Meet Australia’s 24 Top Founders in the Blockchain Startup Space

At Bleeding.Technology we track over 100,000 web 3.0, NFT, DeFi & crypto startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.

This list showcases the top Australia based Founder operating in the Blockchain space. If you think a Founder is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on [email protected].

The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:

Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.

Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.

Andy Lee

Co-Founder of Wilder World

Andy Lee is the Co-Founder of Wilder World.

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About Wilder World: Wilder World is a multilayered immersive 3D platform that allows users to collect and experience 3D augmented reality artworks.

Adrian Przelozny

CEO & Founder of Independent Reserve

Adrian is the CEO and co-founder of Independent Reserve, one of Australia’s most established cryptocurrency exchanges. He has contributed significantly to driving growth in the fledgling industry. Over the last 5 years, Adrian has developed and evolved Independent Reserve to serve over 100,000 Australian clients.

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About Independent Reserve: Independent Reserve is a Bitcoin and Digital Currency exchange.

John Bulich

Technical Advisor & Co-Founder of Bitcar.io

John Bulich is the Technical Director and Co-Founder at Power Ledger.

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About Bitcar.io, Ledger Assets, Power Ledger: BitCar is the first platform in the world that will allow you to P2P trade fractions of exotic cars using your crypto.

Victor Jiang

Founder and MD of Sapien Ventures

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About Civic Ledger, Sapien Ventures: Sapien Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on fintech, blockchain and online marketplaces, with offices in Australia, USA and China

Victor Huang

Co-Founder & MD of UCOT

Obtained Business degree from RMIT University in early years. Serial entrepreneur, social media expert, and executive director of the AJBA. Rich business operation experience in international trade, Executive training, international education, social media, etc., and also has early investment experience in cross-border e-commerce, blockchain Fintech, Australian agriculture, real estate development, hotel B2B, environmental materials and other industries! Mr. Huang has rich experience in business and investment, and has multi-faceted commercial resources in China and Australia. He has a unique vision and is an early blockchain investor. In 2014, he led the cornerstone investment in Blockchain Global

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About UCOT, Ultimo Digital Technologies: Blockchain and IoT solutions for supply-chain provenance

Yawn Rong

Co-Founder of Crypto SA

Yawn Rong is the co-founder of Crypto SA.

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About Crypto SA: Crypto SA is a Blockchain Investment&Advisory Firm.

Trent Allan

Co-Founder & CTO of ActivePlace

I am an entrepreneur, growth marketer, public speaker, and active investor. I co-founded Young Henrys, one of Sydney’s & Australia’s fastest-growing microbreweries. I was also pivotal in the growth of AppliancesOnline.com.au starting with them as the 3rd employee back in 2006. I most recently entered the fin-tech world co-founding a company called Vasco Pay, which was in 2019 acquired by the Novatti Group (ASX:NOV) for 1.5 million in cash and shares. Today, I am building ActivePlace, a specialized health & fitness social marketplace making it easier for people to discover and grow a more active lifestyle. Discover more at activeplace.com

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About ActivePlace, Trent for Growth, Vasco Pay: ActivePlace is NFT’s for sports and event ticketing that empowers people to collect & own them as memories.

Annette King

Co-Founder and Chair of Galileo Platforms

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About Galileo Platforms: Galileo Platforms is a platform technology company serving in the insurance sector.

Damien king

CTO and Founder of PUML Better Health

Damien is an experienced technologist and advisor with a rich heritage in platforms and mobile application development. He has more than 18 years of experience in technology and engineering and has recently become a BlockChain advocate, founding both Blockchainers.co and PUML.io, a healthtech BlockChain company in Singapore. He acts as a Technology Advisor and Mentor for many startups and innovative corporates in Australia and the UK. He has his own nearshore boutique Startup Studio, Adaptive Media, that is based in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam and has founded 2 startups, Possible Fitness and Beeliked Media, a SaaS based a Social Promotions Platform in London. He spent 7 years at Virgin Media in the UK as Head of Development, Digital Entertainment helping to deliver their STB VOD and onDemand video and music streaming services and was also the Chief Technology Officer for music streaming service Guvera. At Guvera he scaled and delivered a sophisticated global delivery platform to support 40 Million tracks across 20 Countries with over 10 Million app downloads. Damien previously worked for BHP Billiton and has experience working with major UK companies such as The BBC, British Telecom and GlaxoSmithKline. Damien is a qualified ScrumMaster an Agile Practitioner and a Senior member of the Australian Computer Society (MACS Snr CP).

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About Adaptive Media, PUML Better Health: Gamified health and wellbeing challenges for Corporates, Brands and Fans. Play to Earn Crypto and Athlete NFTs now and in the Metaverse

James Sangalli

Co-Founder and Developer Evangelist of AlphaWallet

James Sangalli is a co-founder and developer evangelist at AlphaWallet.

