Fayl Tales

Dr Sam Donegan is a medical doctor turned AI founder and the creator of SupportSorted, one of Australia’s fastest-growing digital health startups. In this candid episode, Sam opens up about his leap from medicine to healthtech, co-founder breakups, VC pressure, burnout and rebuilding. He shares what he got wrong at his first startup, Fora (validate before you build, GTM > perfect UI), what most...

Product dies where onboarding breaks. Fintech product adviser, founder and podcast host Ray Yee shares Buy Now Pay Later lessons, audits without the blame game, scaling teams as risk increases, and why FastlaneIQ is helping charities modernise payments.  You'll learn: Why “progress = happiness” in onboarding How to run low-risk experiments regulators can live with The people problem behind ri...

Anton Roe thought he was doing everything right - growing fast, hitting targets, building teams. But somewhere along the way, things broke. People started leaving. The board lost confidence. And Anton had to face the kind of feedback no one wants to hear. In this episode, he opens up about what it’s really like to lead through failure, and how those moments reshaped his approach to leadership, gro...

At 15, Michael Reitzenstein was already selling games. By 21, he’d helped build one of the first web-game businesses with in-game payments - pulling in thousands per day - while hiring fast, navigating co-founder tensions, and learning on the fly from an island off Auckland. In this Fayl Tales episode, Michael opens up about: Early wins and why product-market fit isn’t passion The dangers of scali...

In this episode, entrepreneur and technologist Dietmar Gombotz shares the story of founding UGP Materials , a spin-out built around a novel high-performance polymer with a greener, water-based production process. Early traction with aerospace partners and major corporates suggested a clear path forward - until COVID hit, timelines stretched, and co-founder dynamics shifted. Dietmar opens up about:...

 In this episode, we sit down with Katja Lisanskaya, a talented software engineer and creative thinker, who shares the story behind Everent , her ambitious peer-to-peer tenting platform for everyday items. Katja rapidly built a sleek, functional product, but soon discovered a hard truth many creators face: a great solution doesn’t matter if it’s not solving the right problem.  Follow us on all pla...

Dieter Rappold has been at the forefront of the digital and startup scene for over two decades - as a serial entrepreneur, business angel, and founder of one of the DACH region’s largest independent agencies. In this episode, we dive into Value Lab , his venture aimed at solving Europe’s SME succession crisis. Dieter also reflects on the growth engine behind Speedinvest Pirates and why taking risk...

Krisztina Szarvas always knew she wanted to build something of her own—but she didn’t expect to take over a family medical business while caring for a newborn. In this episode, she shares how that unexpected challenge shaped her as a founder and led to her next big venture: rethinking respiratory machines during the pandemic. It’s a story of resilience, rapid learning, and turning vision into tang...

What happens when two industry heavyweights—one from high finance, the other from cutting-edge tech—join forces to create a revolutionary startup? In this episode of Fayl Tales , I sit down with a guest who has worn some of the most prestigious titles in finance: Vice President at Morgan Stanley, Director at Merrill Lynch, and a guiding force behind multiple IPOs. Together with a tech visionary, h...

 In this debut episode of Fayl Tales , I sit down with Nasib Fathi, co-founder of AristoQuant, a startup that aimed to disrupt the hedge fund industry. While pursuing his Master’s in Finance, Nasib and his team quickly gained interest, built a team of over 10 volunteers, and pivoted multiple times in just a few months. But in their rush to shake up the industry, they realized they had taken on too...