In 2019, Dany Milham walked away from the company he had built. His father had been diagnosed with stage-four cancer, and Milham went home to Byron Bay to look after him for a year.
The company was Koala, the mattress brand he had started four years earlier. Milham was born in Byron Bay, swapped surf life for computers, and, by one account, founded his first startup around 13. Mitch Taylor, his co-founder, had once coached him in under-14s rugby. The two worked out the Koala idea while surfing off a quiet beach south of Yamba.
Milham, having left, started Milkrun, a ten-minute grocery delivery business backed by Tiger Global, AirTree and Atlassian's co-founders.
The model was simple and slightly cheeky: compress a foam mattress, put it in a box, sell it online, and make the marketing impossible to ignore. Early marketing showed off how little the bed moved when one sleeper shifted. Backed in part by Australian cricket captain Steve Smith, the business turned over more than A$1m in under three months in 2016. It added Japan in 2017 and later sofas and furniture.
Then came the unglamorous part. In 2020 some manufacturing moved to China, which drew public criticism. An IPO planned for 2022 was abandoned. Milham, having left, started Milkrun, a ten-minute grocery delivery business backed by Tiger Global, AirTree and Atlassian's co-founders. Milkrun collapsed.
What the headlines did not say was what came next. After Milkrun and the loss of his father, Milham came back to Koala in 2024 as chief executive, taking over a company that had lost a co-CEO the year before. He has said Koala has always been his life's work.
The second act worked. Koala expanded into the US and UK, turned profitable, and on 31 March 2026 listed on the ASX at A$3.40 a share. The float raised A$68.1m, of which A$20m was new capital and the rest came from existing holders selling down. Taylor sold about A$8.3m. Milham sold none. The company forecast revenue near A$332m for FY26.
Asked about the listing, Milham said they had not done it with that goal in mind.
For founders, the telling choice is the one that looks like a loss at the time. He left for a reason money could not fix, and the company he came back to was still his.