She Built That: How Nikki Durkin Bounced Back After Startup Failure

In Australia, Nikki Durkin is kind of a big deal. At 25, she is the co-founder of her third startup Codemakers, has been named one of Sydney Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential People, and was one of the top 3 finalist’s in Cosmopolitan Magazine’s ‘Fun, Fearless Female Of The Year’ Awards.

She founded her first company Kult Kandy at 15, and her second, 99dresses, at 18 and within a couple years was accepted into one of the most prestigious startup accelerators in the world, Y Combinator, located in Silicon Valley. Everything seemed to be going according to plan…ish, until it started not to (sound familiar?).

First, her co-founders left, then the funding she had secured fell through, and while Nikki did everything she could to navigate yet another challenge of scaling a business, it wasn’t enough, and her and her co-founder decided to wind 99dresses down. Hear how she bounced back from failure in this week’s podcast. —Tarah Ferguson