Meet Feijoa
There’s a quiet behavioural problem at the heart of personal finance: saving requires sustained, deliberate effort over decades, while spending requires almost none. Wellington fintech Feijoa is built on the premise that this imbalance can be fixed.
Feijoa’s core product rounds up everyday purchases and directs the spare change into your, or your loved ones, KiwiSaver account – growing wealth in the background, without you having to think about it. The vision, as co-founder Mark puts it, is to make saving as simple as spending: to take a habit that demands years of discipline and make it something that simply happens.
But this is just the beginning of their work to help everyday New Zealanders build wealth through a frictionless experience.
Let’s start with the name: Feijoa
The feijoa is a distinctly local fruit for us Kiwis. But for Mark, it conjured something more specific: the supermarket bag of feijoas that appears on the kitchen counter at work each autumn, free for anyone to take. That image of abundance and generosity – of shared good fortune – sits at the heart of what Feijoa wants to be for its users.
The career pivot: From lawyer to tech founder
Mark’s path to Fintech founder did not run through a computer science degree or a garage in Silicon Valley. He spent roughly half his career in law firms and half in-house at large enterprises, most recently supporting enterprise sales and M&A at major telcos.
His honest answer to whether he always wanted to start a tech company? “All I knew was I didn’t want to be a lawyer.”
What he brought from that career, though, turned out to be exactly what a startup at this stage needs. As an in-house lawyer across large organisations, he had always operated as a generalist – sitting across marketing, sales, technology and finance teams, navigating every part of the business. That same breadth, he says, is what a startup demands of its founders.
He also came with a head start on regulatory complexity, an understanding of how to structure a company, and the M&A experience to know what good founding documents look like. The parts of the journey that often trip up first-time founders were already familiar territory.
“A startup isn’t any one job,” he reflects. “It’s like 10,000 jobs. How you deal with all of those things needs experience from everywhere.”
Building from zero – with Wellington’s help
Feijoa was bootstrapped right from its inception in May 2023. No funding, no established startup network, no prior experience founding a company. What they did have was access to the vibrant startup ecosystem in Wellington.
Within months of starting, the team had assembled an advisory board of around five people, drawn from introductions, networks of networks, and the particular connective tissue of a small capital city where, as Mark notes, everyone knows everyone. Those advisors brought expertise across technology, business, sales and government. They also brought something less tangible: accountability. Weekly updates to the board imposed a discipline of delivery that kept the team moving. One advisor, Mark recalls, would meet him and co-founder Ben at his house every few weeks for a beer and an honest conversation about whether their ideas could become a business.
“Just the sheer amount of time people gave us was astonishing. Not asking for anything, but generously giving their time and insight because they want to help.”
That spirit carried into Feijoa’s recent capital raise. Wellington investors, Mark found, want to see the city succeed. If you have a credible idea and a credible path, they will back you.
Creative HQ’s Fintech Lab – a catalyst for growth
By the time Feijoa applied to Creative HQ’s Fintech Lab in late 2025, the product had launched and had around 400 users. Mark was optimistic that the hard part was behind them.
The Lab turned out to be something different from what he expected. More than a growth programme, it became a community. By the time it finished, Feijoa had grown from 1,200 users to nearly double that and has continued accelerating since. But the more lasting shift was in how the team talked about what they were building – sharpening the story, clarifying the vision, learning to articulate where Feijoa was going.
It also helped Mark feel less alone. “Before that, it was just kind of me and the founders,” he says. “It was a bit lonely.” The cohort gave him peers, and Wellington gave him a network that extended into banks and KiwiSaver schemes that had previously felt out of reach.
Committing to Wellington as our Fintech capital
Feijoa is a KiwiSaver product, built for New Zealanders and the team is staying put. But the case for Wellington goes beyond the obvious.
Mark points to Sharesies as proof that Wellington is where this kind of company gets built. He finds it easier to get in front of senior people in business and regulation here than anywhere else in the country. “You can do it in Auckland,” he says, “but it’s just easier in Wellington.”
Wellington is one of NZ’s greatest places to build a startup – pulling in more investment than any other region last year. Fintech is leading the charge as the country’s fastest-growing tech sector, and right now, the conditions couldn’t be better.
So, Wellingtonian’s – here’s how you can help grow this Fintech into our household name:
Feijoa is building something for every New Zealander and the team wants to hear from New Zealanders – honestly, candidly and often.
If you see Mark or one of the founders in the street wearing Feijoa merch, say hello and tell them what you think of the app. Download it and share the feedback. Talk about them in your networks. And if you work in finance, business, or the wider Wellington ecosystem, open a door.
“We’re only getting started,” Mark says. “Our goal is to change how people build wealth in New Zealand, making it easier than it’s ever been for someone to start.”
The Wellington ecosystem helped Feijoa get this far. Now it has a chance to help it go much further.
