Fayl Tales

Hey Crew! Ok so this one hit different. Megan Luttrell has built Aussie Founders Club into a community of thousands of founders, runs Kairos Recruitment, just launched People Stack, won Victorian Ecosystem Hero of the Year, and landed a $200K grant from Launch Vic.

But her first year? She was broke. Like properly broke. She got her partner to pay her to clean their own house just to have an extra 80 bucks a week. She borrowed money from her uncle. She tried a bunch of ideas that went absolutely nowhere.

And the wild part is she didn't even think she deserved the Ecosystem Hero award. She literally told people not to nominate her yet. They did anyway. And when they called her name, she had her camera out recording someone else because she was so sure it wasn't going to be her.

We get into the stuff nobody talks about when it comes to hiring in startups. Why most founders completely skip thinking about who they are as an employer before they start recruiting. Why culture fit is actually code for hiring people exactly like you. And why your first hires are the most make-or-break decisions you'll ever make.

We cover:

• Why your first startup hires will either 10x your business or tank it
• The difference between culture fit and culture contribution
• How Aussie Founders Club went from a meetup with a 7-word name to thousands of members
• Why she spent her broke year building community instead of just chasing revenue
• The compounding effect of showing up when nobody's watching
• Her first startup experience where the CEO was allegedly high on the job and everyone quit on the same day

If you're hiring, building a community, or just trying to figure out what the hell you're doing as a founder, this one's for you.

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If you've ever read a piece of startup advice and thought "that doesn't feel right"... trust that instinct. This one's for you.

This is another solo episode. No guest. Just me unpacking the startup advice that sounds great on a LinkedIn post but actually messes people up when they're in the thick of building.

I've interviewed a lot of founders over the past year and I kept noticing the same thing. So many of them followed the "right" advice and it led them in the completely wrong direction. Move fast and break things. Your MVP should embarrass you. Passion is everything. Sleep is for the weak.

We've all heard them. But when you actually sit with founders who've been burned by this stuff, you start to see the cracks.

So I broke down 6 pieces of startup advice that I think are misguided, overhyped, or just straight up wrong depending on your context.

We cover:

• Why "move fast and break things" can destroy trust before you even get started
• The MVP embarrassment myth and why scrappy doesn't fly in 2026
• Hiring for culture fit vs culture contribution and why echo chambers kill startups
• How passion can actually blind you from fixing your product
• The difference between building a business and funding an expensive hobby
• Why hustle culture is a scam and burnout is not a flex

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Ok so this one is different. No guest. Just me.

I've interviewed so many founders about their failures and mistakes but I realised I've literally never talked about my own. A few friends and guests have called me out on it too so here we are.

I also recap the first ever Fayl Tales Live event at Canva in Sydney, which sold out in four days (still a bit shocked about that). I talk about what worked, what I'd change, and what's coming next with Melbourne.

And then I get into my own failure. A sports recovery product I spent months developing with a chemist who just... ghosted me. No contract. No IP protection. Just blind faith that it would work out. Spoiler: it didn't.

I cover:

• How the Sydney event at Canva sold out in 4 days and what the format looked like
• Why I designed the event to feel like friends chatting, not a panel
• What's different about the Melbourne event at Stone and Chalk
• How the podcast has pivoted from failed startups only to founders actively building
• Why self-funding this has been the best investment I've ever made
• My sports recovery product that died because I trusted without a contract
• The lessons I should have learned way earlier about IP protection

This is me being vulnerable for once. More of this to come.

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Ok so this one is a ride. 

Alex Melocco studied law AND software engineering (overachiever energy), ditched the safe corporate path, and went full send on building startups. 

First attempt? A tutoring marketplace that flopped because nobody actually needed it. Second attempt? A calendar app he built with a whole team for months only to find out people were basically like "yeah it's cool... I wouldn't pay for it though." 

Brutal.

Now he's building Mira, which pulls all your comms (Gmail, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Slack, the works) into one feed so you can stop losing your mind. And the way they validated it is actually so good. 

No demo, no fancy launch. Just a brochure, three promises, and a Stripe link. If you'll pay before it even exists, you actually care.

We get into the messy stuff too. Convincing yourself a problem is real when it's not, the awkwardness of shutting something down when your co-founder's livelihood is on the line, why Aussie tall poppy syndrome makes it so hard to just be loud about what you're building, and why he's obsessing over making like 10 people love the product before thinking about scale.

If you've ever built something nobody asked for, this one will hit.

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Riana Shah was in second year uni with one unit of Python… and somehow ended up co-founding Dugong Technologies - an AI-powered drowning detection startup designed to flag incidents in real time.

And then? When the mission started feeling heavier than the company (and the founders) could carry… she made the call most people avoid: she shut it down.

In this episode we get into the messy, real stuff founders don’t post:

• why “don’t start building” is the most underrated advice (and why everyone ignores it)
• how she went from YouTube tutorials → MVP experiments → the brutal reality of data + oceans
• why AI isn’t “build once, deploy everywhere” (lake vs ocean = totally different game)
• the pressure of accelerators, hype, and not wanting to “let people down”
• tall poppy syndrome in Australia vs the no-ceiling ambition she saw in the US
• and how she went from feeling like “just an investor” to becoming an operator again with a bigger North Star: building healthcare impact for Kenya

If you’ve ever started something because it sounded cool… then realised you don’t want to spend 10 years of your life on it, this one will hit.

