The people behind Sharp.

James founded SecondBrain in 2025 and writes its agents himself. He has worked with AI tooling daily since the first public release of ChatGPT in 2023, and in 2025 ranked in the top 0.01% of Cursor users worldwide.

In 2025 he spent six months embedded inside a brokerage, and what he saw there became SecondBrain: a great deal of skilled work being done by hand because nobody had been given the time to fix it. He builds and programs the agents that fix it, and SecondBrain is a 2026 Australian AI Awards finalist for AI Innovator in Mortgage Broking.

Before SecondBrain he was AI Lead at ConnellGriffin, an infrastructure advisory firm, and earlier worked at PwC. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance) from the Australian National University and completed Harvard Business School's Alternative Investments program, covering private equity, distressed investing, hedge funds and real estate valuation.

William is responsible for every brokerage's experience of Sharp after the first conversation. He runs the demonstration, configures the lender panel, trains the team and stays their point of contact once they are live. Because he is in the room when brokers first use the product and when they hit friction, his notes set most of the product roadmap.

He holds a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering (Honours) and a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance) from the University of Sydney, where he graduated as a Dalyell Scholar. He approaches an implementation the way an engineer would: map how the firm actually works before deciding where the platform belongs.

James is a practising broker. He is in his second year as a Credit Adviser at Azura Financial, one of Australia's top-ten brokerages, and has settled more than $70 million without a loan processor. He runs Sharp in his own business, so when he speaks to a principal about it he is describing his own week, not a demo.

His lending work centres on complex self-employed clients, company and trust structures, tax-debt consolidation and business lending. He came to broking from accounting and holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance) from the Australian National University and a Diploma of Finance and Mortgage Broking. At SecondBrain he leads development from the broker side — what gets built, and in what order, is shaped by what he and other brokers need — and handles commercial terms with principals.