🗞️ This Week’s Line-Up
Why it’s your duty as an Australian to steal from Woolies
Startup Spotlight - Rumi
AI Tools
Podcast Pick - Dr Sam Donegan (again? Who is this guy)
Upcoming events
Hacks, AI sessions, networking, community energy’s peaking.New MLAI Merch
Memes of the Week
👮 Why it’s your duty as an Australian to steal from Woolies
Coles and Woolies have Australia’s groceries market in the (20c recyclable) bag: the ACCC’s 2025 supermarket inquiry pegs Woolworths at ~38% and Coles at ~29% of national grocery sales, a combined grip of about two‑thirds of the market. And they’re a duopoly that reported record profits during a cost-of-living crisis.
That “Everyday Low Price” feeling? Often it’s just high‑low price yo‑yoing: the ABC analysed nearly 44,000 products and found thousands cycle between set prices, so shop on the wrong week and you’ve basically tipped your trolley out for the same goods at the “not‑so‑special” price.
Why are you telling me this?
When only a handful of corporations control an essential market, the everyday person foots the bill. The OECD and Macquarie University found that between 2007 and 2021, rising monopolisation in Australia led to 6,300 fewer employing firms than the economy would otherwise have supported. The Harvard Growth Lab’s Economic Complexity Index ranks Australia 105th, behind Botswana and Pakistan, warning of sluggish ~1% annual growth over the coming decade. In concentrated markets, fewer competitors mean higher prices and slower productivity gains; exactly what the ACCC flagged in its 2025 Supermarkets Inquiry, which found Coles and Woolworths’ dominance “limits meaningful price competition” across the grocery sector. The takeaway: monopolies and duopolies don’t just pad corporate profits; they quietly tax everyone else.
Quit stalling, get to the plan!
Maybe we can startup our way out of this? AI has made the “start something” button much easier to press. These days can design your logo, mock your packaging, cut a product video, and target your first 1,000 customers while you sleep. Here’s some examples of Aussie founders having at it:
Lucy Munato aka Karen founder of Fergusons Treatos, created her own dog treats brand, has so many sales she’s just needed to move to a new warehouse.
Adrian Liu, founder of WiseList. It’s a home‑grown app that lets shoppers compare prices across Coles, Woolworths and even ALDI, turning those “specials” into actual decisions instead of vibes.
Now I hear you dear reader. “Waaaaaaahhhh” you say. “I don’t wanna start a startup”.
Fair call. Startups are gross. And hard work. But this is a golden age for startups where there are opportunities everywhere and there’s still funding because the economy hasn’t crashed out (yet). So when you see somebody else rocking your shower idea on the market, don’t say I didn’t warn you!
It’s time to steal market share from Coles and Woolies! Yes. Market Share… What did you think I meant?
⭐ Startup Highlight of the Week
👉 Check out Rumi here or ⭐️ join the Instagram here:
Want to have your startup featured? 🤷♀️ → Click here
🛠️ New AI Tools You Should Try
Alai — Create high-quality presentations using AI. No templates, no drag-and-drop, just your ideas turned into pitch-ready decks in minutes.
Vibe Coding in Google AI Studio — Go from zero to app in minutes. The redesigned AI Studio interface lets you build full, multi-modal AI apps (video, image, chat) from a single natural language prompt. Includes a slick new Annotation Mode - just point to a part of your app and tell Gemini what to change.
Perplexity Patents — AI-powered patent search baked right into Perplexity. It’s like having a research assistant who actually understands your idea and can tell you if someone’s already filed it. Great for founders doing stealth builds or late-night “wait, did I just invent that?” checks.
🎧 Podcast Picks
From Medicine to Healthtech & Back Again” – Dr Sam Donegan, Founder of SupportSorted
Dr Sam Donegan is a medical doctor turned AI founder and the creator of SupportSorted, one of Australia’s fastest-growing digital health startups.
📅 Upcoming Events
Mini-Challenge: We’ve built a fake social media platform with a bunch of AIs posting and commenting and chatting with each other. Your task is to classify, from the millions of messages, who is who. Which AI persona looks to have body dysmorphia? Which is using incel language? Who’s posting like a LinkedIn Lunatic?
Grand-challenge: Interview the mentors, chat with the eSafety team and researchers from unimelb to understand deeply the issues we’re facing keeping people safe online. Then design and hack together a demo with your team. Pitch your solution to win big prizes!
No tech background? No worries.
No team? No worries.
Never used a computer before? We’ll make it work.
How To Use AI To Hack Your Way To Page #1 Of Google
Want your startup on page one of Google without spending months guessing what to write? Come spend a Saturday with us and learn a fast, practical system that actually works. We’ll give you code for AI agents that learn what you do, and capture spot #1 on Google search while you sleep
This event is EXPENSIVE ($100/ticket) because we’ll actually give you code and agents that we spent months working on. If you’re a struggling founder/student write me an email (sam@mlai.au) with why you need hella discounts and I’ll give a scholarship to a few peeps.
MYMI x MLAI: MedHack Part II
🗓 7th–21st February 2026
Australia’s most chaotic health-tech hackathon is back. Team up with coders, clinicians, and data nerds to solve real medical challenges and push digital health beyond buzzwords.
👉 Early Bird tickets here.
💼 Jobs in Tech (This Week)
Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) – Lyra – Sydney / Hybrid
Lyra is a crew of full-stack builders shipping products for some of the world’s fastest-moving companies, think Paraform, 88Rising, ReadMe (YC), Opencall (YC), Clarion (YC), ProSights (YC), Elsa, and Microsoft.
Backed by heavy-hitter investors like YC, Accel, Felicis, Greylock, Blackbird, and Slow Ventures, Lyra is where elite engineers go to actually build things that matter.
Joining as an FDE (Forward Deployed Engineer) means you’ll start with a technical assessment, move into a paid training sprint, and, if you crush it, transition into a full-time role with serious pay and benefits.
Perks & Work Vibe
• Hybrid setup
• Ex-Canva, ex-Atlassian, ex-MIT, ICPC champions - basically the A-team. (These devs are pretty cracked)
• Collaborative, fast, and impact-driven
Growth & Expectations
• Fast promotions for high performers (you need to be cracked)
• Culture that values quality, reliability, and momentum
👉 CRITICAL: in the ‘Referred by’ section, put sam@mlai.au Apply here
🦘 MLAI Merch
New stickers just dropped. Pick them up at the next MLAI event:
🦘 Memes
