Consistency beats perfection.You don’t have to get everything right the first time. You just have to start, listen and keep going
From broke student to half a million followers, Queenie Tan has turned her own money struggles into Australia’s most relatable finance education empire.
But her latest venture, Billroo, started with something much simpler: frustration with every budgeting app on the market.
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Like most founders, Queenie’s eureka moment came from solving her own problem. Despite being a finance educator through her platform Invest with Queenie, she couldn’t find a budgeting app that actually worked for her and her partner Pablo’s shared expenses. “I’ve tried so many different budgeting apps, but I kept going back to using a spreadsheet because I couldn’t find one that did everything I wanted,” Queenie explains.
That personal spreadsheet became the foundation for something bigger when she shared it with her followers. “It struck a chord,” she recalls. “So many people said they were looking for something similar, and that gave us the confidence to start building it into something more.”
Armed with validation from her community, Queenie and Pablo took the leap. They bootstrapped Billroo’s first version with $30,000 of their own savings – a web app that would become their testing ground for bigger ambitions.
We just kept going. We listened to our early users, fixed what wasn’t working, and kept refining
The early days weren’t glamorous. “It was buggy, and uptake was slower than we hoped,” Queenie admits. “Honestly, it was disheartening.” But instead of pivoting or giving up, Queenie applied the same principles she teaches her followers about money management: persistence and incremental growth. “We just kept going. We listened to our early users, fixed what wasn’t working, and kept refining,” she says.
What sets Billroo apart isn’t just its features – it’s the philosophy behind it. While most finance apps emphasize discipline and data, Queenie and Pablo focused on something else entirely: human behavior and mindset.
“We wanted to design something that felt friendly, empowering, and fun, not something that made people feel guilty or overwhelmed,” Queenie says.
This approach shows in every aspect of Billroo. Users can create budgets with custom categories and limits, track spending in real-time, and even ask AI-powered finance questions directly in the app. It’s designed for Millennials and Gen Zs who want control over their money without needing a finance degree.
The app also prioritizes privacy through open banking technology, letting users securely link bank accounts without sharing login details – a modern approach to financial data control.
The turnaround
That steady, user-focused approach has paid off dramatically. Billroo now has over 5,000 users, most discovering the platform organically through social media and word-of-mouth. More impressively, the company is on track to be profitable within four months – a rare achievement for an early-stage tech startup.
“Success doesn’t have to come at the expense of joy,” Queenie reflects. “We built Billroo to make money management feel good. That principle has guided every decision we’ve made and it’s why our users keep coming back.”
Queenie’s mission to make finance fun extends beyond Billroo. Her upcoming book, The Fun Finance Formula, distills years of community conversations and personal transformation into a practical guide for building wealth without sacrificing joy. “It’s not a finance book,” Queenie says. “It’s a freedom formula.”
The book introduces concepts like the Money Quadrants framework and the ‘3 F’s of Budgeting,’ designed to help readers shift from restrictive money management to an aligned approach that actually sticks.
Founder lessons
Having built both a business and a brand from scratch, Queenie has crystallized her entrepreneurial philosophy into a few key principles: “Consistency beats perfection,” she shares. “You don’t have to get everything right the first time. You just have to start, listen and keep going.”
She also emphasizes focusing on controllables rather than getting lost in uncertainty. “There are so many unknowns in business but if you stay connected to your purpose and your users, you’ll find your way.”
With The Fun Finance Formula launching and new iOS and Android versions of Billroo rolling out, Queenie and Pablo are doubling down on their mission to change how Australians manage money. Their vision is ambitious yet simple: “We want to help people feel good about money,” Queenie says. “Because when you feel good, you make better choices. And when you make better choices, everything else starts to change.”
The Fun Finance Formula by Queenie Tan is in all good bookstores on 25 July (Wiley) and you can try Billroo for free at https://billroo.com/
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