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About AlphaWallet: Connecting businesses and consumers with the new digital economic infrastructure.

Voidan Kardalev

Co-Founder of bron.tech

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About bron.tech: bron.tech is a company that specializes in decentralized infrastructure for data sharing and identity management.

Jonny Peters

Founder of Gaze Coin

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About The Dream Channel: A patent-registered blockchain platform measured by gaze control/eye tracking.

Steve Melnikoff

CSO and Co-Founder of PENTA

Steven Melnikoff is an information physicist, with expertise in large-scale web-based systems for big data analysis and visualisation. He graduated with degrees in both physics and applied mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving his doctorate in physics from the University of California in 1985. Dr. Melnikoff’s postdoctoral physics career began at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory – the ‘star wars’ lab of the United States. Since then his research spans from space-based nuclear reactors, nuclear waste cleanup and quantitative CT for bone densitometry/osteoporosis treatment, to interactive, real-time visualisation of the entire PubMed corpus. Over the past two decades he has pursued a passion for leading technology development teams and startup projects. His skill set includes extensive experience in a variety of programming languages and methodologies. Dr. Melnikoff’s CV lists numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, fellowships with the US National Institutes of Health, as well as senior lectureships at the University of Melbourne in the school of physics and computer science/software engineering. Dr. Melnikoff received an award for one of President Obama’s ‘opengov’ data challenges in developing KNALIJ, an interactive platform for visualization of PubMed data. He currently resides in Melbourne, Australia, and is the proud father of a 13-year old son who wants to trade on cryptocurrency exchanges.

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About PENTA: a next generation platform for both public and private blockchain projects.

Naby Mariyam

Founder/CEO of Coverhero

Naby Mariyam is Founder and CEO of Insuretech Startup Coverhero. Coverhero’s mission is to deliver relevant, hyperpersonalised coverage in moments that matter to Millenials lifestyle. We call this moment based coverage for lifestyle and wellbeing. Coverhero is one of the most innovative insurtechs in Australia and New Zealand to watch for in 2018. Coverhero was part of the Qantas Avro Accelerator program. Coverhero was one of the 15 start-ups that got on first ever Tech Crunch start-up Battlefield In Australia. Naby Has 20 years of experience in research, Education, Management consulting and start-ups in the last 5 years. She Represented Australia at the G20 Young Entrepreneurs Summit in Berlin 2017. She is an advocate for Diversity of thought in technology and women in leadership.

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About Coverhero: We deliver relevant, hyperpersonalised coverage in moments of need for your lifestyle and wellbeing.

Katryna Dow

CEO & Founder of Meeco

Katryna Dow is the founder and CEO of Meeco, a world leading data independence start-up in the emerging personal data economy. Meeco is a Personal Data Platform that connects people to their digital services, data and devices. Meeco enables individuals to manage, share, provide consent and exchange their identity and personal information for mutual value via The API-of-Me. Meeco was founded in 2012 and conceived over a decade ago, as social networks were on the rise. Katryna envisioned a time when personal sovereignty and contextual privacy would be as important as being connected. Now a decade later, personal clouds, mobile technology, AI, Internet-of-Things and regulation such as the GDPR and PSD2 have converged to make Meeco both possible and necessary. She speaks globally on privacy and data innovation and currently serves on two IEEE standards working groups; Co-Chair for the Personal Data and Privacy Committee, part of the Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in the Design of Autonomous Systems, and Chair for the new P7006 – Standard for Personal Data Artificial Intelligence (AI) Agent

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About Meeco: Meeco is building a personal data ecosystem of equals, with distributed ledger tools for people & organisations to create mutual value

Ken Kencevski

Founder and Managing Director of Devika

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About Devika: Building meaningful experiences using emerging technology

Taylor Tran

Founder of Coworking.fyi

Taylor Tran is the founder of Coworking.fyi.

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About Coworking.fyi: Coworking.fyi is a marketing and services company dedicated to the coworking and blockchain industry.

Robert Laidlaw

Founder & Executive Director of Secure Health Chain

Founder & Executive Director at Secure Health Chain , Dr Robert Laidlaw has worked in public hospitals for the past 7 years, with the recent 4 training in Neurosurgery at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney and Wollongong Hospital. Ultimately it was the intersection of medicine and technology that has motivated him to found two Australian health tech startups, Secure Health Chain & Image Chain. He is an active member in the International blockchain scene running workshops for hospital executives around the world and is writing his first book, “Healthcare unchained, 5 easy ways to bring blockchain into your clinic today”. Robert has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals on the applications of blockchain in healthcare.

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About Secure Health Chain: Medical Data Marketplace, Personal Digital Health Record

Ian Katz

Co-Founder of Image Chain

I am a Consultant Dermatopathologist, specialising in the diagnosis and management of skin cancer. I am an entrepreneur and angel investor, focussing on early-stage startups in the skin cancer field.

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About Image Chain: digital marketplace, medical data, blockchain