fail ventures is a unique venture studio
We’re
tenacious
innovative
resourceful
fast
Our Ventures
About Us
Founded 2008, we have created 78 new ventures from scratch.
72 have failed and 6 have succeeded.
consistently profitable and cash flow positive since 2011.
The 6 successful business have 85 full time employees around the world and employ thousands through their supply chains and pay millions of dollars of tax each year.
Key Facts
US$560M+
US$15M+
2008
68
27
85
2008
81
The Team
william wolfram started his first business at the age of 13 selling custom built computers to friends and family, later dropping out of school at 15 to run his businesses full time. since then, he has co-founded several profitable businesses. william is ceo at fail ventures, and chairman at trifecta retail ventures and sits on the boards of a number of startups including galton voysey and dealdash.
Katerina Yip has built and launched multiple businesses with varying success - with one in particular going on to become a multi-million dollar brand. Katerina has a law degree from the University of Durham, which comes in handy from time to time.
Ringo wong leads at the helm of a profitable brand that generates millions of US dollars a year, and is Head of E-Commerce at Galton Voysey. Ringo has founded multiple brands and has a track record of transforming and scaling brands into multi-million dollar businesses. Ringo has a degree in Math and Economics from UCLA.
Lari Häkkinen is a prolific business founder, having co-founded multiple extraordinally successful businesses. Amongst other responsibilites, Lari heads up a multi-million dollar brand and is on the board of DealDash, Galton Voysey and Trifecta Retail Ventures, all of which he co-founded.
denise’s adventure with building businesses began at age 15, when Disney sponsored a charity project she created from scratch. since then, she’s worked as a software engineer in shanghai, set up one of the first student run VC funds in the UK with £6M AUM, and built a failed startup that was almost accepted into YC (it’s a long story). denise has a law degree from Oxford.
Nicole created a brand with 0 capital a few years back out of a hobby. This snowballed into being featured in the local scene and stocked at independent stores in the Philippines. Her love for design gave her an opportunity to build unique brands that are authentic, magnetic, and timeless, backed with impactful strategy andmotivated by the fear of being average.
shubham jalan is a serial venture builder who has a deep hunger for knowledge. he is passionate about learning, growing and gaining experience; shubham has founded and built a number of ventures - including water2doorstep - all while completing his bachelor of engineering at hkust in hong kong.
emily has always had a passion for working with people, as a talent scout this comes in handy. she is also a wedding planner for small intimate elopements in scotland and she has a management BSc from the university of st andrews.
Zosia knew that pursuing a career as a talent scout was always something that interested her as the idea of learning about and meeting new people excites her. Completing a degree in Psychology turned out to be useful too. She's always trying to find new ways of being creative which is why in her free time she designs and creates websites from scratch.
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elan is a young and driven venture builder. his curiosity of the world has always led him to question everything, which fuels his passion for business and figuring out how to make things work. he constantly explores new ideas and different ways of doing things, bringing a fresh perspective to every project he undertakes. elan holds a bachelor's in business from northeastern university and a master's in finance from the university of southern california.
oliver is a curious and ambitious venture builder, previously co-founding a crowdfunding platform for small businesses in the united kingdom. with a degree in biochemistry from imperial college london, previous experience in strategy consulting and two levels of the cfa qualification under his belt, he is eager to leverage his varied background into building amazing businesses.
Our Philosophy
Why are we called fail ventures?
Because we embrace failure. We encourage entrepreneurial risk taking and intentionally pursue ideas and ventures that have a high likelihood of failing, otherwise others would have probably already done them. We get better with each new venture we build and learn from each instance. The goal is not to eliminate failure, but to increase our velocity and build more successful new businesses.
What kind of ventures do we focus on?
Anything that makes sense. But we have a particular love affair with speed. We emphasize maximizing learning so we love doing ventures that are quick to launch and know whether they are succeeding or failing, you simply learn more with more iterations.
How do we fail?
