What do you believe in today that you didn’t believe in before you started Tailify?

People are everything. I’ve come to realise that behind anything extraordinary is simply extraordinary people. 

Who has been the most influential person in your life and why?

Good question, and one that I’ve been trying to figure out for a while. Nature vs nature and all that jazz. Most likely my parents have had the largest influence on me by default. However, looking at myself now, I can retrace every good trait (the few that there are) back to a myriad of different people that I’ve fortunately encountered along the journey of life. 

It serves as a good reminder of the fact that the people around me, online and offline, are the ones who are shaping who I become.

What is your superpower?

Optimism.

I’ve always had an unwavering sense of it. For which I’m incredibly grateful. Probably because I’ve been lucky to not face any hardship strong enough to overwhelm it. 

I now ended up googling the word optimism to dig a bit deeper, and found a decent quote from Churchill - "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."

A bit cliche quoting Churchill, but hey, who cares.

What does the word “Influence” mean to you?

In its simplest form, influence is having an impact on someone else’s thoughts, feelings or behaviour. 

But to go a bit deeper, I personally view influence as energy, as a force. And actually, my view on it flipped recently. From thinking of influence as an applied force to thinking about it as a gravitational force. 

We as people gravitate towards what gives us energy. The more value you create, the more people want to listen. A bit like a tree extending its roots towards water and minerals. 

On this one, I’ll leave you with two questions. What type of people do you gravitate towards? And what type of people gravitate towards you?

You are one of the founders of Tailify. In short, tell us how and why you decided to start Tailify? 

Curiosity.

Ok, that might be a bit too short of an answer. I’ll expand. As a curious individual, I tend to gravitate toward curious people. So I gravitated towards my co-founders at university. Our curiosity started noticing how the emergence of Tumblr and Instagram allowed anyone to put their creativity out into the world, and thus inspire, entertain, educate (read: influence). And if what they were putting out was good, people started gravitating towards them and following them. We believed this simple mechanic, a decentralised network of people, where we choose who to follow, was the beginning of something big. Something that would change the way the world of media, commerce and brands. And more importantly, change the way we as people positively influence ourselves and others to become who we are supposed to be.

Describe the ‘Typical Talifyer’

We are a bunch of cold headed and warm-hearted human beings that want to influence positively on ourselves and everyone around. We believe that with the right people and the right attitude, anything is possible. We believe in doing better every day. And we believe in doing the right thing, for the long term. And while doing so, have the vulnerability to admit when we’re wrong, which we often are, and have the courage to change. We fall, fail, laugh, learn and grow on our shared and individual journeys towards our full potentials.