Big Other, Founder and CEO
Originally from Moscow, Ian holds a CEMS Master in International Management and a master’s degree from Keio University’s Graduate School of Media Design. His professional background spans cybersecurity and consulting, with experience at Aon. In 2025, he founded Big Other, an educational fintech startup focused on improving financial literacy among school-aged teens in Japan.
Big Other: a receipt-based financial education app for teens
Big Other is a financial education app for Japanese teens aged 13–17 that helps them understand spending and investing without handling real money. Users scan everyday purchase receipts to build awareness of their spending patterns, then practice long-term decision-making in a market-based investing simulator using virtual capital. By excluding payments and balances, Big Other avoids regulatory risk and keeps the focus on learning—bridging real-world behavior and financial theory in a safe, compliant way.
I bring a rare mix of engineering, business, and compliance experience. I was trained at Keio KMD and CEMS, and worked in cybersecurity and consulting at Aon, where I dealt with regulated systems and real-world constraints. This background gives me a practical understanding of fintech mechanics, risk, and user trust, and allows me to build financial education products that are technically sound, credible to parents and institutions, and genuinely useful for teens.
