In 2026, the biggest beauty brand in the world didn’t buy the ad break. It bought into the story itself, and the campaign wrapped around Prime Video’s Legally Blonde prequel is the most complete picture I’ve seen of what replaces the wedge. Not an ad next to the culture. A brand written into the culture, with a checkout attached.

Quick disclosure, because you know I do this: I hosted the Sydney launch, retail media is part of my day job, and yes, I interviewed a chihuahua named Bruiser Woods in a professional capacity. Park all three. The campaign is the story, and it would be even if I’d watched from the cheap seats.

The anatomy of the thing

The script layer. L’Oréal Paris products appear inside the episodes: Colour Riche Lipstick, Voluminous Mascara, True Match foundation. The detail that separates craft from clutter: all three were genuinely on shelves in 1995, when the show is set. A teenage Elle Woods reaching for Voluminous is period-accurate production design, not a paste job. L’Oréal Paris CMO Georgia Hack calls authenticity “our primary filter: if an integration feels like a commercial interruption, the modern consumer immediately tunes out.” That’s the bar now: survive the fandom’s scrutiny.

The casting layer. Lexi Minetree, the lead, is a L’Oréal Paris ambassador in real life. Character, actress and brand share a spine, and you cannot media-plan your way into that. Proof she was always the right call: her audition. The open call asked for two scenes and a 30-second slate. Instead: “It just kind of hit me that I had to recreate her Harvard admissions video, because I was like, what’s the most extra thing I could do? That’s what Elle Woods would do. She would make this a whole event.” She shot it at home, her mum reluctantly assisting, and Reese Witherspoon delivered the yes in person, so deadpan Lexi briefly thought she was being rejected. A girl who understood, before she even had the job, that the content IS the pitch. Of course she’s the face of this campaign.

The money layer. Around the show sits the machinery: co-branded pre-rolls, tune-in ads, custom TVCs and shoppable formats inside Prime Video, one creative world across ten markets, all of it able to land a viewer on a branded L’Oréal Paris store on Amazon. Fall for the character, want the lipstick, buy the lipstick, never leave the building. The distance between a feeling and a purchase, which advertising has spent a century trying to shorten, is now a few clicks inside one platform, and every step reports back. Swisse bought the local version for their Ultivite multivitamins, proof the machinery scales down as well as up.

The culture layer. Off-platform, Maximum Effort (yes, Ryan Reynolds’ agency) built the US campaign around Elle Woods as “the original GRWM girl”, era-appropriate video diaries and all. In Sydney, our version of that thesis was the get-ready-with-me suite I hosted at the Ivy Penthouse: a room full of creators being styled hours before the party, every chair filming. The launch didn’t have content. The launch was content.

And my favourite object of the year: retro Elle VHS tapes with L’Oréal Paris products hidden inside. A VHS tape. As an activation. In 2026. Half the room needed the format explained to them. I would die for that tape.

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This is structural, not a stunt

If Elle were an isolated experiment, it would be a cute case study. It isn’t. Two months earlier, the same playbook ran on The Devil Wears Prada 2: a L’Oréal Paris campaign with Kendall Jenner and Simone Ashley, a staffer handing Jenner a Colour Riche lipstick with the line “make yourself presentable.” Hack has named the whole strategy “Beautytainment” and describes deals like this as a way to “acquire equity in a cultural IP.” Business of Fashion is asking whether Elle is the new blueprint for product placement. Wrong tense. It’s the blueprint’s second print run.

The rest of the market is sprinting the same direction with less grace. Emily in Paris scripted placements now go for 500,000 to a million euros each. Jake from State Farm just appeared as an actual character in a Netflix series. Brands aren’t buying adjacency to stories anymore. They’re auditioning for roles in them, and the difference between the clumsy version and the Elle version is the difference between renting culture and being cast in it.

Now the number that should stop every Australian marketer mid-scroll. Retail media is the fastest-growing ad channel in this country, hitting $2.3 billion in 2026, and WPP forecasts it will overtake ALL of television advertising here by 2028. Television. Seventy years of the industry’s main event, about to be outspent by the shelf. Amazon alone is tracking toward roughly $85 billion in ad revenue this year, with 315 million people now watching ad-supported Prime Video globally, more than 5 million of them here every month. And the show doing the heavy lifting? Number one on Prime Video worldwide, number two in the US within a day, season two ordered before episode one aired.

I put the why to the two people who built the local execution. Willie Pang, who runs Amazon Ads ANZ, points to the fandom math: Amazon’s research shows passionate fans are 55% more likely to recall brand presence than disengaged viewers. Fandom isn’t a soft metric. It’s the multiplier. “That emotional connection between fans and content is precisely what drives commercial outcomes for brands,” he told Inside Retail.

His framing is the cleanest summary of this whole piece: “The most powerful brand connections happen when you meet audiences in an authentic and natural way. From cultural storytelling to shoppable moments, brands can now move audiences seamlessly from inspiration to action.”

Then there’s Chris Wilson, Head of Brand Innovation ANZ, whose Brand Innovation Lab dreamed up the VHS tapes and the whole creative world of the launch. From the outside, a deal like this looks like it fell out of the sky fully formed. I asked him where it actually began.

“It all starts with audience signals. We can see what people are browsing, buying, and of course watching. And we could see that L’Oréal Paris’s audience would love to be a part of this. So we brought them in.” The fit everyone calls iconic wasn’t a hunch. It was in the data before it was on a rooftop.

His placement-versus-storytelling distinction is the line I’ll be repeating in meetings all year: “Brand storytelling starts when we’re actually adding something to the story. A brand shouldn’t come in and just be an ad placement. It should actually be adding to the experience.” That’s why L’Oréal Paris makeup artists were working the room instead of a logo wall. His creative lesson from the whole campaign, after formally acknowledging that bringing team fluffy and chihuahuas together is always perfect (Bruiser was in attendance, this is journalism): “Really start with those audiences. Once we had that, everything else starts to naturally come together.”

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Steal this, at any budget

The Elle campaign is a hundred-million-dollar machine, but the logic works at every size. Three moves.

Buy alignment, not interruptions. An ambassador who genuinely uses your product beats a celebrity renting your logo, whether that’s Lexi Minetree or a micro-creator with 8,000 followers who already loves what you make. The fandom data above is why: aligned attention compounds.

Shorten the distance between the feeling and the checkout. When someone falls for your brand in your content, at your event, in the group chat, count the steps to purchase. Every step is leakage.

Build the measurement in from day one. “We can’t track brand” is officially a dead excuse. If a mascara in a 1995-set dramedy can be attributed through to a conversion, so can your pop-up, your podcast and your newsletter.

And because this community shares its cheat codes: the machinery has a front door. The Brand Innovation Lab Chris leads exists to dream these partnerships up with brands, and his advice for Aussie brands wanting in: “Reach out to your sales rep. Reach out to us, and let’s start talking about it.” The audience signals already exist. The question is whether your brand is in the conversation.

Advertising isn’t a thing that happens between the content anymore. It IS the content, with a receipt.

So, one question for every founder and marketer reading this: in five years, when the ad break is a museum piece, what role will your brand have earned in the stories your customer actually cares about? Background extra, lead, or not cast at all?

Brooke x

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Instead it kept throwing itself over my shopping. Pop-over after pop-over, always in the way, never earning the interruption. I kept waiting for the moment of value. It never came. Stranger still, nobody else seemed to find it either. Not one “girls, this found me the dress for $40 less,” especially not in Australia. The only Phia news that ever reached me was funding news. When a product’s word of mouth is entirely about its cap table, that’s a tell.

Before we go further: this is not a dunk. Two young women built a consumer app, raised real money from serious funds, and got 1.5 million people to install it. I know how rare that story is, I spend my life trying to make more of them exist. But this week they landed in the worst news cycle of their lives, and the lesson is bigger than Phia. The product was never good. That was the signal.

For anyone who missed the hype: Phia is a browser extension that combs the internet while you shop, comparing prices across retail and secondhand to surface the right buy at the right moment. On paper, one of the most exciting startups you could back in the age of agentic commerce. Under the cover, an affiliate marketing business. Hold that thought.

The search was rudimentary. The price comparisons were often just wrong. App Store reviewers said out loud what I was thinking: “essentially a worse version of Google Shopping.” And yet the company kept getting more valuable. An $8 million seed. A $35.5 million Series A at a $185.5 million valuation, led by Notable Capital, Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, with Kris Jenner, Hailey Bieber, Sydney Sweeney and Khloé Kardashian on the cap table. 1.5 million users. 9,600 retail brand partners.

A product that mediocre doesn’t become worth $185.5 million on what it does for the user. The value had to be coming from somewhere else. This week, Bloomberg offered an answer.

What the investigation alleges, fluff-free

On July 9, Bloomberg published an investigation, backed by testing from affiliate-fraud researcher Ben Edelman (remember that name) and rival Capital One Shopping. In plain English:

Phia makes money through affiliate marketing, the deal underneath every “free” shopping tool: a publisher recommends a product, a user clicks, the user buys, the retailer pays a commission. The one non-negotiable rule is that the click is real. In Edelman’s words, the rules don’t allow fake clicks, simulated clicks, imaginary clicks or hypothetical clicks.

