Fayl Tales

Briella Brown started Your Closet at 17 with an $80,000 personal loan from her father. She was making $35,000 a month, dropped out of university, went on Shark Tank, asked for $80,000 for 20% equity and walked out with $80,000 for 40%. 

Then ran the business for eight years, sold it, started a jewellery company during COVID and exited that too.

That next thing is Biolae. A perimenopause brand with Pip Edwards as a shareholder, a class 2B medical device in market after three years through the TGA, and a billboard campaign that put the word vagina on Sydney streets for the first time.

We get into 👇:
★ Going on Shark Tank at 20, giving away 40% equity and why she says it was worth it
★ The nine month acquisition process that gave her sleepless nights until the very last signature
★ Why she took a checkout job at David Jones after exiting two companies
★ Why she's builing a perimenopause brand when she hasn't personally experienced it
★ What Janine Allis told her about naivety that she still thinks about today

***and if you're reading this, pls pls pls pls hit the follow button

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Check out Biolae: https://www.biolae.com.au/

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Fayl Safe episode three, PayPal.

Specifically, the guy who actually invented online payments and went bankrupt. The startup that began as a Palm Pilot IOU app and accidentally became the biggest payments company in the world. The moment Elon Musk got ousted as CEO while on his honeymoon in Sydney. And why a guy named Eric Jackson ignored his bosses, bet on eBay auction users, and changed everything.

This one is one of the most interesting stories we've covered on Fayl Safe. And there are lessons in here that apply to every founder building.

Welcome back to Fayl Safe, the series where we break down business history and startup concepts.

We get into 👇:
★ David Chaum, the man who invented online payments in the 1980s, raised $10 million and went bankrupt
★ How PayPal started as software for Palm Pilot IOUs and pivoted into a payments company by accident
★ The employee who ignored his bosses, bet on eBay auction users and triggered explosive growth
★ Elon Musk getting ousted as CEO while on his honeymoon in Sydney via a no confidence vote
★ How PayPal invented CAPTCHA and the random micro deposit check to fight $10 million a month in fraud
★ Why being first to market is a tactic not a goal according to Peter Thiel 

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Patrick Collins is a sixth time founder.

He pivoted his last company three times, moved it to San Francisco, and then watched a co-founder burn through $7 million in under a year. He took over as CEO, cut the team from 40 to five, rebuilt it and sold it to the largest private marketing agency in the US. Then spent 13 years in Silicon Valley. Came back. Spent 10 years as a Chief Product Officer at Zip, Air Tasker and Secure Code Warrior.

Then quit to do it all again.

His youngest just turned 14. The timing works.

Now he's building Dam Secure, a cybersecurity startup racing to secure the code that AI is writing faster than anyone can check. 11 months old. Customers. $6.1 million raised.

We get into:
★ Six co-founders, no vesting schedules and $7 million gone in under a year
★ The difference between Australian and American leadership 
★ How to sell into the US market and why most Australians get it completely wrong
★ 700 AI agents that broke out of OpenAI and hacked into another company without anyone noticing
★ Why you can't build a startup on the side no matter how much you want to believe you can
★ Why AI is making software faster to write but not more secure 

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Most brands pitch supermarkets with a deck. These two showed up on a camel.

Michael McRae was meant to be a lawyer. Instead he ended up selling beer across Tokyo, Singapore and Vietnam with his mate Tom. One morning, Tom was putting on moisturiser, he tried it and said "holy shit".

They googled how to make moisturiser. Hired a contract chemist. Kept their day jobs. Set milestones. Hit them. Quit. And built Two Dudes into a men's skincare brand now stocked in 2,500 stores across Australia and New Zealand.

Along the way they  hosted a fake funeral for their old packaging, got Tom to skydive into a Chemist Warehouse, made moisturiser for ball sacks and ended up on national TV in Budgie Smugglers to get the attention of supermarket buyers.

And it worked.

