Fayl Tales

Feels strange not being in the studio but when you get the chance to interview Kamran Elahian, you say yes! So excuse the background noise!

Soo, Kamran has co-founded 10 companies across five decades. Four unicorns. Six successful exits. Over $8 billion in peak market cap.

He has also been fired from his own company. Twice.

The first time was on April Fool's Day. He showed up to work the next morning anyway because he genuinely thought it was a joke.

Kamran has been told he was too young to start a company. Then too old. He got 94 investor noes before his first yes. He built a tablet computer 18 years before the iPad, and is now building he's 11th company.

We get into 👇:
★ Selling his first company for $75 million before he was 30 and how that made him dangerously overconfident
★ The one year walkabout that changed everything after the firing
★ 94 investor meetings and being told immigrants make good CTOs but maybe not CEOs
★ Being fired a second time for refusing to back down from his vision
★ Why he thinks failing 89 times with zero successes is nothing to be proud of

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Akshat Agarwal dropped out of a civil engineering degree, spent four years at Antler watching hundreds of founders try to build companies, helped launch Antler's Middle East fund across Saudi and Dubai, and then walked away from VC entirely.

His conclusion after all of it? The reason Australia's best founders keep leaving for San Francisco isn't money or talent. It's the environment.
So he built one.

Arrayah less than a year old. It's a network of hacker houses across Sydney and Perth where ambitious founders, researchers, artists and builders live together and create together. They already have more demand than homes. And the long term goal is to build a city.

Yes, an actual city.

We get into 👇
★ Why Akshat walked away from VC after watching hundreds of founders up close
★ The thesis that talent is equally distributed everywhere, capital and opportunity are not
★ Testing hacker houses across Dubai, Saudi, London, Berlin and Vancouver before landing in Australia
★ Why he skipped Melbourne and went straight to Perth
★ What it actually takes to build a community that holds itself accountable
★ Why the long term goal is to build a city the size of Canberra

#startuppodcast #founderstory #australianstartups #buildinginpublic #hackerhouselife

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Nina Wöss has spent 13 years in VC. She started at SpeedInvest as an intern, became a VC all-rounder, and then left to co-found Female Founders Global and then decided to build a fund on top of that.

What could go wrong?

They started fundraising in early 2022. Russia invaded Ukraine. Crypto winter hit. Stock markets tanked. Everyone told them, do you really want to do this now? 

They did it anyway. 

And then spent years simultaneously investing in companies, building a team, leading that team, and still fundraising. Nina says this period almost ended badly, to be very honest.

Fund F is now a €28 million fund.

We get into 👇:
★ Why founders wildly underestimate what building a company does to you as a person
★ Starting Female Founders Global as a nonprofit and why they eventually had to build a fund
★ Fundraising through war, crypto winter and a tanking market and doing it anyway
★ The period that almost ended badly, and what she learned about taking care of herself
★ Why the most common reason Fund F says no has nothing to do with the founder
★ What VCs are actually looking for that most founders never think to research

#startuppodcast #venturecapital #founderstory #femalefounders #buildinginpublic

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Moritz Lechner started his first company at 14 with 100 euros of pocket money. At 15, he pitched on Austria's version of Shark Tank and raised €170,000. At 21, he sold the company he built to 50 people and millions in revenue. He is now 22 and already planning the next one.

What could possibly go wrong along the way? A lot, actually.
The subscription box business that never quite took off. A product launch where they spent a fortune, did the full campaign, and then, well, nobody cared. The overnight shift from three people to 50 and having absolutely no idea how to manage that. And trying to run a real business while your voice hadn't broken yet and clients kept calling you Mrs. Lechner.

We get into 👇:
★ Starting with €100 and a self built website at 14
★ Pitching on 2 Minuten 2 Millionen at 15 and tripling the business overnight from TV coverage
★ Why the subscription box model hit a ceiling and how they spotted the pivot early
★ Managing 50 people at 19 with zero experience of ever being an employee
★ The structured M&A process that led to the exit and the closing party that went until 7am
★ Why he thinks the next company has to be a $10 billion generational company

Let's keep the crew together 🤝
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fayltales/
🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fayltales
💼 LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/loveth-ochayi-a67491152

On the move? 🎧
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/64449Kq2PDzlkVyCjlN5U8
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/fayl-tales/id1797274868

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Hey Crew! Kilian Kaminski was running Amazon's entire refurbished program in Europe. He could see the opportunity. He could see Amazon had no intention of building it. So naturally, he quit and decided to do it himself.

What could go wrong...

refurbed is now the largest refurbished marketplace by markets across Europe. 24 countries. 10 million products sold. Over €150 million raised. 

But getting there involved investors telling him to delete the slide he cared most about, layoffs he describes as the most painful moments of his whole life, a Poland expansion that flopped, and customers calling to report they had accidentally received a new product.

The messy middle is all here.

We get into 👇:
★ Why Amazon built the refurbished program to keep customers in, not to do good
★ Founding refurbed in 2017 and selling the first product six weeks later
★ How Jürgen built alone in five months what agencies quoted at €200K and six people for six months
★ The layoffs that were the most painful moments of his life, not just his business life
★ Why they became profitable last year and what that actually means for their next phase

★ Do you have a random question or need advice? Pop it into the chat or send them to me!! I get to meet and interview some amazing founders and investors globally, so I'll have it included in an upcoming episode :) ★

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Hey Crew! 

