Meet the founders

I'm Ali Hassan, and together with my co-founder Yan Zhang, we built Helpious from our base in Darwin.

We're not career founders. I'm an accounting graduate from Canterbury Institute of Management who's spent the last few years bouncing between casual work, Uber shifts and side projects — while trying to figure out what to build that would actually be worth building.

Helpious started with a simple observation. We watched friends, family and neighbours in Darwin trying to hire tradies — and every single time, the same thing happened. Hours wasted calling around. Missed calls. Chasing quotes. Wondering if the price they were being given was fair.

On the other side, we watched local Darwin tradies quietly complaining about paying subscription fees and lead credits to national platforms — for leads that were often already stale, or split with three other businesses, or from customers who never actually intended to hire anyone.

"It felt like a system that was working for the platforms, kind of working for the customers, and not really working for the tradies who do the actual work."

So we started building this. Just the two of us, at first. Late nights, weekends, and some very supportive family and friends putting up with a lot of "I'm working on Helpious" excuses.

Today it's still small. We're still a tiny team. But we're proud of what it is and honest about what it isn't yet. If you're a customer using Helpious in these early days — thank you. If you're a Darwin tradie who's given us a chance — thank you. This platform is going to be shaped by what you tell us you need in the next twelve months.