By CHARLOTTE GRIFFITHS, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, MAIL ON SUNDAY Published: 00:16 BST, 28 September 2025 | Updated: 17:07 BST, 14 October 2025
Supermodel Lily Cole has scrapped her gift-giving social network more than a decade after it drew criticism for taking £200,000 of taxpayer cash.Cambridge graduate Ms Cole, 37, has admitted feeling ‘less of an activist right now’, having set up the gift-exchange website Impossible in 2013.The site allowed people to post ‘wishes’ for the services or objects they needed – such as dog-walking or household items – and for others in their community to fulfil those requests for free.Ms Cole stated on her website: ‘Impossible... grew out of the idea that technology could be used to grow community through the gift economy, which the UK Government says it already bigger than GDP. After operating for several years and serving over 100,000 users around the planet, the platform is now closed.’Despite Ms Cole’s fortune then being estimated at £7million, the firm – described at the time as a ‘cash machine that printed wishes’ – was handed government backing from a now-defunct fund administered by innovation quango Nesta, sparking outrage from campaigners and politicians who branded the grant ‘utterly absurd’.Impossible also received funding from Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and was even taken on tour to the US as an example of British entrepreneurial flair. Cambridge graduate Lily Cole, 37, has admitted feeling ‘less of an activist right now’, having set up the gift-exchange website Impossible in 2013The Mail can reveal that not only has the Impossible social network since closed, but her company, registered as I Am Possible Ltd, very nearly disappeared altogether.Last week it was served with a compulsory strike-off notice by Companies House, giving it just two months before being struck off the register. In a dramatic turn, the notice was discontinued days later – sparing the firm from closure.The Mail can also reveal that Ms Cole has quietly reinvented the business as an online hub for ‘designers, artists and engineers who try and solve problems and address social issues.’On her newly styled I Am Possible website, she describes the refashioned firm as a ‘purpose-driven innovation group and incubator' that produces films, podcasts, books and magazines.Ms Cole explained in a social media post: ‘Impossible has become I Am Possible… Impossible was always intended as a play on “I’m Possible” and now we are making that more explicit. We are also shifting our online presence to iampossible.com, where we explore the reciprocal, gift-based undercurrents that run through the natural world and much of our reality.’In the wake of the company’s reinvention, Ms Cole admitted she found the pressures of business tough. Speaking on the Conversations With The Lissome podcast last month, she said: ‘Everything felt very heavy and serious and businessy, and I realised I didn’t want to be a business person, I didn’t want to manage companies.’Now based in Portugal with her partner, technology entrepreneur Kwame Ferreira, and their daughter Wylde, Ms Cole says she has stepped back from activism to concentrate on creative work.