The investigation alleges Phia was faking the click. Shop at a retailer with Phia installed, even if you got there on your own, and the app could open a hidden tab and fire its own affiliate link without you touching anything. At checkout, its code could take credit for a sale it did nothing to create. In one Bloomberg test, clicking a Wirecutter link to Nordstrom triggered a background tab that swapped Wirecutter’s affiliate credit for Phia’s.

The industry calls it cookie stuffing. Any girl who’s worked a commission retail floor knows it by another name: the assistant who never served you leaning over the register to punch her staff number into your sale.

The fallout was fast. Impact.com, one of the biggest affiliate platforms going, suspended them. Phia told Bloomberg it was a bug in “a recent release,” now fixed. Bloomberg verified the fix.

And that would be the end of the story, if the receipts agreed with the word “recent.” Or the word “bug.”

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The part that made me sit back in my chair

Edelman published his full technical breakdown, test videos, code and network traffic included. This is where “unfortunate bug” gets hard to sustain.

→ Per his findings, the behaviour was a named, built feature: enable_coupon_auto_drop. It does what it says, drops the affiliate link with no user action. You don’t accidentally write a feature, name it, and ship it.

→ It shipped in December 2025 and ran roughly seven months, including the entire holiday season. That’s a lot of releases between “a recent release” and now.

→ It was switched on for iOS users only, off for Chrome. Edelman’s read: most affiliate-fraud testers test on desktop. Whatever the intent, the behaviour lived exactly where the auditors weren’t looking.

→ My personal favourite. Phia’s own telemetry logged an event literally named AFFILIATE_COOKIE_COMPETITOR_DETECTED when a user arrived via someone else’s affiliate link. It saw the other publisher’s claim, wrote it down, then took the commission anyway. It knew. It’s in the logs.

To be fair, and to be clear: these are allegations from Edelman’s testing and Bloomberg’s reporting, nothing court-tested, and Phia disputes the framing. They told industry bloggers Kris and Sarah they’ve been “reviewed and verified as compliant” by their affiliate networks. Edelman’s response, in short: networks can fail to find violations, they can’t certify the absence of them.

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Why “the UX was bad” was the whole tell

The cookie stuffing is the symptom. Here’s the disease.

When a consumer product is free, the business model is the product. Phia’s pitch was Google Flights for shopping: comparison, dupes, discount codes. But the revenue was never coming from you. It comes from retailers paying commissions, so every incentive in the building points at one metric: get the Phia cookie onto as many checkouts as possible. Not “find her the best price.” Not “make search good.” Get. The. Cookie. Dropped.

Suddenly the bad UX makes sense. The search didn’t need to be good. The prices didn’t need to be right. The extension just needed to be installed and present at checkout. The user was never the customer. She was the distribution.

It wasn’t the first signal, either. Back in November, NowSecure found an earlier version of the extension sending snapshots of pages users visited, sensitive ones included, back to Phia’s servers, well beyond what was disclosed. Fortune covered it, Phia updated the product, the news cycle moved on. But look at the shape: data overreach in November, forced clicks in July. Both are value quietly extracted from her browser while she thinks the app is working for her.

My rule: when a free product is bad at its job and still getting more valuable, follow the money until the maths makes sense. It always makes sense. Just usually not in your favour.

We have literally seen this movie

This movie has a prequel with actual prison time. In the 2000s, eBay’s two biggest affiliates were caught stuffing cookies at scale, one after collecting more than $28 million in commissions. eBay went to the FBI. Both men pleaded guilty to wire fraud and served prison time. The researcher who caught them? Edelman. The same man who just spent his July inside Phia’s code.

The modern sequel: PayPal bought Honey for $4 billion. In December 2024, YouTuber MegaLag accused Honey of the exact same two behaviours: hijacking creators’ commissions and standing down for no one. It detonated the category. Honey is still in class action litigation with creators including LegalEagle.

That’s what makes the Phia timeline hard to watch. Honey was the loudest story in this exact category, twelve months before auto_drop shipped. Everyone building a shopping extension in 2025 knew where the line was. The internet had just drawn it in permanent marker.

Now look at who pays, because this is the part that should make you furious. Publishers and creators. Wirecutter has journalists, salaries, actual costs. The girl doing affiliate links in her newsletter has rent. She spent months building the trust that made someone click buy. Phia’s contribution, per the findings, was a background tab.

Sit with the maths. A $185.5 million company with half of Hollywood on the cap table, allegedly taking checkout credit from women earning their first few hundred dollars online. The exact women it was branded for. The industry rule is called “standing down”: when someone else drove the sale, you back off. Every dollar taken by ignoring it comes out of a creator’s pocket, and this community is full of women building exactly that revenue line. This isn’t abstract. It’s your bag.

Don’t file this under American problems either. The same rails run our cashback economy: every ShopBack click, every “shop via the app” bonus is this exact plumbing. We know how fragile the category is, we just lost our homegrown player: Cashrewards, eleven years, two million members, switched off overnight last September in an ANZ restructure. A category built on trust deserves players who protect it. Not ones who treat the rules as optional.

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The agentic elephant in the room

Now zoom out, because this is bigger than one app, and this part is my actual day job.

AI already shops for you. Agentic checkout is live in Australia, with THE ICONIC, Adore Beauty, Bunnings, Kogan and Petbarn signed on. The whole premise: you delegate the click, the comparison, the purchase, to software acting on your behalf.

Here’s the law of that world: whoever holds the payment holds the trust. Old-way shopping distributed trust, you saw the store, the reviews, the price, the checkout, and verified every step with your own eyes. Delegate to an agent and it all collapses into one question: do I trust whatever is executing the transaction? You don’t see the shelf. You don’t see the comparison. You see the receipt.

Checkout stops being plumbing and becomes the relationship. PayPal didn’t pay $4 billion for coupons; it paid to own the moment money moves. UCP fights to keep the retailer as retailer of record for the same reason. It’s also why the Phia allegations are worse than skimming: checkout was the one moment the shopper couldn’t see, the moment she trusted the tool completely, and per the findings, that’s exactly where the value was extracted. The deal broke at its most sacred point.

Phia is the first big trust scandal of the shopping-agent era. Break trust anywhere and you lose a customer. Break it at the payment and you break agentic shopping itself, because delegation only works when the thing you delegate to is provably on your side.

Get the incentive design wrong now, while the category is young, and we’ll automate this exact behaviour at planetary scale and call it innovation. The agents are coming either way. The question is whose side they’re on, and the answer is written in the business model, not the brand campaign.

What I’d actually say to the founders

If Phoebe or Sophia ever read this: the comeback is available, and it’s not a PR strategy. It’s building the boring version of this company. Take credit only for sales you drive. Back off when a creator got there first. Make the product so good the commission is earned, not engineered. It’s slower, it looks worse at a board meeting, and it’s the only version of Phia that deserves the 1.5 million women who installed it.

For the rest of us:

→ If a product is free, work out who’s paying. Their interests steer the roadmap.

→ If a free product is bad at its job and still winning, that gap is information. The UX tells you where the value is flowing.

→ If you earn affiliate income, check your attribution reports from the last seven months, especially the holidays.

→ If you’re building with real money behind you: hot-cap-table growth pressure is exactly when “auto_drop” gets shipped. Decide who you’re building for before the Series A decides it for you.

The girls in that app deserved a product that was actually for them. The whole point of building for women is that she’s the customer, not the inventory.

So, my question. What’s in your browser right now that’s free, a bit bad, and worth hundreds of millions, and have you ever asked why?

Reply, I want to know.

Brooke x

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Sources: Bloomberg’s investigation, Ben Edelman’s technical breakdown, TechCrunch on the suspension, TechCrunch on the Series A, Fortune on the data collection, NowSecure’s analysis, Engadget.

It’s been a month since Singapore, which is exactly the right amount of time. The recaps are out, the LinkedIn glow has faded, and what’s left is the stuff that actually stuck. That’s the version you’re getting.

Quick scene-setting for the girls who don’t live in retail: NRF is the National Retail Federation’s Big Show, the largest retail conference in the world, held in New York every January. NRF APAC is its Asia-Pacific edition, held in Singapore in early June, and it’s the biggest retail gathering in our region.

Now sit with two numbers.

New York in January: 40,000 people. Singapore in June: 11,000.

Easy to read that as the little sibling event. The satellite show. The warm-up act. It’s the exact wrong read, and the opening address said why: by 2035, Asia-Pacific overtakes North America as the world’s largest consumption region, with affluent households growing at six times the pace of the rest of the world. The region already gave the world the super-app, social commerce and Singles’ Day while the West was still A/B testing button colours.

The small room is the main event. The big room just doesn’t know it yet.

Quick bias declaration before we go on: I work at AWS, we co-hosted the Aussie delegation and the Retail Safari, and this is literally my day job. Take everything below with that context. The opinions, though, are all mine, and a few of them are not in the corporate pack.

01 — Australia finally got on the bus

The delegation was the bit that made me proudest. Woolies, Myer, David Jones, ALDI, Wesfarmers, THE ICONIC, The Warehouse, Aspar. Australia and New Zealand’s best and brightest retailers, on a bus in Singapore, instead of in a cab downtown New York.

