Taryn Williams’ bio is as long as her hair is short. She founded three businesses: modelling agency WINK Models, booking marketplace theright.fit and social media marketing agency, The Influencers Agency. After exiting businesses two and three in 2023, she launched #Gifted. A sabbatical is on the horizon, but for now, there’s just too much to do.
Williams joins our Zoom from her WINK office in Darlinghurst, Sydney – though being in the office is a rarity for her, she admits. She’s no longer involved in the day-to-day of the commercial modelling agency she launched in 2007 when she was 21-years-old.
Today, WINK Models represents more than 650 models Australia-wide and provides all kinds of talent for commercial, fashion, sports, promotional events and influencer campaigns for brands like Swarovski, MAC Cosmetics, PUMA, Sephora and Unilever.
But back then, it was just her, a laptop and a desk phone. “I was very conscious of, ‘Is McDonald’s going to trust me with their casting brief when I’m 21?’ Are they going to go with a big-name agency that’s been around for 20 years? We had to be exceptional in our service. We had to over-deliver to build that trust.”
About a decade after WINK’s launch, Williams stepped back. She was onto her second venture.
Williams launched theright.fit in 2015 as a marketplace to connect talent with brands and clients, without the need for a traditional agency. (She would also launch a full-service influencer marketing agency, The Influencer Agency, shortly after.)
Theright.fit was Williams’ first foray into the venture capital world. Here, she raised $2.5 million from two capital raises led by Airtree Ventures and two international venture capital firms.
“It was totally daunting, especially as a business that was self-sustaining and cashflow-positive,” she says. “We’d always had month-on-month growth, so we would invest back into the business and hire more staff … Raising capital was the completely opposite of that. It was saying, ‘I’m going to burn money and try to prove an idea and hope for the very best, with just a financial model and a strategy. It’s incredibly intimidating.”
“You’re very mindful when you raise venture capital that you’ve made a commitment to shareholders that you will deliver something, whatever the cost.”
Taryn Williams, founder and CEO
Raising capital is one thing, scaling a business is another. For Williams, she says she had to get out of her own way. “You can be your own hindrance or bottleneck if you want to be across everything and not want to delegate. You need to ask for help.” Fortunately, she had a strong network of mentors and advisors.
By 2022, six years after raising capital, theright.fit averaged 45% revenue growth per annum, and client growth of 53% per annum. Over 19,000 companies were registered to the marketplace, and more than 470 brands (including Qantas, Canva and Koala) and 150 agencies (including Havas, Ogilvy and M&C Saatchi) were actively using the marketplace in the first-half of FY22. Williams was ready to exit.
“I really wanted the business to grow further internationally, so we were looking for a partner that had international expansion opportunities,” she says. She’d also fallen victim to what she calls “struggle porn”.
“I’d been at the real hustle end of entrepreneur life for 15 years. It was like, you work super hard, you work through the nights, weekends. That’s just startup life and you kill yourself for it. The era of Instagram quotes and I just thought I had to be that way. And also, you’re very mindful when you raise venture capital that you’ve made a commitment to shareholders that you will deliver something, whatever the cost. It took me getting the business to be in a fantastic position to say, ‘It’s time for me to take a step back’.”
In April 2023, Williams says she successfully exited theright.fit and The Influencers Agency. The sabbatical was supposed to begin. Except it didn’t.
In 2022, Williams had a problem. As an influencer herself, and from her dealings with the influencer marketing industry, she knew influencers would often receive unsolicited gifts from PR agencies they didn’t need. She felt guilty. “I didn’t need this stuff,” she says. Or she did need something, but not what she got. “It was really unstructured – it made no sense.” And when she completed her exits from theright.fit and The Influencers Agency in 2023, she saw an opportunity to launch the solution: an app called #Gifted.
The app, which has a Shopify integration, ratings, reviews and user-generated content, aims to connect influencers with gifted products. Brands can choose a product from their Shopify store, create a gift card, event or experience they want to give, upload photos and wait for a match from influencers. The influencers tell the brands what they’re willing to do in exchange for the gift, and the content rolls in.
“There was a need for it, and it was really in my wheelhouse. I wanted to see if I could apply all of the things I’ve learned through my journey and see how different it was the second time around. It was not the idea – I was supposed to take time off – but it was ready for launch. It seemed crazy to hold it any longer.”
This time, Williams says she’ll be involved in a different way. Currently, #Gifted is hiring for CEO, which is already a change for Williams, who normally takes the top job at her companies. She’s hired good – and hired early. She’s offered equity positions to increase employees’ investment in the success of the business.
“And I’m much clearer on where I add value – and where I don’t.” For now, a sabbatical is on hold. But the larger goal moving forward is to have a portfolio of interesting projects, surrounded by great founding teams. “Hopefully that’s a healthy, happy, balanced life, peppered with some interesting, stimulating commercial projects.”
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