Founder Profile: Robert de Burgh-Day from Brightspace
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“Go and talk to some founders that have built hardware before. No one's going to steal your idea, believe me. You'll save yourself an unbelievable amount of effort and time if you an find someone that's done it before to give you some advice. And they will, because they've been through the pain and don't want you to go through it.”
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Robert de Burgh Day is the founder of Brightspace. He shares his advice for companies looking to expand to the Southeast Asian market, and why founders looking to build a hardware business should speak to those who’ve done it before.
What does Brightspace do?
We build edge AI sensors and software control systems for large commercial buildings. Basically, we go into a building and install our hardware, which allows us to anonymously track all the people in the building, and all the environmental metrics. Then we use that to create a live digital twin, which is primarily focused on saving money from HVAC usage. But we've got clients that use us for lighting, to improve their tenant comfort, or want the occupant data to streamline their operations.
What did you wish you knew before expanding to SEA?
I would have been more targeted with the conversations I was having. You've got limited runway running a start-up. Identifying the highest value conversations would have saved us a reasonable amount of time and money. You go overseas and everything's shiny and everyone wants to talk to you, but you definitely want to identify the fastest path to getting some early product in market.
How you’re perceived is important too. It's all well and good to get your product in somewhere small, but you've got to find something that's blue chip or blue chip adjacent — or something that people respect — and if customers see someone they respect do it, it really opens up the market.
What are the challenges facing hardware start-ups in particular?
The hard thing about being a hardware startup in Australia is nobody likes hardware. If you're in the investment space, it's very difficult to get money. You basically have to sell your product before it's finished, otherwise you're not going to get any money. You've got to balance this timeline of, okay, we know where our feature set is, we’ve done all the testing and maybe we can't manufacture at scale yet, with somehow getting a bunch of orders, when you haven't got the product. Timing them both together is very tricky.
We spent a year doing that. We were basically ready to do mass manufacturing, while trying to get these orders. And the investors are saying, “get the orders and we'll give you the money.” And then they say, “go deploy the product and then we’ll give you the money.” So there's a real chicken and egg problem in hardware in Australia. There's definitely not enough being done about it.
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Flinders University and SA Water are trialling larger, ‘filamentous’ algae as a means of wastewater treatment.
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Programs
Founders Factory x WA Nature Tech Accelerator
Operating from Perth, the Founders Factory and WA Nature Tech Accelerator backs early stage startups (pre-seed to seed) with capital and a four-month program designed to support the development and validation of new environmental technologies.
Launched in partnership with the Western Australian Government, the program offers founders guidance from regional government, and operational support across product development, strategy and operations, commercialisation, data science, partnerships, and fundraising.
San Francisco Landing Pad’s US Export Acceleration Bootcamp
The US Export Acceleration Bootcamp program is free and run entirely online. It helps Aussie founders understand what foundations their business needs to succeed and how to build a Go-To-Market strategy for the US including market validation, TAM, SAM, and SOM, pricing, and establishing the most lucrative channels to market.
Following completion of the online program, participants will be able to progress into additional Landing Pad programming stateside when they are ready to execute their US go-to-market plans.
Applications close 27th July
Events
Jul 17th - 18th (MEL) | Connecting Hydrogen APAC 2025
This conference focuses on key topics such as policy, production, supply chain, infrastructure, regional trade, and the expansive scenarios including Power-to-X, green mobility, green steel, etc.
Jul 24th (WA) | CORE Community Coffee Newman
Join us for a Community Coffee Morning and to launch the Newman Tucker Truck sponsored by Kuwwa Rentals, a shared community resource that will help support Meals on Wheels, local events, and bring people together.
Jul 28th, 1:00PM - 2:00PM (MEL/Online) | Co-Designing Healthier Climate Policies: Toolkit Launch
This event launches the initial suite of resources that comprises a climate and health policy toolkit to support climate policymakers in accounting for health during policy development.
There has been limited research on if and how policymakers consider health when developing climate policy. To address this, we have co-designed a research project with state and local government policymakers, with generous support from VicHealth.
Jul 29th - 30th (SYD) | Australian Clean Energy Summit
Our flagship 2-day annual conference is a must-attend event for anyone working in the Australian clean energy industry, bringing together thought leaders and decision-makers from across industry, government and finance to share the models, trends and technology innovations in driving clean energy.
Jul 30th (ADL) | CORE Connect Adelaide - Big Energy & Mining Ideas, Real Connection
CORE Connect Conversation Series will see a mixture of guest speakers and panel style events tackle some of the big questions facing the energy and mining sector and explore solutions and pathways to create a bigger and more sustainable future for the energy and mining industry.
Aug 4th - 7th (SYD) | Investor Week 2025
Investor Week is a week-long event designed to bring together leading investor communities, startups, and ecosystem players with the goal of supporting startup growth and fundraising, while providing founders the opportunity to learn directly from investors.
Startup&Angels will host a major event each day, featuring a pitch session and panel discussion where founders at various stages can connect with Angel, VC, and Impact Investors. On Thursday, founders will have the chance to compete for a $1M USD prize at the Startup Worldcup.
Aug 5th (ADL) | Growing Futures - Breaking Barriers, Australian Women in Agriculture 2025 National Conference
This flagship event will bring together women from across the agricultural sector to explore leadership, innovation, sustainability, and advocacy.
The conference will feature:
- Inspiring keynote speakers
- Workshops and panel discussions
- Networking opportunities
- Regional Tours
Have an event to share? Submit it to our calendar. You can also get updates for events separately — we’ve created a calendar for climate tech events in ANZ you can find here :)
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