About Us

This is the home of FinTech Melbourne.

We’re here to help build the Melbourne FinTech community by fostering connections between industry and startups. We believe that a strong community is key to helping foster a vibrant ecosystem of FinTech companies.

FinTech Melbourne is here to help startups and corporates alike to innovate in the space. We do this by organising events and initiatives that focus on building awareness about FinTech. 

We run meet ups monthly. At our meetups we’re joined by industry leaders to talk about trends, issues and opportunities in the FinTech space. If you’d like to join us simple visit our meetup page HERE. 

We also organise special one off events with corporates to help better foster connectivity between startups and corporates.

FinTech Melbourne is led by:

Andrew Lai

Andrew is the founder of FinancialAsk, a FinTech startup making financial advice easy to get via apps and the web.

Previously an Analytics Manager at the NAB, Andrew has worked in the financial services sector for 8+ years working on a diverse range of products from home loans to variable annuities.  With a great passion for financial services and startups, it was natural for Andrew to start his own FinTech company and subsequently found FinTech Melbourne to help support the community.

Alan Tsen

Alan is the founder and principal advisor of Coindoctrine Consulting (www.coindoctrine.com).

He is a former tax advisor who worked in the tax and legal practice of a big four accounting firm in Melbourne, Australia for a number of years. Alan specialised in international tax and transaction services. During his time as an advisor he worked on a number of high profile cross-border reorganisations, structured financing deals, mergers and acquisitions.

Alan regularly speaks at events on Bitcoin regulation and the application of Blockchain technology. He also regularly contributes articles to leading online publications on Bitcoin. More generally, Alan’s view on Bitcoin and how it could impact business is regularly sought by start-ups and those in professional services.

He is a co-organiser of the Bitcoin Melbourne and FinTech Melbourne meet up groups. Alan is also the editor of the The Week In Bitcoin (www.theweekinbitcoin.com) – a weekly curated newsletter on Bitcoin.

Alan has a double degree in law and economics both with honours. He also has a Masters of Commerce (Economics) degree from the University of Melbourne and is admitted to practice law in the state of Victoria

Sahand Bagheri

Sahand Bagheri is Business Liaison Officer at York Butter Factory, a technology co-working and incubation space for Melbourne’s early-stage high potential startups. An extension of Adventure Capital Venture Management, an early stage technology venture fund, the York Butter Factory is Australia’s leading startup ecosystem with over 60+ members innovating and building their startup ideas and businesses.

As Business Liaison Officer, Sahand directs and coordinates the York Butter Factory’s Innovation Consulting, Desk Licensing and Support Advisory business engagements with the likes of IBM, Ernst & Young, ANZ, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, Dropbox and etc.

He is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and is also co-directing an Accelerator Program alongside the New Zealand Trade & Enterprise. In addition to this, he is also actively coordinating Startup Weekend events in Melbourne, successfully executing over 5 hackathons. Furthermore, Sahand has also ran startup and technology related presentations and lectures for university classes and official delegations from Israel, China, Sweden, Norway and Singapore.

Derric Wong

Derric is a strategy and management consultant and an experienced startup operator.

He previously worked at Elixirr Partners, a boutique consulting firm with an investment/capital arm that invested in high growth companies and startups. The firm specialised in banking and financial services and operated out of London and San Francisco. Derric worked at the heart of London’s FinTech scene alongside startups, investors, accelerators and corporates. His main mission was to help corporates connect with enterprise ready startups and acquire their services and technology.  He also scouted for potential investments for the firm.  Derric’s FinTech experience crosses P2P lending, payments and settlement, crowd funding/equity and FX remittances.

Derric is also an experienced startup operator. His first startup was m-Qube, a pioneer in the North American mobile technology, content and payments space. It was successfully acquired by VeriSign in 2006.  His second startup was Vortex Connect, an early developer of enterprise mobile platforms and applications. It was later acquired by RedPrarie in 2012.