We're helping drive Australian innovation forward.
Innovation takes guts. And a lot of money.
One of the hardest parts of bringing something new into the world is the sheer investment it takes – time, money, emotion, and risk, often before you know if any of it will work. The R&D Tax Incentive exists to ease that load: to help founders keep building, keep hiring, and keep pushing industries forward.
But for years, accessing it has meant red tape, expensive consultants, and a process that felt like a risk in itself. We started Synnch to change that, so the founders doing the hard work keep more of what they're owed, with less of the stress.
Why go with Synnch?
We're not another tech tool that leaves you to do the hard part, and we're not a traditional consultancy that bills by the hour and disappears until next year. We're the best of both: seasoned R&D advisers, backed by technology we built to make the whole thing faster, cheaper, and less work for you.
We've built startups ourselves, and been through the R&D claim process from the founder's side of the table. We know the blockers, the second-guessing, and the risk of getting it wrong, because we've felt them.
We didn't take an open-source model and slap our name on it. We built and trained our own, with the rigour that 15+ years in R&D tax law demands. The expertise came first. The technology just makes it faster.
Helping you lodge a claim was never enough for us. We're in your corner all year, working through the real challenges of building a company, tax, capital, governance, growth, alongside a whole community of founders doing the same.
If the ATO ever queries a claim we've lodged on your behalf, we will help defend it, at no extra fee.
Meet Our Humans
Andrew Antonopoulos, Founder
Andrew has spent 15+ years in R&D tax, first as a lawyer, then as a registered tax agent advising inside a national accounting and advisory firm. He's sat across the table from founders trying to do the right thing with a program that rewards them for it, and from companies with boards and auditors who need to know, in writing, that the claim will hold up. Both of those people are who Synnch is built for.
But Andrew has also been the founder on the other side of that table. He knows what it's like to feel the weight of "am I even doing this right?": the red tape, the risk, the sense that one wrong document could undo a year of hard work. That feeling is exactly why Synnch exists.
Too many good companies were leaving money on the table, not because they weren't eligible, but because good record-keeping was hard and the process needed a middleman to make sense of it. So he built the platform he wished existed: real R&D expertise, paired with technology that does the heavy lifting, so nothing gets lost between the work you did and the claim that proves it.
He's since stepped away from consulting to focus on Synnch full-time, which means when the ATO does query a claim, he's not one adviser among many at a firm. He's the person accountable for it, and he stands behind every claim Synnch lodges. Off the clock: 80s music, punk rock, snowboarding, and mountain air. #NoFX
Nikki Borgon, Head of Platforms & Partnerships
After almost 5+ years at Synnch, Nikki knows the platform, its clients and the wider R&D ecosystem from the inside out.
She leads Synnch’s platform and partnership activities, driving client engagement and helping shape how the platform and business evolve. Working alongside Andrew, she turns ideas and opportunities into action, connects what we hear from clients and the market with what Synnch does next, and keeps the moving parts aligned.
Before Synnch, Nikki spent 13 years in Swiss private banking, working with ultra-high-net-worth clients in an environment where trust, discretion and attention to detail were non-negotiable. That experience still shapes how she works today: commercially minded, relationship-driven and comfortable bringing structure to complicated situations.
Off the clock: surfing, snowboarding, yoga, dogs, books, design and languages. Swiss at heart, happiest somewhere between the ocean and the mountains.
Jonathan Gonzalez Botero, Full Stack Developer
Jonathan has been part of Synnch for almost three years, working across the platform’s user interface and underlying systems. He helps turn product ideas and feedback into features and improvements that support clients and R&D consultants in managing their R&D records and claims.
Before Synnch, he worked in software development across banking and insurance, bringing experience from a range of business and technical environments.
Off the clock: marathon running, recovery sessions at Rigs and Bad Bunny on repeat.
Come and meet us.
