What does the next generation of Newcastle founders look like?
What does the next generation of Newcastle founders look like? On Tuesday night, three of them told us themselves.
At I2N's Student to Startup, Viv Jayachandran, Claudia Bruinsma and Manav Arora took the stage at I2N Hub Honeysuckle to share the unfiltered reality of building a business whilst navigating the demands of university life.
Viv started Jaegersoft whilst studying and never stopped. Five years on, he leads a software engineering consultancy working across engineering, construction, mining, manufacturing and medical industries Australia-wide - not the typical startup story, and that's exactly the point. He figured out how to sell to industries that had never heard of him, in markets that didn't naturally trust a student with their critical systems. He did it anyway.
Claudia is doing her PhD and founding a company at the same time. Myci turns fermentation by-products into high-performance skincare - guided by the principles of circularity and renewal that run through her research. She is simultaneously a scientist, a founder and a student, and she spoke openly about what it takes to protect the integrity of all three when each one pulls in a different direction.
Manav is building Linzara, a curated, visa-aware hiring platform that connects employers directly with visa holders. The idea came from a gap he experienced personally - the opacity, the anxiety and the lack of clarity that defines job-seeking for so many people in his position. He knew the problem intimately. The work now is turning that knowledge into something other people trust enough to use.
When the questions turned to advice - specifically, what they'd say to a student sitting on an idea who thinks they're not ready - the answers were consistent in a way that felt earned rather than rehearsed.
- Start before you're ready. Readiness is something you develop by doing, not by waiting.
- Use the university around you - the networks, the mentors, the permission to experiment - because most people would pay for that kind of environment and you already have it.
- Put yourself out there and get comfortable being wrong. Every founder on that stage had been told no. The ones who kept going stopped taking it personally and started treating it as information.
Top takeaways
- The best time to start is while you still have the curiosity, the courage and the community around you to catch you if you fall
- Being a student is an advantage - not something to overcome
- Resourcefulness is a skill you build by being forced to use it
- The gap between idea and action is smaller than you think - and scarier than it needs to be
- The people who back you early matter as much as the idea itself
Student to Startup is part of I2N's 2026 event series honouring a decade of supporting founders and innovation across the Hunter and Central Coast regions.
If you're a student thinking about getting involved in entrepreneurship, you're not too early. You're exactly on time.
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