That matters more than it sounds. Australian retail has a default setting: when we want inspiration, we look west. US formats, US playbooks, US conferences. But the growth isn’t west. The consumption boom is north of us, the AI adoption curve is steepest north of us, and the retail formats that will eat our lunch if we ignore them are being built two time zones away, in our region, in our trading hours.

→ So what: if you’re a founder or marketer choosing where to spend your one conference budget or your one research trip this year, the maths has changed. Seoul, Singapore, Bangkok and Shanghai are the field trip now. New York is the rerun.

I’m taking my own advice: I’m doing China in September and I can NOT wait.

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02 — Here’s my note

The content was strong, I want that on the record. The LVMH session with Anish Melwani was the most quoted of the week for a reason: his line that if every customer service agent ends up virtual, “the last customer service agent will work for LVMH.” As AI takes the admin, human interaction becomes the scarce, premium thing. Ten years of “human is the new luxury” talk and he made it a business model in one sentence.

His other idea is the one I want every founder in this community to sit with: the difference between demand and desire. Demand is what customers tell you they want. Desire is the emotion you create in them. “A great brand will come up with products that nobody ever asked for, that yesterday nobody had ever seen before, but today some portion of the audience can’t live without. That’s desire. That’s not demand.” You cannot survey your way to it. You read the moment, back your taste, and make the thing nobody requested. Every founder agonising over another round of customer feedback before shipping needed to hear that.

But I’ve been sitting on this one for a month and it hasn’t softened: I want Asia’s conference to be Asian.

We flew in Europe’s finest, LVMH and Kering, to a room in Singapore, and a good chunk of the agenda was a recap of what already played in New York in January. Meanwhile the most interesting retail on the planet right now is happening in China, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam. Olive Young, the Korean beauty retailer that every Western beauty exec is quietly obsessed with, got a small session that didn’t hit. That’s the brand I wanted an hour with. That’s the brand I flew for.

The best read of the whole week backed me up. Dr Frank Yang’s closing keynote on China was the sharpest thing on any stage: Chinese youth consumption shifting from planned to instant, shoppers trading up from price-performance to price-quality, and the whole market moving from buying goods to buying lifestyle, with emotional, self-pleasing consumption now driving growth. One keynote. I wanted a full day of that, from every hot market in the region.

The gap between what that conference was and what it could be is the same gap I wrote about after Vogue Codes. So close to extraordinary. Give me less of Europe explaining luxury to Asia and more of Asia explaining the future to everyone else.

03 — FOBO, the acronym that followed everyone home

FOMO is dead. The new condition is FOBO: the fear of better options.

KPMG’s Global Head of Consumer and Retail, Isabelle Allen, put it on the table on day one: “The new term is FOBO, the fear of better options. The risk is not just that you invest and get some things wrong. The greater risk is that you wait and fall behind, or get excluded from the party altogether.”

Nobody’s scared of missing AI anymore. They’re scared that whatever they commit to now gets outdone by something cheaper and better next month, so they wait. The tool paralysis is real: every week there’s a new model, a new agent, a new platform someone swears is the one, and freezing starts to feel like the responsible move.

By the end of the week the acronym had quietly upgraded itself into something darker: the fear of being obsolete. And I’m going to plant my flag here, because I think the second definition is the correct one. “Better options” makes waiting sound rational, like you’re a savvy shopper holding out for the sale. You’re not. There is no perfect moment coming, and the option you pick matters far less than the muscle you build using it. The experimenting you do right now, the messy pilots, the wrong first tool, the prompt that didn’t work, is the actual capability. It compounds. Sit out this window because you’re waiting for a better option and you don’t fall behind by one tool, you fall behind by every lesson the tool would have taught you. That’s not behind. That’s obsolete.

The best answer to FOBO on any stage came from FairPrice, Singapore’s biggest grocer. Their “store of tomorrow” runs about nine AI initiatives at once, and they only keep the ones that earn their place against real business metrics. Basket size. Gross margin. Not vibes.

→ So what: this applies whether you’re running a startup or a team inside a corporate. You don’t need the perfect tool. You need small, no-regret bets measured against one real number, and the discipline to kill the ones that don’t move it. The cost of a wrong bet is a lesson. The cost of no bet is your relevance.

04 — Your product data is your shopfront now

This is the section to forward to anyone with a Shopify store, a marketplace listing or a marketing budget.

I told you in the June cap table report that agentic checkout went live in Australia, with THE ICONIC, Adore Beauty and Bunnings feeding product data straight into Google. Singapore was three days of the why. Retail is handing the act of discovery over to AI. Increasingly, a shopper doesn’t search for your product; her AI agent does. And agents don’t browse. They don’t feel a vibe. They don’t look at pictures.

They read data.

Here’s the number that should scare you into action: a Mirakl study of retail websites across the region found an average product-data readiness score of 48 out of 100, with fewer than one in a hundred sites scoring above 80. Myer’s Warwick Blunt was refreshingly honest about it on stage: a dress carried only in evocative marketing copy may never be surfaced for the shopper who wants it, because the agent can’t read “effortless summer elegance.” It can read fabric, fit, occasion, size, stock and shipping speed.

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Roger Dunn’s session gave the week its best line: when discovery, comparison and purchase collapse into a single AI interaction, the brand becomes metadata. His numbers were just as sharp:

→ A Google search averages 3.4 words. A prompt to ChatGPT can run to sixty. Keywords are ice cubes, uniform and mass-produced; prompts are snowflakes, layered with context. The signal is ten times richer, if your data can answer it.

→ Traffic arriving from AI assistants converts at around 11.4%, miles above paid or direct, because that shopper has already done her research.

→ Shoppers trust a retailer’s own AI tools roughly three times more than the big platforms’, and Walmart sees order values rise about a third when customers shop through its agent, Sparky. The retailer’s edge is knowing what’s actually in stock, right now, at what price. The big models don’t.

→ So what: enriching your product data is the least glamorous and highest-leverage marketing job of 2026. Structured attributes, reviews, sizing, stock, shipping. If the AI can’t read you, you don’t exist at the exact moment someone’s ready to buy. For a small brand this is the rare game where you can out-execute a department store with a spreadsheet and a weekend.

05 — The marketing money, and where it’s going

Three sessions, one uncomfortable message for anyone holding a marketing budget.

→ Les Binet, the effectiveness godfather, came with receipts: how much you invest accounts for roughly 90% of the profit marketing generates, and the efficiency of each dollar only about 10%. Since the pandemic, marketers have nudged measured ROI up a few points while actual profitability fell by more. Leaner, and delivering less. His fix: weight spend roughly 60/40 towards brand over short-term activation, and protect share of voice even when the budget conversation gets ugly. And the line to pin above your desk: big brands that imitate small brands become small brands.

→ Adrian Staiti of CAA called time on celebrity badging. Slapping a famous face on a product and calling it a campaign is dead money. Asking what a celebrity costs is, in his words, like asking how long is a piece of rope. The winners start with the story, then find the partner. One Snapdragon x Manchester United announcement did more for awareness than years of paid media.

→ Crafted’s Sarah Nesheim brought the creator maths. Don’t chase virality, manufacture word-of-mouth: activate creators by the hundreds on standardised rates, watch what resonates, then whitelist the winners and run paid under the creator’s own handle so the social proof stays intact. Lo-fi UGC at $0 to $200 a video routinely beats polished brand creative. And measure incrementality, the customers who wouldn’t otherwise have bought, not ROAS.

→ So what: the founder playbook writes itself. A few micro-creators in real relationships beat one expensive celebrity post, brand-building is an investment not a luxury, and the moment your audience feels tricked by fake or AI-made content, the trust is gone for good.

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06 — The safari (hot af, worth it)

Day three we swapped the keynote stage for the streets. The Retail Safari with NORA was thirty-plus degrees, a hundred percent humidity, and we were so, so sweaty. I’d do it again tomorrow. Nothing beats seeing retail in the wild.

The stop worth your attention is New Bahru: the beautifully preserved former Nan Chiau High School reborn as a retail precinct, with more than forty independent, made-in-Singapore, mostly founder-led brands and not a single mass chain. Badminton court markings still on the floor. Every tenant chosen for fit, not for the footfall guarantee. It’s what happens when curation is the actual strategy, and it made every Australian on that bus quietly rethink what a “centre” is for.

FairPrice Finest was the other one: a supermarket with a bar in it, craft beer on tap and meals cooked from ingredients in the aisle you’re standing in. Grocery as a destination, not a chore.

And the thing I personally can’t stop thinking about: single-brand beauty stores in their full expression. Walking into one brand’s complete world is magic, and the discipline is asking what travels. The Prada Beauty spring flower market was the masterclass: the concept worked at full scale in-store and compressed down to a single gondola at the airport. That’s the test of a real retail idea. It survives shrinking.

Honest caveat for the Australian reader: plenty of this won’t copy-paste here. Singapore is six million people in 730 square kilometres; we are sprawl. The density economics that make a New Bahru or a four-visits-a-week grocery habit work are not our economics. Steal the principle, not the format. Curation, participation, hospitality woven into retail. The inspo travels even when the floor plan doesn’t.

07 — A brief intermission about a tiny mic

Sophie and I spent the breaks running around with the tiny mic, trapping executives as they came off stage for LinkedIn content, and it was unhinged behaviour that I refuse to apologise for.

