A program built around testing ideas in the real world
Fastrack is Monash University’s two-semester entrepreneurship program. In 2026, 24 students were selected from more than 1,000 applicants across Monash. We worked through customer discovery, problem definition, pretotyping, prototyping, pitching and go-to-market planning, with workshops covering areas such as AI prototyping, branding, IP and startup legal fundamentals.
For me, the biggest shift was learning not to protect the first idea. Each round of research, testing and feedback gave us a reason either to keep going or to change course. That process led our team through two very different ventures.
The program gave us a way to test, not just a place to pitch.
Across the year we moved from customer discovery and problem definition into pretotyping, prototyping and go-to-market work. The workshops added practical tools around AI prototyping, branding, IP, founders’ agreements, startup legal basics and metrics.
The part I used most was the testing rhythm: identify the riskiest assumption, put something in front of real people, collect evidence, then decide what changes. Meowra and Makhana are two different outcomes of that same process.
My focus: customer discovery, interview data, community research, council outreach and stakeholder follow-up.
Meowra started as a pet tracker. My work was concentrated on customer discovery and validation. Across Fastrack, I helped collect and organise 300+ customer and stakeholder research interactions through face-to-face conversations, online communities and social platforms. For Meowra, that meant speaking with pet owners, reviewing recurring feedback and following up with stakeholders to understand where the strongest need actually sat.
We then widened the research beyond individual users. I contacted all 79 Victorian councils, received 32 useful responses and helped take the conversation further with a formal needs-exploration meeting with the City of Casey.
By that point, the research had given us enough evidence to question our starting assumptions. Rather than force the original idea forward, we closed this chapter and moved on to a different problem.
My focus: sales and distribution.
With Makhana, my role moved closer to the commercial side. I focused on sales and distribution: potential retail channels, distributor options, retailer requirements and the preparation needed before approaching the market.
That work depended on decisions elsewhere in the business, so I also looked into sourcing and production options, importing from India versus producing locally in Australia, food-safety requirements, packaging compliance and product testing. Together, these factors shaped what we could realistically offer a retailer or distributor.
The project brought those questions together into a clearer route-to-market picture: what the product would need, which channels could fit, and what had to be resolved before commercial launch.
