Faced with financial setbacks at just 24, Nick Melrose launched ScaleApp—a tech-based solution designed to guide young Australians toward securing a place of their own. The application integrates long-term spending plans with real estate projections, offering a 50-year dynamic roadmap. Users can explore lifestyle possibilities in a private environment, experimenting with real-life scenarios to create personalized strategies for building wealth.
Nick’s inspiration for the project came from his own experience. Despite a career in data-driven analysis and years of disciplined saving, he found himself far from affording his first home. Rather than accepting defeat, he leaned into his expertise and began constructing a financial model to map out his options. What started as a complex Excel document, boasting over 20,000 formulas, was shared informally among friends during Zoom catch-ups and eventually evolved into the foundation of what would become ScaleApp.
ScaleApp’s mission is to support young Australians grappling with rising day-to-day expenses by giving them a no-cost, data-driven way to plan for the future and visualise attainable steps toward owning a home. The venture began with seed backing from Nick’s former employer following his resignation and has subsequently attracted $1.5 million in early-stage investment. More recently, it secured support from REACH, the innovation accelerator operated by the National Association of Realtors, marking a significant milestone in its expansion.
Redefining Home Buying for a New Generation
Nick describes ScaleApp as a decision-making platform grounded in education—one that empowers users to simulate everything from income tax and student loan repayments to rental earnings, capital gains, and co-ownership structures. He emphasizes its comprehensive scope, noting that every financial detail is accounted for. By blending personal finance with housing market insights, the platform removes the need for first-home buyers to choose between budgeting apps that ignore real estate and housing calculators that overlook everyday spending.
With an emphasis on individual budgeting and housing market dynamics, ScaleApp caters to the 3.5 million Australians dealing with increasing everyday expenses and barriers to homeownership. In contrast to traditional platforms that use fixed visuals and general yearly estimates, ScaleApp introduces a more dynamic approach—a gamified, month-by-month interactive timeline that spans five decades. It allows users to map key financial decisions—such as saving for a deposit, refinancing, or expanding their investment holdings—in a way that feels more intuitive and creative than traditional spreadsheets.
It furnishes a mechanism for individuals to test out alternative life choices and review their implications, and how different paths might influence their financial future. Backed by data from PropTrack, ScaleApp also offers practical functionality, allowing someone at an open inspection to instantly pull up a listing, plug it into their financial plan, and evaluate if it aligns with their goals. The feature has struck a chord with the community: before it even launched, more than 2,600 people had joined the waitlist, and early-stage partnerships are projected to bring access to over 68,000 prospective users.
Tech-Driven Solutions That Respect Privacy
One of ScaleApp’s standout features is its commitment to user privacy. Accounts can be set up without revealing full names, undergoing identity checks, or linking to bank accounts. Users remain anonymous throughout the experience—something deliberately designed to reassure a generation that’s grown increasingly cautious about how their personal and financial data is handled. The onboarding process reflects this philosophy, asking only for a first name and clearly stating that the platform isn’t a bank and has no interest in personal identifiers.
To maintain financial precision, a top-tier international advisory company conducted an in-depth inspection of the app’s core accounting framework. Simultaneously, those needing help with financial literacy can interact with the app’s smart teaching feature, fueled by proprietary ScaleApp materials, offering clear and timely explanations on a variety of subjects from taxation to investment property data.
A Growth-Aligned Monetisation Approach
Although ScaleApp is complimentary for aspiring homeowners, the platform is built with a strategic business vision. As individuals progress from first-time buyers to seasoned property owners and investors, they gain access to premium features such as $25-per-month portfolio tracking, on-demand property analysis credits, and a curated network of service providers. To complement this, Nick developed ScaleConnect—a solution tailored for mortgage brokers, aimed at replacing the outdated model of annual client reviews. The platform provides brokers with real-time visibility into their clients’ financial status, allowing for more timely and relevant engagement.
Feedback from advisors played a key role in shaping the feature, with many reporting they often reached out to clients either too soon or too late. ScaleConnect addresses that gap by syncing directly with users’ evolving plans. Looking ahead, the company’s data arm—Scale Insights—will play a central role in its growth. This analytics engine leverages anonymised user data to evaluate how changes in policy or economic conditions influence real households. Nick believes it can become vital framework for government bodies and financial organizations. He envisions a future where policymakers can accurately model the impact of small rate hikes—such as a 25-basis-point rise—on specific demographics, like recent buyers in New South Wales. According to him, such detailed forecasting remains largely absent from conventional economic modeling.
A Solution Designed for Today’s Needs
Nick has a firm grasp on the challenge at hand. He sees housing affordability as the defining economic hurdle for younger Australians, and he created ScaleApp to meet that need head-on. The solution is designed as a neutral, flexible resource that empowers users to navigate a fast-changing property landscape. By offering affordable access to the insights needed for long-term planning, risk management, and smart decision-making, ScaleApp aims to equip its users with a clear pathway to home ownership.
While the vision is bold, ScaleApp may be uniquely positioned to deliver on it. According to Nick, it’s the only consumer-facing product that unites personal finance tracking, taxation modelling, and end-to-end property forecasting in a single system. He believes his peers aren’t lacking motivation—they’re already searching for solutions. ScaleApp’s role, he says, is simply to provide the right tools to help them approach the challenge with confidence and precision.
