Fayl Tales

Loveth Ochayi
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  • Entrepreneurship
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"failing" is a normal part of building, especially when you're at the frontier of great innovation. so i sit down with founders and investors and get into the messy version of their story: the pivots, the near-misses, mistakes and everything usually edited out. and i break down jargon and deep dives into the things nobody explains properly.

  1. 3h ago ·  Video

    friendster v myspace v facebook

    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 Follow us on all platforms! Instagram ~ @fayltales Tiktok ~ @fayltales  LinkedIn ~ @fayltales

  2. Aug 24 ·  Video

    hangovers are a business opportunity ~ Tim O'Sullivan

    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 Follow us on all platforms! Instagram ~ @fayltales Tiktok ~ @fayltales  LinkedIn ~ @fayltales

  3. Aug 17 ·  Video

    two rejections, one pivot, $3.5m ~ Cordelia King

    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 Follow us on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fayltales/ 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  Follow us on all platforms! Instagram ~ @fayltales Tiktok ~ @fayltales  LinkedIn ~ @fayltales

  4. Aug 10 ·  Video

    maggots, robots and aussie's most underfunded startup ~ Ryan Woodcock

    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 Follow us @fayltales on all platforms! And follow Loveth @lovethochayi on LinkedIn and instagram Annnddd you can find Ryan Woodcock on LinkedIn #startuppodcast #climatetech #founderstory #startupfailure #australianstartups Follow us on all platforms! Instagram ~ @fayltales Tiktok ~ @fayltales  LinkedIn ~ @fayltales

  5. Aug 3 ·  Video

    startup vs business, what's the difference?

    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 Follow us on all platforms! Instagram ~ @fayltales Tiktok ~ @fayltales  LinkedIn ~ @fayltales

  6. Jul 27 ·  Video

    fired from his own company. twice. built 4 unicorns anyway ~ Kamran Elahian

    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 Follow us on all platforms! Instagram ~ @fayltales Tiktok ~ @fayltales  LinkedIn ~ @fayltales

  7. Jul 20 ·  Video

    he quit vc to build a city for australia's best founders ~ Akshat Agarwal

    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 Follow us on all platforms! Instagram ~ @fayltales Tiktok ~ @fayltales  LinkedIn ~ @fayltales

  8. Jul 13 ·  Video

    the vc pulling back the curtain on why founders fail ~ Nina Wöss

    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 Follow us on all platforms! Instagram ~ @fayltales Tiktok ~ @fayltales  LinkedIn ~ @fayltales

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About

"failing" is a normal part of building, especially when you're at the frontier of great innovation. so i sit down with founders and investors and get into the messy version of their story: the pivots, the near-misses, mistakes and everything usually edited out. and i break down jargon and deep dives into the things nobody explains properly.

Information

  • Creator
    Loveth Ochayi
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    52
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Fayl Tales
  • Show Website
    Fayl Tales