🎧 Listen now and tell me: when do you push through… and when do you walk away?

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If you’ve ever tried to plan a group trip and watched it fall apart in the group chat… this one’s for you.

In this episode, I sit down with Jay Raval, co-founder of Troopa — an AI-powered travel planning platform built around one simple truth: someone always ends up doing all the work.

Jay walked away from a stable consulting career to build a startup that’s part AI, part collaboration tool, and very human. We talk about what it’s actually like to make that leap — the self-doubt, the imposter syndrome, the messy middle, and the mistakes you only see once you’re in it.

We cover:

• Why quitting consulting “sounded like a stupid decision”
• The reality of building an AI product (and how expensive APIs get… fast)
• Why “build it and they’ll come” is a lie
• Underestimating marketing and distribution from day one
• Being told by a VC not to raise money
• Building in public without becoming a self-help guru
• And why travel planning is emotional, not just logistical

This is a candid, grounded conversation about startups, risk, and learning as you go, not just the highlight reel.

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What actually kills startups? Sometimes it’s not product… it’s timing.

In this episode, I’m joined by Alan Jones: angel investor, startup mentor, ex-founder, and co-manager at M8 Ventures (backing early-stage tech across Australia & New Zealand). Alan’s also the host of Pick My Brain, where founders pitch live and get the kind of feedback that’s equal parts practical and slightly brutal.

We talk about:

• why timing is the variable no one can control (and why it quietly decides so many outcomes)
• Alan’s “life is a side-scrolling shooter” metaphor (and why it’s weirdly accurate for careers + startups)
• what he looks for in early-stage founders — and the red flags that make him pause
• why he says he likes to invest in time (not just money), and how relationship-building scales… until it doesn’t
• why diverse teams are often more resilient than “perfect” monoculture founder duos
• the balance founders need: what to do carefully vs what can be tested fast and messy
• a classic story of moving fast… and sending the wrong cover letters (painful, hilarious, and a real lesson)

If you’re building in a world where AI is speeding everything up — this one will make you rethink what you can control, what you can’t, and how to keep moving anyway.

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What if donating didn’t require a big monthly commitment… or an awkward “do you want to round up?” moment at the checkout?

In this episode I’m joined by Tim Millbank, founder of Change for Change, a fintech-for-good platform designed to turn everyday spending into micro-donations for vetted charities. Think round-up apps, but instead of investing spare change for private wealth… it goes straight to social impact.

Tim shares what it actually takes to build a charity fintech in Australia and the stuff donors and charities don’t say out loud like why people expect 100% of donations to go directly to programs (and why that can backfire).

In this episode, we cover:
- What Change for Change is and how round-up donations work
-  Building a fintech with a non-technical background (and bootstrapping reality)
- Charity fundraising channels, donor psychology, and the “emails every week” problem
- The iOS/App Store barrier (and why they refused to become a charity just to list)
- The pivot to a progressive web app (PWA) and the user-experience tradeoffs
- Why fintech + charity = innovation… but also hard mode

Tim’s biggest lessons on MVP, product-market fit, and doing impact work sustainably

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Nick Hazell raised $180M building V2 Food, Australia’s market leader in plant-based protein, before exiting and turning his focus to an even bigger climate problem.

Now the founder of Algenie, Nick is betting that algae biomanufacturing could one day compete with crude oil and become a scalable solution for food, fuel, and materials.

In this episode, we cover:

• Raising $180M and scaling V2 Food nationally and globally
• What the plant-based meat boom got wrong (and what V2 did differently)
• The real challenges of supermarket listings and category confusion
• Missteps along the way, including expansion into China during COVID
• Why Nick left V2 Food and how the venture market shift changed everything
• The origin story of Algenie and the race to make algae economically viable
• Why climate tech won’t scale unless it makes financial sense

A candid conversation on ambition, failure, and building companies that aim for planetary-scale impact.

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Some founders build products. Others build the future.

In this episode of Fayl Tales, I sit down with Roxanne Bardini-Medio, CEO and co-founder of Geoneon, a climate tech company using geo-intelligence and data science to help governments and communities prepare for natural disasters like bushfires, floods, and deforestation.

Roxanne shares her journey from earth sciences and disaster risk research to building a bootstrapped climate tech startup in Australia, alongside her husband and co-founder, without external investment.

We cover:

• Why disaster preparedness matters more than response
• Bootstrapping a climate tech company through consulting → product
• Balancing scientific integrity with startup speed
• The emotional reality of entrepreneurship and founder resilience
• Working with governments, NGOs, and global partners across Australia, Bhutan, and Laos
• How to understand your risk tolerance and move forward even when failure feels close

This episode is for founders, operators, and anyone interested in climate technology, disaster risk reduction, geospatial data, and mission-driven startups.

🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

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