We get into 👇:
★ How a girlfriend's skincare routine became the bones of a global brand
★ Why they kept their day jobs for six months and the milestones they set before quitting
★ The 50 guy trial group where one dude rubbed face wash in without rinsing it off
★ Why they market like a craft beer company and what the camel stunt actually achieved
★ The fake funeral that made customers think the brand had folded
★ Why raising too much money is one of the most dangerous things a founder can do

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Byron McCaughey spent 15 years in Europe working in sports sponsorship, Formula One and advertising. Did an MBA at Imperial College London. Built a fintech startup with his co-founder Henry. Raised £80,000 from 50 MBA classmates. Tried to crowdfund half a million pounds. Fell six figures short of the target. Then COVID hit. And they folded.

What happened next?

Byron became a psychologist. Specifically for founders. Because when he went looking for support after the business collapsed, he found that therapists didn't get what it meant to run a company, and business coaches lacked depth. So he spent five years studying and built Sublime Studios to fill the gap.

88% of founders report mental health challenges. And sadly this probably doesn't surprise you.

★Annnddd we just launched our newsletter! Our first edition is pretty slick: https://fayltales.substack.com/p/the-math-of-starting-late?r=7cmxs1

Follow Byron: https://byronmccaughey.com/

#startuppodcast #founderstory #founderwellbeing #foundermentalhealth #buildinginpublic

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Welcome back to fayl safe, the series where I break down startup concepts and history.

Episode two. Social media.

Specifically why Friendster turned down a $30 million offer from Google, why MySpace sold for $580 million in two years and then got offloaded for $35 million, and how a 19 year old Harvard student ended up winning.

There are lessons in here that still apply to every founder building.

We get into 👇:
★ Six Degrees, the first ever social network launched in 1997 and why it failed before anyone knew it existed
★ Friendster, the $30 million Google offer that got rejected, and what happened next
★ Why Friendster's tech couldn't handle its own growth and what technical debt means
★ MySpace, 75 million users, Calvin Harris getting his big break, and a $580 million exit in two years
★ How Facebook won by being elitist, exclusive and growing slowly on purpose
★ Why being first to market is not always an advantage and what the fast follower gets right

p.s. please leave a comment if you're reading this and let me know your thoughts!

p.p.s subscribe (thank you very much)

Chapters:
0:00 the teaser
1:51 six degrees, the og social network nobody remembers
6:05 friendster turned down google for $30 million
13:59 myspace watched friendster die 
18:35 rupert murdoch paid $580 million for myspace
23:23 zuckerberg launches the facebook from his dorm room
30:30 reid hoffman buys the six degrees patent 
39:30 friendster finds a second life in asia 
47:26 what news corp did to myspace
52:30 why friendster changed everything 

#startuppodcast #faylsafe #startuphistory #socialmedia #buildinginpublic

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im O'Sullivan got expelled from his fancy Melbourne private school at 16 for shoplifting on a ski trip. He never went to university. Instead he spent his early twenties throwing parties in Vietnam, bribing police with $20 USD.

He never went to university. He did spend his early twenties throwing parties in Vietnam, bribing police with $20 USD, and making coffees at his family cafe in Essendon.

And then he went to Korea and found liquid gold in the form of pear juice.

Bae Juice is now in four and a half thousand stores across Australia. They raised a million dollars from a LinkedIn message. Spent two years in New York and ran out of cash. And now they're doing $2-3 million in revenue spending basically nothing on marketing.

The story of how they got there is genuinely wild.

We get into 👇:
★ The birth of the 'i can do anything' mentality in Vietnam
★ The trip to Korea that changed everything
★ Starting Bae Juice with $5,000 and getting a crucial yes from someone who didn't speak English
★ Getting into Woolworths, Coles and Costco with zero FMCG experience
★ New York, running out of cash and coming home

#startuppodcast #founderstory #fmcgstartup #buildinginpublic #australianstartups

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The Superstat crew applied to Startmate three times. Got rejected twice. Went from zero to $240,000 in recurring revenue in 12 weeks. And then Blackbird led a $3.5 million pre-seed round. And who are these weapon trio? Cordelia King, Sam Hung and Kai Bloomfield.

