hannah Ritchie has already drawn the exact chart I was thinking of! Enjoy it below. And then enjoy her excellent blog post that covers FIVE reasons why small emitters can't just say "Our small % doesn't matter": https://lnkd.in/gkwbpVSu #ClimateChange

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Firmable has raised AUD 13.5 million in Series A funding. Access our comprehensive database of 4,500+ startups in Australia, sign up for a free trial at https://buff.ly/UZQaemT Subscribe to our weekly digest of Australian deals data & more: https://buff.ly/yZhCnTt #Startups #Investors #VentureCapital #Startupfunding #PrivateMarket #PrivateEquity #VC

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As Founder of Last Dices Pty Ltd, I'm proud to announce we're officially building tools that empower developers to ship faster. No more hours lost to boilerplate hell. Our first product, Repo Forge, generates production-ready GitHub repositories in under 2 minutes CI/CD, Docker, linting, beautiful READMEs, all pre-configured. From Cape Town, Western Cape 🇿🇦, Last Dices is here to cut the setup tax and let builders focus on what matters: creating. Stacks live now: React + Vite, Next.js Full-Stack, Node/Express, FastAPI, React Native, AI/ML, Microservices + Docker, Static sites. Free tier (3 repos/month) → https://lnkd.in/drUghG8A Pro ($12/mo unlimited + GitHub push) rolling out. Follow Last Dices Pty Ltd for more dev tools that actually move the needle. What's your biggest setup pain? Drop it below! #CapeTownTech #DeveloperTools #LastDices #RepoForge #SouthAfricaStartups

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Shopify and Australian National University are integrating the Memory Management Toolkit (MMTk) with Ruby. This isn't incremental improvement - it's fundamental research that could transform how Rails applications perform at scale. MMTk provides a modular framework for building sophisticated garbage collection algorithms. Once integrated, Ruby gains access to collectors like Generational Immix and Sticky Immix that dramatically outperform the current Mark and Sweep approach. These algorithms have been proven in other languages but never available to Ruby developers. The technical challenges were substantial. Ruby wasn't designed for copying garbage collectors that move objects in memory. Shopify's team introduced "Potentially Pinning Parents" to identify objects that cannot move, allowing the vast majority of objects to benefit from advanced collection whilst maintaining compatibility. Finalization posed another problem. Traditional malloc-based memory management created bottlenecks during parallel garbage collection. The solution involved allocating buffers for common types (Array, String, MatchData) as Ruby objects themselves, enabling automatic memory management and eliminating finalization overhead for these critical types. Two implementations exist. The MMTk team maintains an advanced fork experimenting with cutting-edge techniques. The upstream Ruby implementation uses the modular GC framework and learns from the research fork whilst maintaining ecosystem compatibility. Knowledge flows in both directions. For Rails developers, this work delivers performance improvements without code changes. Applications handling large datasets or high request volumes benefit from reduced memory overhead and improved allocation patterns. Understanding these garbage collection fundamentals increasingly distinguishes senior developers who can diagnose performance issues from those who cannot. This collaboration demonstrates how investing in fundamental research benefits entire programming ecosystems. The improvements being developed today will eventually reach production Ruby installations worldwide, making every Rails application faster. What memory management challenges have you encountered in production Rails applications? #RubyInternals #ShopifyEngineering #Performance #TechRecruitment

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Strong startup ecosystems are built on strong communities. That’s why we’re backing Aussie Founders Club with a $200,000 grant to deliver 60 founder-led events over the next 3 years, bringing like-minded entrepreneurs together to learn, connect and grow. 🎥 Hear what’s coming up from Founder Megan Luttrell 🤝 and don’t forget to sign up to our newsletter to be the first to know when new events go live. Link in the comments.