Here’s the surreal bit. Twelve months of doing this across conferences and the tiny mic now gets recognised. Executives I would have died to get five minutes with were coming up to ME saying they like the content and asking to be featured. Build the thing consistently and the room starts coming to you.

And then someone gave me feedback that stung because it was true: “You’re a brilliant journalist in the making. However, you parrot what other people say. Be more opinionated.”

Girl. Noted.

This is the magic of building a personal brand, and why I’ll keep telling every one of you to start. Jobs change, companies restructure, titles get taken off you. The brand is the only thing you take with you. And apparently mine now comes with feedback, which means it’s working.

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Where this leaves us

Every stat from the week points the same direction. The consumption growth is in Asia. The AI adoption curve is steepest in Asia. The retail formats worth studying are being built in Asia. And the biggest retail conference in our region just put Australia’s entire retail leadership on a bus to go look at it, then filled half the stage time with Europe and New York.

Both things can be true. The event was excellent. The event is also one brave agenda away from being the most important retail gathering in the world.

My read: Asia was never coming. It’s been here the whole time, and the only thing that was ever west was our attention.

So: when did you last pay attention to what’s happening in APAC for inspiration instead of America? Reply, I want to know.

Brooke x

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Aussie Angels is Australia’s answer to the serendipity Americans take for granted. The room where founders, operators, corporates and creatives are in the same group chat, and it turns out they needed each other. These are the girls who get it.

I met Jem at Domefest, where she was the headline act back home on Aus soil from London for a moment. The girls collectively lost their mind when she bought out her mum as her special guest for the show. She’s even better in person.

What are you actually building right now? Better habits and muscle. Not particularly sexy, but I’ve been on a real longevity journey this past year after some scary health news. It’s been amazing to see how much the body can adjust and transform on new routines, slowly and then seemingly all at once. I’ve been thinking a lot about myself as a mother and grandmother and how I want to move and feel then, not just look now.

The most unhinged thing you’ve done for your career? Every week I have a ‘shoot your shot’ Wednesday where I send the emails, pitches, articles and DMs to people I’d want to collaborate with in my wildest dreams. I let myself have all the courage and none of the embarrassment for that one day a week, and it’s taught me there’s no shame in asking.

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What are you gossiping about right now? Substack. And the people making their BAG from writing and sharing their thoughts online. I have friends making $100–300k on that platform and they never have to sacrifice their voice, pitch themselves to brands or adhere to someone else’s guidelines. I admire them so much.

The thing you’re most embarrassed to admit? I’m really bad with long-term financial planning. I’m so financially cautious and anxious that I don’t always get my money working for me, even though my mum is literally an economist. Something I need to change this year, that’s for sure.

What do you want the angels to find you for? Science-backed evidence for your 20s and for life. Opinions occasionally, but the research and the empirical evidence for why you feel the way you do always comes first.

When did you realise you’d built a community, not just an audience? My first friendship meet-up. We run these occasionally to get likeminded listeners together, and every single person who came was the coolest person I’d ever met. Smart, talented, motivated, kind. It made me shed a few tears of joy.

What’s something ambitious women are spending too much time on right now? Dating. Most men can’t keep up with ambitious women, or simply don’t want to (someone had to say it). Don’t waste any more of your precious time on a man who has to be a special project. The right person will come along.

→ Where to find her? The Psychology of Your 20s wherever you listen, @thatpsychologypodcast and @jemmasbeg on Instagram, and psychologyofyour20s.com.

Who should we feature next? Reply to this email and nominate an angel we all need to know about.

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Aussie Angels is Australia’s answer to the serendipity Americans take for granted. The room where founders, operators, corporates and creatives are in the same group chat, and it turns out they needed each other. These are the girls who get it.

This newsletter is the highlight reel. The WhatsApp is where we actually live.

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It’s EOFY, tax time, the pointy end of the financial year. Quiet on top, busy underneath: rates held, confidence slipped, the headline raises looked huge, and the real action was in the small cheques. Fluff-free as always: what happened, what it means, and the so what for your money, time and energy.

a quick EOFY confession, because you need to hear it

I spent two days processing expenses and I want you to learn from my pain. I put through $22k of reimbursements I’d let pile up since February. Twenty-two thousand dollars, sitting in a company account instead of mine, earning me precisely nothing. Imagine that in a high-interest account or an ETF the whole time, quietly compounding, instead of decomposing in a folder of receipts because I couldn’t be bothered.

Three tax-time nudges. I’m not an accountant and this is a big-sister yell, not financial advice:

→ Claim expenses monthly, not yearly. Money parked in someone else’s account isn’t working for you.

→ If you run a business, the $20k instant asset write-off is permanent from 1 July, so a considered purchase is worth a chat with your accountant.

→ Book that accountant now. Their July is carnage, the good ones find deductions you never will, and they pay for themselves.

The math is the math: idle money is a decision, usually an accidental one. Right. On to June.

Aussie Angels is Australia’s answer to the serendipity Americans take for granted. The room where founders, operators, corporates and creatives are in the same group chat — and it turns out they needed each other. These are the girls who get it.

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01 - THE MACRO

→ The RBA held the cash rate at 4.35%, its first pause this year after three rises in a row. The cash rate is the dial the Reserve Bank turns to make borrowing cheaper or dearer. A breath, not a turn back down.

→ The twist the headlines missed: reported inflation eased to 4%, but mostly because the petrol discount pulled fuel down. The measure the RBA actually watches, underlying inflation (which strips out volatile stuff like fuel), kept climbing to 3.6%, its highest since late 2024. The number that decides your mortgage is the quiet one, and it’s still going the wrong way. Translation: another rate rise in August is still on the table.

→ Consumer confidence fell to 80.6, a fourth drop this year, with households rating their finances 7.5% worse than a year ago. People are nervous and buying less.

→ Three things change on 1 July: the $20k instant asset write-off becomes permanent for sub-$10m businesses; the fuel-excise relief halves (32c to 16c a litre, about $11 more per tank, then gone by August); and a world-first law bans Coles and Woolworths from gouging on groceries, policed by the ACCC.

→ So what: money is expensive, underlying inflation is still rising, and customers are scared. If you’re building, grow without burning cash. If you’re backing or advising, favour the ones who can. Either way, make the runway (the months of money a business has left) stretch.

Over to you: does the permanent write-off change anything for you, or is it a headline that lands as nothing on the ground? Tell me in the comments.

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02 - THE MARKETS

A quick read on the big markets, because they set the mood your customers shop in.

→ Housing The national home value index posted zero growth in May, its first stall of the cycle, with auction clearances near 50%. Perth, Darwin and Brisbane are still throwing a party; Sydney and Melbourne have gone home early, down 2.1% and 3.2% from their late-2025 peaks. The budget’s proposed cuts to property-investor tax breaks could thin the crowd further.

→ Commodities (the raw stuff we dig up and sell). In Westpac’s June read, gold slipped 2.5% on higher global rates, copper jumped 5.6%, and iron ore ticked up 1%. Oil eased as the US-Iran standoff looked to settle, which should finally take some heat out of petrol and inflation.

→ Retail The twist: even with confidence in the gutter, discretionary spending (the nice-to-haves) actually rose 2.1% in May, led by clothes, cafes and travel. But that's one sale-driven month in a cautious year, Deloitte tips discretionary growth to crawl from 2.5% last year to 0.7% this year. Shoppers are out, but only when there's a deal.

→ ETFs (baskets of shares you buy in one trade, now how most people invest). The local market is on track to pass $400B this year, with over $5B flowing in a month. The every girl is quietly becoming an investor, one automated transfer at a time, buying the whole market instead of picking winners.

→ So what: the average customer’s house has stopped climbing, her petrol relief is fading, and her savings compound in the background. Wealth feels flat and cautious. That’s the mood the whole market is selling into, so value and trust beat hype.

03 - THE CHEQUE-IN

June’s money came shaped like a barbell: heavy at both ends, thin in the middle. A few enormous late rounds, a pile of tiny first cheques, little in between.

→ At the top: Airwallex raised US$320M at a US$11B valuation, up 37%, and Everlab took a $65M Series A for preventive health, with Pat Cummins on the cap table (the list of everyone who owns a slice). The cricket captain. No notes.

→ The spread underneath was wide: QuantX Labs ($7M, defence quantum clocks), DataMasque ($5.6M, realistic fake data so AI can train without exposing real customers), New Energy Transport ($5M, electric trucks), Flyweel ($2.41M, the money layer under ad spend), SavvyWise ($1.56M, AI for Australian tax), and Oscorp ($1.3M, AI robots pulling fire-risk batteries out of recycling).

→ Little guys, big backers: two Queensland teams off to Y Combinator at $700k each, Alloovium (construction AI) and Gutgutgoose (personalised probiotics), plus grassroots-sports teamwear platform Nardo ($1M, with Socceroo Tim Cahill on board).

→ One to watch: Nitrosend’s $700k seed, the Adelaide AI email platform from the Hartley brothers, who sent six billion emails at their last company before selling it. Second-time founders, back in the ring.

📊 Venture capital raised by Australian startups, 2019 to 2026 On track for ~$4.3B if the year holds this pace ($1.8B banked, ~$2.5B more expected). Up on 2025’s $2.9B, still well below the 2021 $6B peak. Source: Dealroom.co, updated 18 Jun 2026.