We’re on a mission to normalize failure as a healthy part of learning, development and growth. We believe in getting into the arena, failing while daring greatly and picking yourself back up to try it all over again with enthusiasm. When we fail, we fail with absolute honesty and grace. Though we have no qualms with those who need to do so, it is not our operating model to ever use bankruptcy provisions or laws when we fail.
In fact we only use our own equity for building new ventures. We don’t want to raise equity from others for individual ventures and we certainly don’t use debt. Every single employee and creditor has always been paid on time since William started his first business at age 13, and he is proud of the track record and has a moral imperative to maintain that record. Earlier in his career, William raised some equity from outside investors and all investors have made multiple times their money back, something that he takes great pride in. Several years ago William made the decision to not raise any external equity going forwards - we believe operating with our own equity gives us the freedom and flexibility to move fast and fail often.
What is the culture like?
Our team members can be identified by their healthy amounts of intensity, enthusiasm and humility; we are unashamed to be our own biggest fans and the biggest fans of those we work with. We work fast, we work hard and we demand the best from ourselves and from others. We engage in constant debate and self-reflection - some professional and some personal. At our core, we’re a group of people fundamentally obsessed with trying to grow our wealth and ourselves alongside people we value, respect and trust. We respect success and expect others to do so too. If this all sounds appealing to you, you’ll be in good company.
How to Apply to the World's Most Exclusive Venture Builder
Our acceptance rate is 0.05% and successful applicants typically attend at least 5 to 7 interviews before hire. Our cheat sheet below will give you some guidance about what to expect.
All accepted applications start the interview process with a quick 15-minute video call with one of our team members.
15 Min Video Call
All accepted applicants will be invited to a 15 minute video call with one of our team members as the first stage.
Face-to-face Interviews
Most successful applicants usually attend 5 to 7 interviews. Review the cheat sheet below, be prepared, and make sure to ask us questions! This is about finding a great fit for us and for you.
Decision making
If we mutually think that there's a good fit, we'll officially invite you to join the team!
Cheat Sheet
Traits we look for
- Energy and enthusiasm
- Speed of execution (do it today, not tomorrow)
- Ability to change their mind when facts change
- Agility when plans change at the last minute
- Resourcefulness
- Initiative
- Self-reflection and the desire to improve
- Total ownership over everything you do
- Incredibly smart
How do we assess you?
- Are you curious about the world?
- Do you show an interest in us by asking questions that are specific to us and what we do?
- Do you share our holy reverence for success?
- When you make a mistake, can you laugh at yourself and embrace it?
- How do you disagree? Can you engage in heated debate or do you prefer to remove yourself from the situation?
- Are you reflective and self-aware of your own strengths and weaknesses?
- Do you have a love affair with speed? We think in timeframes of days, not weeks or months!
- Are you eager to learn?
- Can you be vulnerable with us and laugh about the silly things we all do together? Vulnerability is one of the most powerful things we have in our toolbox to be able to grow.
Who should not apply?
- Training or formalized development
- A predictable career path
- A conflict-free environment
- Predictable hours or a predictable schedule
What you can expect
- Hands off autonomy
- Access to capital
- Opportunities to start businesses from scratch over and over again
- Big but rewarding challenges
- Really attractive compensation
What you will learn
- Useful tricks to increasing your innovation and creativity
- How to become desensitized to launching and failing over and over again and yet being as excited and passionate as ever in the next thing you are building
- Accounting basics
- Hiring basics
- E-commerce basics
- Tax basics
- Legal basics
- Management basics
- Marketing basics
- Economics basics
- Contract manufacturing basics
What happens after?
After that you may decide to go and run one of the ventures you’ve built as CEO and scale it as an independent company, or perhaps you will want to continue building new ventures.
Maybe you’ll go on to lead your own new ventures team. Or perhaps you want to branch out on your own as an entrepreneur - in that case we will be sad to see you leave but hope you will let us be your first investor!
fail ventures
15th Floor, Connaught Marina, 48 Connaught Road West, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong
fail ventures
15th Floor, Connaught Marina, 48 Connaught Road West, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong
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