Year founded : 2021
Founder/CEO: Ewen Hollingsworth
Location: Sydney
Size of Team: 6
Website: www.sparkfinance.com.au
Who is your ideal customer: A young professional who is looking to accelerate their career with postgraduate student overseas. Whether that be an international student studying here or an ANZ student studying overseas. Think of someone looking to do their MBA at Harvard or the LLM at Cambridge University.
Why would someone work for your company: Because we're a company that's solving one of Australia's biggest problems (how to fund international students and maintain Australia's migration rate) by doing something completely unique in Australia (no one is willing help fund these students,) and that's delivering a tangible impact to people's lives (helping people access life-changing education)
Current Investors: Family and Friends
Recent Milestone: Recently secured a $5m facility to help fund our latest cohort of postgraduate students
Why the name: We think education can be the spark to kick start a person's future
Why did the business start ? : I experienced the problem first hand when I studied overseas. It was such a great experience but it was really difficult to get the funds together. When I came home I thought there should be a better way to help students that want to study overseas to accelerate their career but can't afford it because no one would help them. It sounds corny, but we want to democratise education.