BetterLabs Ventures
Year:
2020
Service:
AI-Powered Fraud Detection
Industry:
eCommerce
Size:
20-30 employees
Client Website:
BetterLabs is a venture capital (VC) firm and venture studio based in Perth, Western Australia. Backed by the Royal Automobile Club of Western Australia (RAC), it operates a $40 million fund dedicated to supporting early-stage startups.
About BetterLabs
Investment Strategy
Target Stages: Primarily invests in Seed and Series A rounds.
Ticket Size: Investment checks typically range from $200,000 to $3,000,000.
Geographic Focus: Mainly Western Australia and across the broader Australian ecosystem, with some presence in the United States.
Core Domains: The firm focuses on technology-driven solutions within six key "Emerging Innovation Domains":
Clean Tech: Energy, waste, and water sustainability.
Mobility of the Future: New ways to get around.
Next-Gen Insurance: Disruptive insurance models (InsurTech).
Life, Work & Money: Financial management and future of work tech.
Third Age: Supporting the aging population.
Member Community: Strengthening community connections.
BetterLabs Venture Studio
In addition to direct investment, BetterLabs operates a Venture Studio where it builds and launches its own startups internally.
Notable Studio Success: In 2024, the studio-developed user-generated content (UGC) platform Creator Flow was acquired by Roar Global.
Other Studio Projects: Includes Drip Invest and Plant with Willow.
Notable Portfolio Companies
BetterLabs has made over 39 investments as of late 2025. Key companies in their portfolio include:
WeMoney: A financial wellness and credit score app.
Upcover: Business insurance for the gig economy and startups.
The Volte: A large designer dress rental marketplace.
Power Ledger: Blockchain-based renewable energy trading.
SpacetoCo: Online marketplace for short-term space hire.
Loopit: SaaS platform for vehicle subscription and rental.
Key Personnel
James Edwards: Chief Executive Officer.
Isabelle Charter: Head of Venture Studios.
Matthew Dunstan: Head of Commercialisation.
My Impact at BetterLabs
Clandestine's fraud system operated on static rules: if transaction amount > X from country Y, flag for review. Simple. Predictable. And completely overwhelmed.
The consequences:
Drowning in false positives: Legitimate transactions sat in review queues for hours while analysts manually verified obvious approvals
Inconsistent decisions: Different regional teams applied rules differently, creating compliance risk
Reactive posture: The system could only catch known fraud patterns, not emerging threats
Customer friction: Genuine users experienced delays, declined transactions, and frustration
Every transaction review cost time and money. Analysts were spending 80% of their day clearing false alarms, leaving limited bandwidth for actual investigations. The system wasn't just inefficient — it was unsustainable.
Solution
Source rebuilt Clandestine's fraud detection from the ground up using adaptive machine learning that evolved with emerging threats.
Instead of static rules, the new system:
Learned continuously from transaction patterns, user behavior, and analyst decisions
Scored risk dynamically using hundreds of behavioral signals beyond simple threshold checks
Prioritized intelligently — surfacing only high-confidence anomalies for human review
Created feedback loops where every analyst decision improved future accuracy
The transformation wasn't just technical. Source integrated the system directly into existing workflows, so analysts got clearer context, faster access to relevant data, and confidence in the AI's recommendations. The machine handled volume; humans handled judgment.
Result
Three months in, the impact was undeniable:
43% reduction in false positive rates
60% faster case resolution
35% lower fraud prevention costs
Higher customer satisfaction and transaction success rates
But the bigger win was strategic. Clandestine's fraud team shifted from firefighting to pattern recognition — identifying emerging threats before they scaled, tuning the system proactively, and finally operating ahead of the curve. Fraud prevention transformed from a cost center into a competitive advantage.