Oliver Holle founded his first company as a PhD student at Columbia in the late 1990s. Raised money. Opened four offices. Hired 20 people. And nearly went personally bankrupt for two and a half years with three small kids, no salary, and personal debt of €1.5 million.

He eventually sold to VeriSign, moved to Silicon Valley, came back to Vienna, and built SpeedInvest. Europe's largest seed stage fund. Now managing over $1.2 billion in assets.

This one is full of hard earned wisdom from someone who has been on both sides of the table and paid dearly for every lesson he learned.

We get into 👇:
★ Dropping out of a Columbia PhD to build a startup nobody understood
★ Raising money, blowing it, and nearly going personally bankrupt for two and a half years
★ How threatening to walk away flipped the power dynamic and got him back 100% of his company
★ Why he passed on Bitpanda and ElevenLabs and what that cost him
★ What actually separates founders who make it from those who don't
★ Why the AI revolution feels bigger than the internet and mobile combined

Follow us on all platforms!

Instagram ~ @fayltales

Tiktok ~ @fayltales 

LinkedIn ~ @fayltales

★ Do you have a random question or need advice? Pop it into the chat or send them to me!! I get to meet and interview some amazing founders and investors globally, so I'll have it included in an upcoming episode :) ★

Hey Crew! It's just me today. No guest. Just a proper deep dive into one of the biggest shifts in consumer business happening right now.

Direct to consumer had its moment. Gymshark. Casper. Allbirds. Peloton. The playbook worked until it didn't.

Now in 2026 the rules have completely changed. And I'm going through exactly why, with real case studies and real numbers.

I get into 👇:
★ Why D2C worked between 2012 and 2021 and what broke it
★ Gymshark, Peloton, Allbirds, Casper and Nike, what worked and what didn't
★ Rhode, Feastables, Chamberlain Coffee and Unwell, the new playbook
★ Why Nike couldn't make D2C only work and what that means for everyone else
★ My thesis on what it actually takes to succeed in consumer in 2026
★ Why retail isn't a failure, it's leverage

Let's keep the crew together 🤝
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fayltales/
🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fayltales
💼 LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/loveth-ochayi-a67491152

On the move? 🎧
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/64449Kq2PDzlkVyCjlN5U8
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/fayl-tales/id1797274868

Follow us on all platforms!

Instagram ~ @fayltales

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LinkedIn ~ @fayltales

Hey Crew! 

Daniel Lord-Doyle started in telemarketing. Taught himself to code on YouTube. Built a laser hair removal e-commerce company during COVID by accident among many other things. And then co-founded Mary Technology, an AI legal tech startup that just opened offices in New York and San Francisco.

Half engineer, half salesperson. He thinks that combination is the whole game. And he has a lot to say about what it actually takes to build in one of the hardest industries to sell into.

We get into 👇: 

★ Teaching himself to code on YouTube after missing out on equity at his first company 

★ The laser hair removal e-commerce business that took off during COVID 

★ How Mary Technology went from a red button on a website to AI handling the biggest bottleneck in law 

★ Why legal tech is actually not that hard to sell into right now 

★ The BATNA mistake that nearly sank them 

★ New York, San Francisco, and why 550,000 US law firms was the only answer

Let's keep the crew together 🤝 

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fayltales/ 

🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fayltales 

💼 LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/loveth-ochayi-a67491152

On the move? 

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/64449Kq2PDzlkVyCjlN5U8 

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/fayl-tales/id1797274868

+ anywhere you stream

Follow us on all platforms!

Instagram ~ @fayltales

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Hey crew, 
Dickie Currer-Ganguli grew up on the poverty line in Yorkshire with a single mum, joined the army at 20, became a criminal defense and asylum lawyer at 23, moved to Australia at 26, and then found himself picking fruits and milking cows at 27 thinking, what the hell has happened here?

Now he's running Hype Man Media and APAC Innovation Hub, and recently spent 16 days on a train across India with 600 young entrepreneurs, and is about to move to Mumbai.

We cover:
- Growing up on the poverty line with a single mum and how that shaped everything
- Joining the army at 20, becoming a lawyer at 23, and fruit picking in Melbourne at 27
- How a nickname on LinkedIn turned into a media and storytelling business
- Why the most success he's ever had came when he was the most vulnerable
- 16 days on a train across India, four hours sleep a night, and coming off it a shell of a human
- Why 99% of Australian founders look to the US when 5 billion people live next door

Let's keep the crew together 🤝
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fayltales/
🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fayltales
💼 LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/loveth-ochayi-a67491152

On the move? 🎧
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/64449Kq2PDzlkVyCjlN5U8
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/fayl-tales/id1797274868

Follow us on all platforms!

Instagram ~ @fayltales

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LinkedIn ~ @fayltales

Hey Crew! Trang Nova stepped on a snail during a morning run and it triggered a quarter life crisis that changed everything.

The career. The relationship. The country. Even her name.

She went from unhappy physio to checking her bank account at a petrol station and finding 80 cents. From a 10 year relationship to a one way ticket to Bali. From not speaking English as a kid to coaching people how to find their voice on stage.

This one goes everywhere.

Let's keep the crew together 🤝 

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fayltales/ 

🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fayltales 

💼 LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/loveth-ochayi-a67491152

On the move? 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/64449Kq2PDzlkVyCjlN5U8 

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/fayl-tales/id1797274868

#startuppodcast #founderstory #careerchange #pivoting #femalefounder

Follow us on all platforms!

Instagram ~ @fayltales

Tiktok ~ @fayltales 

LinkedIn ~ @fayltales