SuperStat uses AI to turn raw match footage into player stats, event timelines and performance patterns automatically. Built for the 99% of sport that has absolutely no data at all. 

The parents spending two to four hours every weekend manually cutting up footage and doing stats. The kids who never get seen because they don't have the data to back up how good they are.

This one moves fast. Because so did they.

We get into 👇:
★ The previous company TrainStop, called the Tinder for local sport, and how it led to SuperStat
★ Why footy didn't work and basketball did, courts are the same size every time
★ Going to stadiums on Friday nights with flyers and approaching strangers filming games
★ Zero to $240,000 in recurring revenue in 12 weeks during the Startmate program
★ Pitching to American VCs and being told Aussies are way too laid back
★ Why they're moving to Austin, Texas and what scares Cordelia most about leaving

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Keep up to date with Loveth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loveth-ochayi-a67491152/

Follow superstat on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/superstatsport/ 

Chapters:
0:00 the teaser
0:58 the tinder for local sport
1:51 why footy didn't work and basketball did
3:45 the first four weeks
5:43 friday nights at stadiums with flyers
9:35 zero to $240k in 12 weeks
10:34 san francisco and pitching american vcs
11:58 the aws bill anxiety
13:23 blackbird led the $3.5m raise
14:45 why austin texas
16:28 graphic designer who designed the logo in a day

#startuppodcast #founderstory #sportstech #buildinginpublic #femalefounder 

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Ryan Woodcock joined Goterra as a software developer in a company using maggots and robots to process food waste inside refurbished shipping containers. By the time he left, he was the engineering manager, could instruct people on heavy machinery, had sorted through tons of food waste by hand, and had watched what the media called Australia's most loved and underfunded startup go into liquidation.

He also came out as bisexual. Left Christianity. And says a startup about maggots gave him the community that changed his life.

This episode is unlike anything we've done before on Fayl Tales.

Goterra was founded in 2016 by Olympia Yarger out of a garage in Fyshwick, Canberra. It raised over $15 million. It had Woolworths, Hyatt, Melbourne Airport and Lendlease as clients. Its technology worked. Its customers loved it. And on June 3rd, 2026, it went into voluntary administration because it couldn't raise the capital it needed to scale. 

Ryan was there for all of it. And he has a lot to say.

We get into 👇:
★ What Goterra actually built and how maggots, robots and shipping containers fit together
★ What it's like to join a hardware startup as a software dev and end up doing everything
★ Why Australia's most loved startup couldn't get funded despite working technology and loyal customers
★ The week after administrators came in, when the team was still planning routes and scooping maggots
★ What Ryan learned about leadership from watching Olympia Yarger lead right to the end
★ How a climate startup gave Ryan the community that helped him come out and leave Christianity

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And follow Loveth @lovethochayi on LinkedIn and instagram
Annnddd you can find Ryan Woodcock on LinkedIn

#startuppodcast #climatetech #founderstory #startupfailure #australianstartups

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First up. What even is a startup?

Spoiler: there's no universal definition. And honestly, before researching this episode, I've probs butchered it too

Welcome to Fayl Safe, a new series where we break down the startup concepts, jargon and assumed knowledge that nobody ever actually explains.

Loveth and Amy Fogarty get into the deets. This one is for anyone who has ever walked into a startup event and nodded along pretending to know what TAM means.

We get into 👇:
★ Why 97.3% of Australia's 2.7 million businesses are small businesses and only eight are unicorns
★ Three very different definitions of a startup from Paul Graham, Eric Ries and Steve Blank
★ Loveth's four characteristics of a startup, risky, scalable, fast growing and disruptive
★ Airbnb, Netflix, Uber and Canva as case studies for each characteristic
★ What TAM actually means and why niche down before scaling up is not a contradiction
★ Why startup founders sometimes think they're better than traditional business founders and why that's wrong

Also Paul Graham's essay, startup = growth is here: https://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

#startuppodcast #faylsafe #startupjargon #australianstartups #buildinginpublic

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