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Software engineers are in an identity crisis. They find purpose in building things and now have to transition to managing agents. Annie Vella Distinguished Engineer at Westpac New Zealand, accurately described that in her now viral blog post “The Software Engineering Identity Crisis.” Dozens of engineers have instantly reached out to her, saying that she managed to write down exactly what they’ve been feeling. In this episode of The Hangar DX podcast, Ankit Jain sat with Annie to talk about the shift from software engineers to agent managers, why engineers are so attached to writing code, and what skills will be relevant for engineers in the near future. Here is the full conversation - > https://lnkd.in/d2hPcZ3f

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Top Custom Software Development Companies in Melbourne & Sydney Compared (2026 Guide) Off-the-shelf software can only take your business so far. Australian and UAE enterprises are increasingly choosing a Custom Software Development Company to build scalable, secure, and future-ready digital solutions. In our latest blog, Jaarvis Technologies compares Melbourne and Sydney’s top custom software development companies—covering: ✔ Cost vs value insights ✔ Enterprise vs SME fit ✔ Technology trends shaping 2026 ✔ How to choose the right development partner 👉 Read the full guide and discover which city—and which partner—is right for your business. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gXxFyGAS #softwaredevelopment #softwaredevelopmentcompany #CustomSoftwareDevelopmentCompany #CustomSoftwareDevelopment #SoftwareDevelopmentAustralia #MelbourneTech #SydneyTech #DigitalTransformation #EnterpriseSoftware #UAEBusiness #AustraliaBusiness #JaarvisTechnologies

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Ever made your grant application worse by editing it? After securing approx. €1M in grant projects with AICU, we know the struggle - and we built something to fix it. It started with two founders, a weekend off (aka “too much boredom”), and that familiar frustration: Grant applications are hard. So we (shoutout to Finn Glas from NextStepHR) did what bored, slightly over-caffeinated founders do: We built a tool for everyone who’s ever felt stuck writing grants. Here’s what we learned from our own experience: - Writing a 5-year sales & marketing plan feels impossible if you did not even start the founder journey yet - Excel plots and financial plans for grants can take weeks (or you'd rather do literally anything else) - You can pitch your tech, but writing the "right story" is another skill entirely - You tweak your text but have no clue if you’re making it better or worse — hello, verschlimmbessern 👀 - And what is even innovation (!) Are we even good enough? And if your co-founders don’t speak German? Good luck with proofreading… because every grant so far (except one) had to be in German. I remember ordering 100s of business and marketing books (yes, 100; I got them second hand and from friends) just to figure out how to write our first grant application, cause I had no idea what "words" to use to make sense of my "strategy". -> Spoiler: Ordering insane amount of books and hoping others to give great feedback.. not the way to go. Our fix? A simple, free tool for grant-writing feedback. We put together: - Instant feedback on your grant copy - Example applications & financial plans - Our own learnings from successful applications - Deployed it all in 9 hours, with zero fluff No more waiting for someone to proofread. No more guessing if you hit the right keywords. No more “is this even clear?” moments. Bonus? It helps you clarify your startup strategy along the way. We’re also sharing our knowledge in a growing grant-writing blog - with templates, LOIs, Excel sheets and more. All based on real experience. Want to make your next grant application smoother? 👉 Check the link in the comments. Or: What’s your biggest struggle with grant writing? Let’s make it easier — together. 💬 ----- DM me if you want to contribute, request features, or want to create a blog post to share your experience!

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"For businesses where data sovereignty isn't negotiable, we provide the secure foundation your AI projects need—without compromising on performance or breaking the budget." Now that is an em-dash I can stand behind. I'd love to see more NZ AI/ML businesses building local: limiting the risks, jurisdictional complications and ethical concerns that come with most if not all of the big overseas providers - even before they inevitably start ratcheting their prices up even further. Our data is a taonga, so let's treat it accordingly.

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Two B2B SaaS startups evaluated by the same investor. Jo Wickham, Partner at Icehouse Ventures. One is solving a real, proven problem. - 92 customers. - $18.5k MRR. - Raising $750k. - More traction. More proof. More likely not to die. The other is building something that sounds almost absurd. - 12 enterprise pilots. - $64k MRR. - Raising $4.5M. - Category ambition. Technical risk. Massive upside. If you evaluate venture investment based on “who has achieved more so far,” you will likely back the wrong one. That’s the point of this series. Venture capital is not awarded for progress to date. It’s deployed against asymmetric future outcomes. The safer company can still be a pass. The riskier one can still earn a meeting. Not because it’s better. Because the ceiling is different. Read how Jo breaks both down - from cold inbound email to first meeting verdict. If you’re building in New Zealand and considering venture, understand this difference before you pitch. ⚡ Explore the full VC Teardowns home page: https://lnkd.in/enzFxu34 #NZStartups #VentureCapital #StartupFunding #B2BSaaS #BuildInNZ

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