→ So what: the big funds are piling back into the safe, late rounds, which leaves the early-stage gap wide open. Early is where a community like ours makes the most difference, whether you’re building one of these, backing one, or cheering one on.

04 - THE GIRLS WHO ARE BUILDING

All-women founding teams still get about 2% of the country’s venture capital.

Two. Percent.

→ Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks, Ovum. $4M seed after tripling her valuation, led by Admiralty Capital with Antler, Giant Leap, Brisbane Angels and the Alice Anderson Fund. She started it after doctors dismissed her own chronic migraines, and has built the first dataset that tracks women’s health over time: 60,000+ health insights, 113,000+ AI conversations, and partners already signed in Medibank, Fernwood, Sweat and Menopause Friendly Australia. Lived experience, real data, real distribution.

→ The fix to track: Minderoo put up to $8M into Startmate to back women, where 43% of companies have a female co-founder versus 24% across the industry. That’s what moving the number looks like.

→ So what: she gets backed at the start or not at all. If that 2% ever moves, it’s because someone wrote the cheque early, not five rounds later once she’s “proven” and twice the price.

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05 - THE MARKETING NOTES

Reaching customers split into two lanes this month: the free kind and the paid kind.

→ Earned (attention you don’t pay for): the creator economy took centre stage at Cannes Lions in June, 250+ creators on the ground with their own official track. The quiet admission from brands: they lean on creators because they can’t make enough good content themselves, and creators can. At home it’s heading past $1B this year. The shift that matters: from one-off gifting to ongoing partnerships, and from big names to micro-creators (10k to 100k followers) who convert because their audience trusts them.

→ Paid: retail media is advertising you buy inside a retailer’s stores, app or site. News Australia’s Suddenly launched one and signed BWS, 300+ in-store screens. Woolworths and Coles had this to themselves; now News Corp wants in, which means more ad space and higher costs to be seen.

→ So what: if you’re a founder with little cash, a few micro-creators in a real relationship beat one pricey celebrity post, and beat renting shelf space before you have loyal customers. Earn attention first. Pay for it once the maths works.

06 - THE AI CORNER

Two things to actually know from June.

→ Where the money goes: applied AI beats general AI. Every June raise solved one specific, painful job, Everlab on preventive health, Ovum on women’s health data, DataMasque on safe training data, Oscorp on battery fires. Nobody got funded for vague “AI for everything.” Whether you’re building, backing or betting your career on a sector, that’s the test: one real problem, solved better than a human can.

→ Where the customer goes: agentic checkout went live here, a first for our region. Agentic just means an AI that can act for you, like finding a product and buying it. Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol launched in Australia on 17 June with THE ICONIC, Adore Beauty, Bunnings, Kogan and Petbarn, feeding product and price data straight into Google so people buy inside Search, Gemini, YouTube and Gmail without visiting the shop. The clever part: THE ICONIC stays the “retailer of record,” keeping the customer and the loyalty. It gave up the storefront, not the relationship.

→ So what: discovery is shifting from “rank on Google” to “be readable by the AI.” If a product’s data isn’t formatted for an AI to understand and recommend, it gets skipped at the moment someone’s ready to buy. If that’s your product, or one you back or advise, get the data AI-ready now, while it’s still an edge.

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07 - THE MONTH IN ONE LINE

Expensive money, a flat housing market, a barbell of raises, a femtech that finally got paid, a 2% problem, and an AI doing the checkout. None of it gets fixed by the funds alone. It gets fixed in rooms like this, where the people who build, back, buy and consume actually talk.

See you in the chat 🤍 Brooke x

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Socials: @aussie__angels and @brookekmoody.

I had six tabs open this week that I could not close, and somewhere around the fourth one it clicked. They’re all the same story wearing different outfits. Everyone is spending more and getting less, and we’ve all agreed to call it a good time.

A celebrity gadget that’s all casting, no product. A festival selling human connection while drowning in AI. A 188-year-old department store finally handing a woman the keys to fix what it broke. Two cool-girl brands rattling the tin for cash. A European resale giant that slipped into the country overnight. And a tax-time sale that looks like a party and feels like a budget meeting.

Six stories. None of them connect. Lined up, they tell you exactly where the consumer is right now. Let’s go.

1. Kylie put on the Meta glasses and I nearly bought a pair

Here’s the upsetting part. It worked on me.

I have never wanted smart glasses. Never added them to a cart, never thought they were cool, never once felt them enter the group chat. Then Meta dropped its new line this week, quietly scrubbed the Ray-Ban name off the whole thing, and put Kylie Jenner’s name on the hero pair. The Meta Glasses by Kylie land at AU$629, a clean $160 more than the other two models at AU$469. What’s the extra money for? Almost nothing you can use. A little gem on the lens, a nod to paparazzi flashes. Metal nose pads so your foundation survives. A sparkling chime when you put them on. Kylie’s actual voice as your AI, “rise and shine” included.

And there I was at 11pm, basket open. An hour no good decision has ever been made.

Because the casting is the whole product. The tech is the same kit that’s been sitting there unloved for two years. What changed is who’s wearing them. Kylie’s been on a run: the soft, “real” turn on Jake Shane’s Therapuss (Session 120, the most-streamed episode in the show’s history), the courtside silly-goose era with Chalamet, the slow reveal of an actual personality. The campaign landed on top of all that goodwill and it just worked. No other Kardashian name-slap is moving culture like this right now. Get the casting right and the product barely has to turn up.

Then I get off the bus. Because it’s surveillance tech with a gem on it. The loudest take online this week was that a camera that doesn’t look like a camera should probably be illegal, and they’re not wrong. We say we’re desperate for connection. For IRL. For putting the phone face-down at dinner like grown-ups. And the most desirable object of the week is one more pane of glass between you and the person across the table, quietly clocking everything.

It sold me a more elegant way to ghost the people I’m sitting with.

So what does it say about us that the hottest product of the week is a better-looking way to leave the room without standing up?

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2. Why is everyone suddenly at Cannes

Cannes Lions used to be an industry thing. Agencies, ad men, rosé, rooms I had no real interest in. This year I could not stop thinking about it, and judging by my feed, neither could you.

More than 500 creators worked the Croisette, up from about 400 a year ago. Not the kids’ table “media channels” anymore. Strategic partners, with brands rebuilding the room to seat them.

But the glow-up has a crack right through it. Award entries fell roughly 25%, to 20,050 from 26,900. Leadership is calling it a “reset.” Generous. Last year, winning campaigns had their Lions stripped after agencies got caught using AI to fake the results. So the festival that just tightened its rules to punish AI deception threw its biggest-ever celebration of AI creative tools in the same week. Iconic, no notes.

Here’s the line that stuck. One agent remembered when spotting ad legend Martin Sorrell on the street was the celebrity moment at Cannes. That was the old power map: agencies, networks, holding-company chiefs. This year the room belongs to the people who walk in with the audience already attached, a community, a production style, proof people choose to watch them with no media plan forcing it. The power didn’t shift. It flipped.

Before you throw the parade, though, read what the creators actually said. One told the Washington Post his first Cannes felt like an “I made it” moment, then went honest: “I didn’t feel welcome, to be honest.” Cut in line, talked over, treated like a second-class attendee. So here’s the bit nobody says on a panel: the CMOs want the meeting, and the old guard still resents the dollars walking out the door with people who never paid their dues at an agency. Both things. Same beach.

And the detail I keep turning over. In a week absolutely marinating in AI, the rooms that were actually alive were full of creators talking about human connection, real storytelling, getting offline. The main stage sells automation. The crowds show up for the opposite. The smart brands clocked why: a creator partnership that reads as a cash grab or an audience rental now just fails. Authenticity stopped being the nice-to-have. It became the product.

Want proof of where the money’s going? It wasn’t a keynote. It was a handbag. Balenciaga used Cannes to become the first luxury house to join Substack’s new sponsorship program, sitting in the launch cohort next to Uber, T-Mobile and Polymarket, sealed with a literary panel at its Cannes flagship. Read that again. A century-old fashion house decided the place to plant its flag in 2026 is independent writers’ inboxes. Not a feed. Not a billboard. Not a sixty-second pre-roll. Influence moved from the algorithm to the email.

This is the bit I actually care about, so I’ll say it straight. The program lets creators with as few as 100 paid subscribers tap those same advertisers directly. One hundred. Brand money that used to need an agency, a manager and a media kit is now reachable by a girl writing to a few hundred people who actually read her. That’s the whole game changing. The gatekeepers didn’t open the gate. Someone built a new door.

So is this the creator economy’s victory lap, or the most expensive room in the world to stand in, get cut in line, and insist that human connection still matters?

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3. David Jones got a woman at the helm. Only took 188 years.

Erica Berchtold is the first female CEO in David Jones’ 188-year history. A department store whose whole reason for existing is the woman with the credit card, and it took until 2026 to let one drive. That’s a headline on its own. But the better story is her CV.

Berchtold ran THE ICONIC and was MD of Rebel Sport. A digital and e-commerce operator to the bone, handed the most analog format in retail at its most fragile moment. David Jones posted a $95.5 million pre-tax loss last year, sales down 8.7% to $2 billion, and her predecessor was shown the door under cover of a “planned transition.” Now she’s running the five-year INSPIRE30 turnaround: efficiency, margin, digital. A pure-play native, inheriting the cathedral.

