✈️ AFC takes Sydney: An Evening With the Founders Who’ve Actually Lived It
Sydney, we’re coming to you.
We run founder panels and events across Melbourne constantly, and every time, someone from Sydney asks when we’re bringing it north. We’ve put it off long enough. This is AFC’s first Sydney gathering, and it won’t be the last.
Every founder on this stage will tell you about a call they almost got wrong - the hire they shouldn’t have made, the month they nearly ran out of cash, the pivot they fought for too long. No pitch decks, no polished founder-story voiceover. Just what actually happened and what they’d do differently.
Why this is worth coming to
I’ll be hosting this one with a glass of wine in hand, not a clicker and a lanyard. That’s deliberate - the second a panel feels like a stage show, founders stop telling you what actually happened and start telling you what sounds good. Keep it loose, keep it honest, and you get the real version: the call that nearly sank the company, not the one that made the pitch deck. Sydney’s never had this format live before. Thursday 29 October is the first time.
Key event details
Date: Thursday 29 October
Time: 5:30pm onwards (finish time to follow)
Location: Stone & Chalk, Sydney
Food and drinks: Drinks and nibbles on us!
Who should attend
Founders and startup people building real companies, pre-seed through to scaling. If you’re in Sydney and you’ve been asking us to come, this is it.
The panel
Anish Sinha, Co-founder & COO, Upcover
Anish co-founded Upcover, the region’s only AI-native insurance broker, working with 80+ local and global insurers to get market-leading coverage to businesses of every size. Since launching in 2021, Upcover has raised over $20M and helped more than 70,000 businesses. Before Upcover, Anish was an early hire at a Sequoia Capital-backed company in India that scaled to 10M users before a ~$100M exit, and started his career at Goldman Sachs.
Brittany Fox, Founder & CEO, Nevam
Brittany is the founder and CEO of Nevam, building technology that links customer insight directly to operational action. She won the Innovator Award at the 2026 Women Leading Tech Awards, and has built her career - and the company - in a male-dominated industry while raising two young children.
Dan Anisse, Co-founder & CEO, Relume
Dan is the co-founder and CEO of Relume, a Sydney-based AI-powered website builder that has served more than one million users worldwide, all while staying bootstrapped with a lean team of around 25 people. Outside Relume, Dan is a proud father of two and a die-hard Parramatta Eels fan.
What you’ll learn
Nothing you’ll find on their LinkedIn. This is the version they tell their co-founder at 1am, not the version they tell a journalist.
Thanks to Our Sponsors
💳 Proud Supporter: Stripe
Big thanks to Stripe for backing AFC as we bring the community to Sydney. Stripe builds the payments infrastructure behind some of the best startups in the country, and they back founders building real companies - which is exactly who this room is for.
🤝 Venue Partner: Stone & Chalk
Rapt to be hosted by Stone & Chalk for AFC's first Sydney event. They're one of the country's biggest homes for ambitious tech companies, built to back founders from first product through to scale - exactly the energy we wanted in the room for this one.
RSVP
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