Fayl Tales

Carlos Santini grew up in rural Brazil where his mum saved up surgery money to buy him his first computer at 13. He spent his teenage years fixing computers for free at a local shop just to learn. At 23 he landed in Sydney with three months of cash, barely any English and drove chicken delivery trucks from Sydney to Canberra to survive. Carlos eventually built a consulting agency, got clients like Optus, then lost his business partner and started again from scratch on Upwork. At one poi...

Ride sharing. Do you assume that Uber invented ride sharing? Well you would be wrong (as I was). Sunil Paul and Homobiles were the pioneers. Joining me is Kush Patel, one of the most ruthless founders I know. We get into 👇: ★ Sunil Paul, the man who invented ride sharing in 1997 ★ How Zimride went from a Zimbabwe-inspired carpooling app to becoming Lyft ★ Why Uber started as a luxury black car service ★ The $500 per driver signup bonus, the mass cancellation campaigns and Uber’s 14 company...

Simon Crerar is the son of a fifth generation printer in Edinburgh. He got his first job at The Times of London in 1999 when they launched their very first website. Moved to Australia for love. Then became the founding editor of BuzzFeed Australia. He built it into a hundred person newsroom, won a Cannes Golden Lion, broke major political stories, hired Australia’s first Indigenous affairs reporters before the ABC did, and was making nearly $10 million in revenue. Then Facebook changed the al...

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 throu...

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 less...