Here’s where I get personal, because I live in the gap she’s been hired to close. The flagships are genuinely lovely now. Sydney, Melbourne, the level-seven shoe floor. Proof the in-store bet can work. But that is not the everyday David Jones. The everyday one is me walking into Queens Plaza and finding broken change rooms, nobody on the floor to grab me a size, nowhere to actually pay. The basics. Fumbled, by one of the biggest names in the country. You can refurbish a flagship until it glows. But if the local store can’t find me a size 8, the transformation is just a press release.

And she’s inheriting all this as the sector turns into a beauty arms race. Myer is going all-in, doubling its beauty offer, turning the halls into “worlds,” stacking up La Mer, Guerlain, Helena Rubinstein, chasing K-beauty and TikTok ranges to pull the younger shopper it admits it doesn’t have. Looks airtight. Then you check the maths. Only about 13% of beauty sales here happen online; 87% are still in a store, which is exactly why everyone’s racing into bricks and mortar. Yet Sephora, after all these years, sits at roughly 4% of online share. Mecca leads. Adore holds about 10%, and Adore is mid-rollout to 25 stores on about 2% margins, with a share price that’s slid from a $6.91 listing to around 36c. Big land grab. Brutal economics.

My first job was at Myer. The basement, youth fashion. I thought it was the coolest place a person could work. We didn’t have to wear Myer black, we wore our own jeans, and we’d burn mix CDs at home to play over the store stereo. The whole floor had a feeling. Mid-2000s, sure, and I was a teenager who thought a lot of things were cool. But it had something you cannot print on a planogram.

Berchtold can fix the tech. Myer can buy every luxury skincare house on the planet. But the real question for both is the one nobody wants to say out loud on an investor call. Can you merchandise your way back to cool? Or is cool the one thing a department store can never put on the shelf?

4. The DTC darlings go looking for money

Two of the most-watched direct-to-consumer brands went looking for money this week. Side by side, they’re a referendum on whether “born online and impossibly cool” still counts for anything once Wall Street walks in with a spreadsheet.

Reformation filed for an IPO, heading to the NYSE as REF. The numbers are hot: $507.1 million in revenue last year, up 15.7%, 20 straight quarters of double-digit growth, about 90% of it direct. That’s a real business. Not a vibe. But the profit line whispers the other half, net income more than halved, to $12.6 million from $32.6 million. It’s private-equity owned, and the filing opens with the brand’s signature wink (”Being naked is the #1 most sustainable option. We’re #2.”) before getting deadly serious about margins. The test: does the market still have an appetite for premium fashion that built its cool first and is only now sending the bill?

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Glossier, meanwhile, the original DTC sweetheart, raised fresh capital to fund “the next chapter of Glossier’s growth” and said almost nothing about what that chapter is. Which is the tell. Glossier was built on scarcity, community and one very specific shade of pink. Needing a top-up, and being coy about why, is a long way from the brand that had people queuing round the block for a cleanser in a pretty pouch.

Put them next to section three and the irony pours itself. Reformation and Glossier conjured cult cool out of nothing and now have to turn it into the kind of growth investors can model. David Jones and Myer have the scale, the floor space, the foot traffic, and are trying to buy that cool back.

Here’s my flag in the ground. Turning cool into profit is the easier trick. Reformation just proved it. 20 quarters. Cool comes with attention, and attention is the hardest thing in retail to manufacture. You can always staff a model better, tighten a supply chain, raise a price. What you cannot do is reverse-engineer the feeling that made someone queue. So I’d take the brand with the cool and the cash-flow problem over the institution with the balance sheet and the empty change room. Every time.

So which is the harder trick in 2026, turning cool into profit, or turning profit into cool?

5. Vinted quietly landed in Australia

No press release. No launch party. Just a live website and an App Store listing that turned up this week, ahead of the official July 1 start. Vinted, Europe’s recommerce giant, valued at €8 billion, is now trading here. Pointed straight at eBay and Depop.

The model is the hook. Sellers list for free, print a prepaid label, keep 100% of what they earn. The fee sits with the buyer. That’s the same structure that’s already forced eBay to drop private-seller fees market by market. But the smart bit is the exclusive three-year deal with Australia Post, parcel lockers, post offices, the lot. It fixes the one thing peer-to-peer resale always breaks on. Shipping that doesn’t make you want to give up.

And the timing is everything. 46% of Australians already buy second-hand every year, and the local recommerce market is tipped to hit US$6.75 billion by 2029. Read that against everything above. A department store fighting to stay relevant. A beauty arms race. A consumer trading down. Recommerce just stopped being a side hustle and became a channel with national infrastructure behind it.

So when the cheapest, coolest wardrobe in the country is everybody else’s wardrobe, what is full-price retail even competing against?

6. Tax-time sales: everyone’s spending, nobody’s enjoying it

Here’s the tell of 2026. The sale still works. The shopper just doesn’t trust it anymore. She buys, then feels weird about it.

EOFY is one of our biggest retail moments of the year, and it’s set to grow a limp 1.9%, below inflation. About 6.1 million Australians will shop, but the share planning to spend less jumped six points, and around three million who shopped last year are sitting this one out. The clearest signal is generational: the 35-to-49s plan to spend $1,464, less than both the under-35s ($1,946) and the over-50s ($1,993). The middle is the most scared, because the middle is the most exposed. That’s your K-shaped consumer in one line. The backdrop confirms it: Deloitte has discretionary spending growth collapsing from 2.5% to 0.7%.

Same anxiety in the US, different accent. Amazon stretched Prime Day to four days and it’s headed for a record, $26 billion, bigger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. Yet the average order fell 17%, to $48.36. Bigger event. Smaller baskets. Fortune called it the institutionalisation of the panic-buy. The deals are thinner, people buy anyway, and more of it goes on Buy Now, Pay Later (about 44% of Gen Z).

Everywhere you look, the same split. Record headlines, shrinking receipts. We’ve trained a whole generation to never pay full price, and to only move when they’re scared prices will rise. Which works, right up until the discount stops feeling special.

Look no further than David Jones this week. Up to 50% off, plus an extra 20% off designer, with an extra 50% stacked on some categories. Not one discount. A discount on a discount. When half price has stopped moving stock on its own, the baseline has already broken.

So what happens to retail in this country the day the sale stops working?

If there’s a through-line, it’s this: cool is the only thing left that can’t be discounted, faked, or bought back. Everything else is on sale.

Which one are you still chewing on? Reply, I want to know.

Brooke x

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I’ve spent so much of May and June on planes (Sydney, Thailand, Singapore, Melbourne, Sydney again and again) that I’ve started treating my low-phone days at home like medicine. Genuinely saving my sanity.

Mid-year is my favourite time to go into self-investment mode. It’s never wasted. Usually this means committing to my running routine ahead of Bridge 2 Brissy. But this year I’ve just started professional speaker coaching with the brilliant Sally Prosser and I am SO pumped, after a decade of corporate Australia flattening my voice this feels like taking it back. Put me on a stage and I’m in my element. This is even more impactful if I have something to say that’s not in the corporate messaging guide, I need to get comfy with this.

Clearly the whole room is in build-yourself mode: half of you are quietly deep in Jessi Jean’s Yap Challenge (the one that did a $1.2M launch, yes really). Report back, I want to know how you’re going.

If the thought of yapping on a tiny mic makes you cringe, don’t stress. Getting visible is a pick ‘n’ mix: stages, podcasts, Substack, posting regularly in the group chat, introducing yourself to someone new at drinks. There’s a way to show up for everyone. You just choose the one that feels like you, and go. The key is consistency and a POV that’s uniquely yours.

I’ve also been thinking so much about energy management, mine and ours. I want to build something that lasts, which means I need to scale this properly. Two things I’m calling in: I need city leads to help run events in each capital (more on this to come), and I want to build out our education pillar (you saw the Deep Dives poll, it’s happening). This community deserves both. Aussie women deserve better, and we’re going to build it.

And because I love a hot rec, a few things I’m sick for this month:

→ My new work bag: the Marlow Tote from Reh Studios. I bought it because Jordyn had one (as you do) and the quality for the price point is insane. Aussie brand, all-women team. Sold.

→ The Crown Affair towel. Since getting my K-tip extensions (thank you Stone the Studio) I’ve been obsessed with making the styling actually worth it, and I hate to admit it but Diana Cohen knows exactly what she’s talking about. Worth the $90.

→ Willpowders cherry electrolyte sachets. Got gifted these at Domefest and now I travel with them everywhere. Obsessed.

→ Baked mango from Nibblish. All those months in Asia gave me a thing for nibbly little treats, and these have no nasties. Dangerous in the best way. Thank you Sunday Agency for getting me hooked.

Forward this to one girl in your network who’d get it. Add her to the chat. We’re taking over.

Love Brooke x

Aussie Angels is Australia’s answer to the serendipity Americans take for granted. The room where founders, operators, corporates and creatives are in the same group chat, and it turns out they needed each other. These are the girls who get it.

02 — FROM HQ

A few bits of good news from our side of the room.

