Founded by Matthew Fish, Shiraj De Silva, Tarang Patel, and Akshat Khatri, FirstStep is an integrated software solution for fund managers seeking to grow assets and engage directly with their clients.
The startup joined the Accelerator in 2017, recognising that many Australian fund managers were aspiring to scale their business by taking advantage of direct distribution channels including the Australian Stock Exchange and on-boarding clients via online tools. The FirstStep offer provides fund managers with an integrated solution that enables direct access to their listed and unlisted products with elegant client communication and reporting, and is a unique solution as it offers fund managers the ability to grow assets continuously with the added flexibility to construct portfolios from the products they manage.
To support their growth the company have raised over $1million in capital, and were recognised by Finnies for their company culture, named as finalists in their 2018 Best Workplace Diversity awards.
in 2017, FirstStep successfully launched and operated a mobile app that helped hundreds of Australians automatically invest small amounts regularly
Akshat’s entrepreneurial journey started off a few months after completing university where he worked on building product prototypes for various business ideas along with Tarang, a classmate at college who went by the mantra of ‘building a business for yourself’ rather than “working for someone else”. Although some of these ideas didn’t take off, the technical skills gained were very valuable and laid a foundation in establishing a founding team for future businesses. Together with Tarang and Shiraj, whom he knew through college too, Akshat built a local services marketplace called ServiceLocale. FirstStep has been the most recent business since early 2015 with the same founding team, together with Matthew as the founding member
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Matt is the co-founder of FirstStep helping asset managers expand distribution and improve investor engagement. Prior to FirstStep, Matt supported iconic Australian and international organisations in varying strategic and commercial roles for +10 years. During this time he was laser focused on my career and lacked time and money to properly build wealth through investment. This motivated him to make a difference and join FirstStep with a vision to make investing accessible and simple for all.
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