Published: December 4, 2025 at 9:20 am
Zally CEO Patrick Smith has spoken of his ‘regret’ over 11 previous business failures.
The award-winning entrepreneur said he’s been completely ‘open’ about leaving a trail of unpaid creditors earlier in his career following several business failures.
Smith founded Zally three years ago in Manchester and recently moved its HQ to San Francisco as it prepares for a US raise.
The startup is on a mission to help people to authenticate themselves without the need for passwords.
In recent months, Smith has been attracting the sort of attention he probably wouldn’t want.
It started when a newspaper article from his native Norway began to do the rounds, cataloguing 11 of his previous business failures.
It’s important to stress that they date back more than a decade and to a period of Smith’s life that he preferred not to talk to me about and doesn’t go into detail about on LinkedIn
The article sparked a flurry of calls to me and was the subject of much debate in Manchester’s tech ecosystem.
Smith said: “It relates to events from more than a decade ago, which I have been open about and (have) always taken full responsibility.
“Some of the businesses I ran in my early twenties were dissolved, leaving creditors unpaid, which I wholly regret.”