Our Story
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We’ve never had a perfectly linear entrepreneurial journey.
Alongside our careers and family life, we’ve continually experimented with businesses, projects and ideas that interested us.
Some became businesses. Some remained experiments. Some taught us quickly that we needed to move in another direction.
We value that process.
2021 — SFL Media
2021 — SFL Media
SFL Media began as a TikTok-focused social media marketing business.
TikTok was rapidly changing how businesses and creators reached audiences, and we wanted to understand the platform by actually working with businesses rather than only studying it from the outside.
We worked with approximately five early clients for free while learning, testing different approaches and building experience.
2022 — First paying client
2022 — First paying client
We converted that experience into our first paying client.
The business later closed and, over time, we chose not to continue actively growing SFL Media.
It was a small business, but it gave us practical experience with finding customers, delivering a service, working with social platforms and understanding the challenges small businesses face when trying to reach people online.
2025 — SFL Coaches
2025 — SFL Coaches
A few years later, we experimented with another idea: SFL Coaches.
The concept combined experience in leadership, business and personal development with the goal of helping small-business owners and leaders grow intentionally.
It was another opportunity to test an idea, build something from scratch and learn where our strengths and interests were evolving.
2026 — RoaR
2026 — RoaR
Malaki is now building RoaR, a social content platform designed around user agency.
The idea grew from years of observing how social platforms influence behaviour, how creators respond to incentives and how product design shapes what people consume.
Rather than trying to remove algorithms or reject social media entirely, RoaR asks a different question:
What would social media look like if we deliberately designed more of the experience around the interests of the user?
That question is now being turned into a working product.
Why SFL?
Why SFL?
SFL comes from our combined family names:
Southey — Faoagali — Latu.
When we married, combining our surnames represented the family we were building together.
Over time, SFL also became the name attached to many of the entrepreneurial ideas we’ve explored—both together and individually.
The businesses have changed.
The willingness to keep building, learning and trying things has remained.
Teagen SFL
Teagen SFL
Teagen has been part of many of the ideas and conversations behind SFL over the years and brings a strong perspective on people, family, creativity and everyday customer problems.
She has contributed feedback and ideas across a number of SFL projects while pursuing her own interests and responsibilities.
SFL reflects the entrepreneurial journey Malaki and Teagen have shared together, although RoaR is currently founded and led by Malaki.
Malaki SFL
Malaki SFL
Malaki is an engineer, project controls professional and entrepreneur with experience working across large infrastructure, resources and construction projects.
Much of his professional career has involved understanding complex systems, improving processes, working with stakeholders and helping teams make better decisions.
Outside of his professional career, Malaki has consistently explored entrepreneurship.
His experience includes property investing, social media marketing, business coaching and, more recently, software product development.
He is currently the founder of RoaR, a social content platform designed to give users greater agency over what they consume.
Despite not coming from a traditional software engineering background, Malaki has used AI-assisted development tools to build and iterate on the first working version of RoaR.
His approach to entrepreneurship is simple: build, test, learn and continue improving.
Malaki is currently focused on building RoaR.
What we believe
What we believe
We believe good ideas become useful when they are tested in the real world.
We believe failure is often information.
We believe businesses should ultimately improve the lives of the people they serve.
And we believe entrepreneurship is less about appearing successful and more about continually learning how to build something people genuinely value.
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