Taryn Williams
Founder & CEO at #Gifted
Taryn Williams is founder and CEO of #Gifted, a Shopify app launched in 2023 that helps brands manage influencer product gifting at scale for clients including Accor Hotels and Estee Lauder. She founded modelling agency WINK Models at 21, and later built talent marketplace theright.fit, which raised $2.5 million from investors including AirTree Ventures before she sold it, along with sister agency The Influencers, in 2023. She spoke on the Perspective X podcast about building and exiting six companies and the personal cost involved.
In their own words
From Taryn Williams: Building and Exiting 6 Companies — and the Cost No One Talks About · Perspective XIdeas are free. The pain is in the execution.
Career
- Now Founder & CEO · #Gifted
- Earlier · Startup Founder · The Influencers
- Earlier · Startup Founder · WINK Models
Sources: forbes.com.au, tarynwilliams.com.au
Key moments
Jump straight to the part of Taryn Williams: Building and Exiting 6 Companies — and the Cost No One Talks About you want.
- 0:00 Cold open: I was 21 when I started Wink
- 4:08 Scouted at 15: modelling as an accidental business education
- 6:21 Starting Wink Models at 21 — fixing a broken, fragmented industry
- 9:04 Building the first tech product (and the trap of gold-plating instead of an MVP)
- 12:21 Launching The Right Fit and raising capital from Airtree
- 17:56 How big Wink and The Right Fit actually grew
- 19:34 Running multiple companies at once — and stepping fully out of Wink
- 22:13 #Gifted, Notable and Online Model Academy: every year, birth a new child
- 28:27 Why it isn't the Taryn Williams show
- 31:37 The 2023 exits: running a formal process and the transition
Connections
Spot something wrong? Suggest a correction Updated 25 September 2026
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