→ We tipped over 333 on Instagram. 333. If a number was ever going to feel ANGEL aligned, it’s that one. 🤍

→ Spotify ANZ picked us up. The Process The Pod x Brooke community episode landed in Spotify ANZ’s Podcast Picks of the Week. The one where Arielle and I do nothing but gush about this group for an hour. Iconic that the algorithm and the Spotify ANZ team agrees with us. Listen →

→ I finally said my piece on Vogue Codes. I loved it, and I had notes. I’ve been trying to put my opinions out there more after a decade of corporate Australia flattening them, so this one meant a lot. I loved Vogue Codes, I also have notes →

→ The May Cap Table Report is up. Macro, raises and AI all moved last month. This is the fluff-free version: what actually happened, and the so-what for where you put your money, time and energy. Your brief going into June. Read it →

→ The Aussie Angels Directory is live. You asked for it, so here it is. Spend 60 seconds adding yourself and you’ll be able to search every other angel by what they do, what they’re looking for and what they’re open to being contacted about. Founder, corporate, investor, creative, all of it. The whole community, searchable. No more “wait, who does what again?” Add yourself →

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03 — ANGEL OF THE MONTH

Meet Jemma Sbeg. Host of The Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast talking millions of us through this decade with the research to back it. Now available on Netflix!!

What are you actually building right now? Better habits and muscle. Not particularly sexy, but I’ve been on a real longevity journey this past year after some scary health news. It’s been amazing to see how much the body can adjust and transform on new routines, slowly and then seemingly all at once. I’ve been thinking a lot about myself as a mother and grandmother and how I want to move and feel then, not just look now.

The most unhinged thing you’ve done for your career? Every week I have a ‘shoot your shot’ Wednesday where I send the emails, pitches, articles and DMs to people I’d want to collaborate with in my wildest dreams. I let myself have all the courage and none of the embarrassment for that one day a week, and it’s taught me there’s no shame in asking.

What are you gossiping about right now? Substack. And the people making their BAG from writing and sharing their thoughts online. I have friends making $100–300k on that platform and they never have to sacrifice their voice, pitch themselves to brands or adhere to someone else’s guidelines. I admire them so much.

The thing you’re most embarrassed to admit? I’m really bad with long-term financial planning. I’m so financially cautious and anxious that I don’t always get my money working for me, even though my mum is literally an economist. Something I need to change this year, that’s for sure.

What do you want the angels to find you for? Science-backed evidence for your 20s and for life. Opinions occasionally, but the research and the empirical evidence for why you feel the way you do always comes first.

When did you realise you’d built a community, not just an audience? My first friendship meet-up. We run these occasionally to get likeminded listeners together, and every single person who came was the coolest person I’d ever met. Smart, talented, motivated, kind. It made me shed a few tears of joy.

What’s something ambitious women are spending too much time on right now? Dating. Most men can’t keep up with ambitious women, or simply don’t want to (someone had to say it). Don’t waste any more of your precious time on a man who has to be a special project. The right person will come along.

→ Where to find her? The Psychology of Your 20s wherever you listen, @thatpsychologypodcast and @jemmasbeg on Instagram, and psychologyofyour20s.com.

Want the angel of the month slot? Reply to this email and it’s yours.

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04 — WHAT THE CHAT IS DOING WITH AI

I got on a nine-hour flight, realised it had wifi, and asked the chat for the most unhinged and helpful things they’ve got AI doing for them. The thread did not disappoint.

→ Your own board of advisors. Teodora runs a panel of AI “advisors”, each with a role: a contrarian to challenge the idea, an outside observer asking the dumb-smart questions, a task-doer, an out-of-the-box thinker and a top 1% strategist. Each reviews anonymously, then a “chairman” makes the final call. (Prompt via Mariah Brunner.)

→ A personal assistant named Brick. Ari’s husband built her an AI PA (Brick, as in one brick at a time) that sends her the weather, moon phase, horoscope and calendar each morning, reminds her to drink water, and checks in on her mood and stress.

→ Kirby is basically planning a wedding with it. Designs, mockups, fitness and eating plans, the lot.

→ Rachel Lai has it running as a real assistant on recurring tasks: synthesising her human design, gene keys and astrology into a business plan, running a cost-benefit on DIYing a serum, and turning a week of Slack messages and brand docs into a Notion dashboard.

→ The one I can’t stop thinking about: an angel syncing her Oura data so AI books her pre-period acupuncture automatically. That is the level of automation I want in my life.

→ And Alexie (who runs an AI marketing agency in Paris) teaches founders to actually use Claude day to day, and built her own business-tracking platform in a single day. DM her if you want to learn.

The automation is the next level most of us haven’t unlocked yet. Tell me what you’ve built.

05 — WHAT THE AUSSIE ANGELS ARE MAKING

The girls are SHIPPING and I’m obsessed.

→ Georgie Healy — In The Blink of AI. Her podcast just cracked #46 in business podcasts and passed 10,000 plays on Spotify. Everything you didn’t know you needed to know about AI. If you’re not listening to Georgie yet, fix that. Listen →

→ Annabelle Russell — Substack ANZ. Our angel and Head of Partnerships for Australia & NZ at Substack just launched the next phase of Substack’s native sponsorships program. The inaugural cohort of flagship partners (Yahoo, Whatnot, Granola, Balenciaga, T-Mobile, Polymarket, Uber) is collectively putting millions into Substack creators, who keep full creative control and editorial independence. Real money without selling your voice. This is huge for anyone building here. Annabelle’s Substack → · LinkedIn →

→ BlakCast Network is Australia’s first First Nations-owned and led podcast network, founded by the brilliant Mundanara Bayles (we interviewed her at Domefest, she’s incredible). It’s home to shows like Black Magic Woman and Yarning Up. They’ve launched a Patreon to keep grassroots Indigenous storytelling alive, so rise above the noise and throw your support behind it. BlakCast → · Patreon →

→ Soph Hood — So Topical. The Seoul Tonic founder has launched a new beauty brand, and the move I can’t stop thinking about is the second account. Alongside @sotopical she’s running @sotopicalsociety purely for the behind-the-scenes of building it. Editorial, science-led, a real founder lab in public. “When everyone’s algorithm is the same, where do you find inspiration?” A founder move worth watching. sotopical.com →

→ Sam — Wayfarer Mobility. A medtech startup redesigning mobility aids to actually be beautiful (finally). Sam’s building both the product and the community around it (see her Disability Dinner Club in the diary). This is the good stuff. Sam’s also after brands to contribute products, samples or discount codes for the Disability Dinner Club gift bags. If that’s you, reach out. @wayfarer_mobility →

→ Layla — Dr. Diamond. The elevated jewellery-care brand just launched in Thailand this month, and Layla is packing up her life to take it global. This is the energy. @drdiamonnd →

→ Rosie — Collagenie Wellness Lounge. Rosie wanted to share this one because it’s the community in action: two different Aussie Angels jumped in to help on the day. hree of the Aussie angels came together to run an Event for Collagenie pets on the weekend. At Harry’s in Bondi, over 400 humans and over 150 pets dropped in for matcha, pup cups and editorial protrait photos. A meet and greet with Real Housewives celeb / Vet Dr Kate.

The world’s first certified organic collagen peptides for pets. Because pets deserve to be able to move, and run and play as they get older - just like humans. You can follow Collagenie here. EOFY sale starts on Friday with 30% off @collagenie_pets →

→ Paris — The 194 Collective. An e-commerce shoe brand for wide feet, fit struggles and the genetic stuff nobody designs for: comfortable shoes that actually look good. Waitlist is open (and she built the landing page herself in an afternoon, which is its own flex). Join the waitlist →

→ Rach Tucker — Smooch. Functional beverage to put you in the mood. Presale opens July 1. 💗 smoochdrinks.com →

→ Levina — Karsiyah Beauty. Her Face Polish is live and ready to add to cart now (pre-orders opened 22 June). Treat yourself. @karsiyah.beauty →

→ Sophie — Myrrar goes live. Her beauty AI app hits beta on Monday 29 June and I could not be prouder. Want in on the beta? She’s adding people directly, so DM her to get on the list. @_myrrar →

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And the wins that aren’t launches:

→ The dinner the chat built. What started as a single message turned into 15 of us around a table at Matteo in Double Bay last Friday, pulled together with Genevieve. And the magic was the mix: founders, operators, corporate girls and some epic VC talent all in one room. That’s the whole point. We met Joanna Lawson (Co-Ventures, working alongside VC icon Maxine Minter), just back in Sydney from San Francisco, who’s going to help school us on raising and angel investing. We are lucky to have her. One message to a full table in a week.

→ Maddi Kinchington of Mode Office and OG Aussie Angel got married in Scotland. It looks insane. That’s it. That’s the post. Congratulations angel 🤍

→ Perry Howell packed up and moved to London to scale Pilates Gang. Backing herself, going global. This is the energy. @pilatesgang_ →

→ Jen Garner made Mumbrella for her new role: from SVP of sales operations at Epsilon to GM of Operations at Two Dot AI, a Brisbane AI-agent startup. Leaving a big stable corporate seat to back herself at an early-stage company. Her words: “It feels like I’m coming home.” The leap is the whole point.

Shipped something, hit a milestone? Drop it in the chat. I want to celebrate you.

06 — IN THE DIARY

Where we’re showing up.

First, the one I’m hosting. Girl Dinner: In The Making — Melbourne on 8th July and Sydney on 15 July (The Solo Co x Aussie Angels). I’m doing this with Lizzie Mulherin and I could not be more in. An intimate dinner for early to mid-stage founders riding the highs, the lows and the general chaos of building right now.

Our guest for Melbourne is Anna Mackenzie: startup advisor, ex-Mecca, creator of Anna Mack’s Stack, one of the sharpest thinkers going on portfolio careers and the future of work. Our guest for Sydney is Rebecca Jarvie-Gibbs, Co-founder and COO of We are example an earned led culture agency blowing up the world’s hottest brands (The Australian Open - hello!!) and literally shaping the culture.

You don’t need a certain number of years in business or a financial milestone to earn a seat. You do need to come hungry for the kind of evening that nourishes you the way only dinner with your favourite girls can.

Wednesday 8 July, 6:30–10:00pm, Gracie’s Wine Room, South Yarra.
Wednesday 15th July 6:30-10:00pm, Biblo Wine Bar, Double Bay.

$150 a head, strictly 20 seats. First in, best dressed. This will go fast. RSVP Melbourne → RSVP Sydney

Now the rest of the month:

25 June · Sydney — APEX Founders: Founder Coffee Catch Up. 7:40–8:40am, A.P Bread & Wine, Darlinghurst. APEX is the new founders community from Mahdieh (Madi) . First of four on their calendar. RSVP → · @theapexfounders →

26 June · Sydney — Process Clubhouse: June Meet Up. Round two of the casual Process The Podcast get-togethers with Arielle Thomas. Faces to names, no agenda, just the community in a room. 6:00–8:00pm, Surry Hills (entrance 1 Lacey St). RSVP →

30 June · Brisbane — Aussie Angels Brisbane Meetup. Our own one, Brisbane girls this is for you. After-work drinks at Bar Monte, Newstead, 5:30–8:00pm, with a room full of ambitious women building businesses, careers, side hustles and lives they’re genuinely excited about. Most come solo their first time, and you’ll leave with at least one new friend, contact or group chat. Huge thanks to Jen Garner for pulling this one together 💛 RSVP →

30 June · Melbourne — Disability Dinner Club by Sam Freidin (Wayfarer Mobility). A monthly curated dinner for people living with physical disability or chronic illness who want a great night out with people who get it and zero support-group vibes. Venue TBC. RSVP →

1 July · Melbourne — FoundHer Dinner: Ladies of the Round Table by Veronika (Vee). A curated dinner for 20 women who mean business, every seat placed on purpose. Not networking, just two hours of real conversation over a proper meal with the right people in the right seats. 6:00–9:00pm at Pincho Disco, 59 Cambridge St, Collingwood. $85pp, multi-course (drinks not included). Approval required and already over capacity, so get on the waitlist for this and future dinners (Sydney coming August). Email hello@foundher.world or @foundher_world →

9 July · Sydney — APEX Happy Hour. 5:00–7:00pm, location TBC. APEX events are moving to the Gooday app, so join the waitlist for this one. Waitlist → there’s also a Founder dinner on the 16 July. 6:00–8:00pm, SAX Restaurant & Lounge Bar, Barangaroo. Waitlist →

17 July · Sydney — UNSW Founders Female Founders Showcase. Hosted by angel Wonyoung. A night inspired by women who’ve done it, in a room with people who get it. (Founder pitch/demo EOIs have closed, but go along.) RSVP →

21 July & 30 July · Sydney & Melbourne— Disability Dinner Club by Sam Freidin. Venue TBC. RSVP → The Commons Collective Winter Garden. RSVP →

Date Night by Hayley Westoby (our Issue 03 angel). Her curated female-founder dinner series, running on rotation: Gold Coast in July, Sydney 28 Aug, Melbourne Sept/Oct, Sydney 30 Oct, Sydney 11 Dec. Real connection, no surface networking, Hayley curates the room. The only way to get an invite is her EOI form. @datenight.aus →

On the radar (lock in early):

→ 9 Sept · Online — Women in Digital masterclass, “Elevating Your Digital Career & Personal Brand” with Ashton Tuckerman (GM, TwentyTwo Digital). 12–1pm AEST, $0–$35. Tickets →

→ 5 Nov · Sydney — Techella Fest, billed as Australia’s first tech festival built by women. 300+ women and gender-diverse builders, founders and AI creators in one room, from Brooke Wright. Save the date. techellafest.com →

Coming up: the Deep Dives. A series over the next few months. Less networking, more practical skills, insider knowledge and access to people you’d normally never get an hour with. I put it to a poll, and here’s what you want most:

→ AI technical skills: Claude Code, Codex and agentic workflows (with AWS)
→ Content creation: podcasting, video, newsletters and personal brand growth
→ Sales and pitching: how to influence, negotiate and close, for founders and corporate
→ Personal branding and LinkedIn growth
→ AI co-working: bring your laptop and your biggest bottleneck in biz or life
→ Angel Investing 101: how to get started, sourcing deals, what to look for
→ Raising Capital AMA: hear from VCs and founders who’ve raised in Australia and the US

DM me if you want to be involved in running one, or have a topic we missed.

Next round of Aussie Angels IRL dates dropping soon. Syd, Melb, Bris, Adl, GC. Watch this space.

Running something? We want to know. DM me.

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07 — THE CLASSIFIEDS

The angels need things. The angels have things.

The girls are hiring:

→ No Sunday Blues (Mikhaila Warburton) — recruiting a newly created role at a culture-led, social-first media agency in Sydney. It’s a head-hunt, referral-led, and Mikhaila reckons this community is the place to start. Advert →

→ Missing Perspectives — the media company platforming women’s stories is hiring a junior, freelance/casual, to support editing podcast episodes and clipping for social. missingperspectives.com →

→ Dr. Diamond (Layla) — the elevated jewellery-care brand is growing fast and hiring a part-time Marketing & Content person. Creative, proactive, social-obsessed: think TikTok, Instagram, influencer gifting, content shoots and creative brainstorming. @drdiamonnd →

→ RUME is looking for a co-founder. Kaitie Mulherin launched RUME at the Social Summit last month (you might have caught her flyers around). It’s a live platform connecting creators and brands to make and source social content in real time: create for brands you actually care about, build your portfolio, sharpen your craft. She’s after a growth lead to come on as co-founder and scale it, for equity. If you’re well connected in the influencer and social space and want to build from scratch on a platform that’s already LIVE, this is your seat. Interested? Hit up Kaitie@duopr.com.au rumesocial.com → · @kaitiemulherin →

The AI labs just landed in Sydney. If you’ve been waiting for a sign to shoot your shot at frontier AI, this is it:

→ Anthropic opened a Sydney office, its fourth in Asia-Pacific, and is hiring on the ground. Roles floating around include External Affairs Australia, an ASEAN Account Executive based in Sydney, ANZ Communications and a Data Center Energy Lead. Careers →

→ OpenAI is hiring in Sydney too, mostly technical and go-to-market: Solutions Architect, Solutions Engineer, Model Deployment for Business. Hybrid, with relocation on some roles. Careers →

Asks:

→ Franziska — new to Sydney, eyes open for the right match in tech or startups, would love to hear from anyone who started from scratch here or knows the scene. DM her.

→ Veronika “Vee” Forsyth wants a photographer or content creator to shoot an event in Melbourne in July. In return: exposure to the community, tags across every post including brand partners, referrals to her agency clients, and paid gigs the moment she locks sponsorship. @foundher_world →

→ Pardis is after a great activation or pop-up agency (or person) based in Melbourne. Worked with someone good? Send them her way. @pardismahdavi →

→ Nancy Cao (Muse Circle) is building a social platform connecting small businesses with local freelance talent, and wants a partner to help host IRL events across Sydney, Melbourne and beyond. Could be a lead-gen play if you love hosting. musefunnel →

→ Rach Tucker (Smooch) is hunting a buyer contact at Priceline. Smooch has been invited to pitch a big pharma group for ranging, but Priceline is the dream for brand fit. Got a contact, even a sneaky one? Email rach@smoochdrinks.com. smoochdrinks.com →

→ Sonia is after a product photographer or creative-direction assist in Sydney. @soniakhay →

→ Shreya — Australian Coffee Culture. Premium, plant-based, ready-to-drink cold brews from 100% Australian-grown coffee, fully traceable to the farm. Soft-launched three months ago and already in premium hotels, organic grocers, luxury wellness and corporate. She’s after a social content agency (small budget, be kind), and in return offers a second pair of eyes on anyone’s growth model, account management or sales strategy, plus intros. DM her. australiancoffeeculture.com →

Offers:

→ Content creators for hire. Georgia McFarlane shoots weddings (@thewed.files) and events via her agency (@thecontent.files), captured my wedding, and is doing an Aussie Angels discount. Jess covers weddings up the Byron and southern GC way. Paris (studioblueproductions.com.au ) is running mini content shoots.

→ Need a startup-friendly accountant? The chat rates Coast Accounting and The Integrated CFO (a fractional CFO with a full accounting team, great if you’re scaling and want to be set up properly from the start). coastaccounting.com.au → · theintegratedcfo.com.au →

Capital and the US play:

→ We’re building a US connections channel. So many of you are eyeing the States for funding, expansion or a corporate move, so we’re spinning up a dedicated space, sorted by exactly what you need: investors and angels, events, vendors, industry intros, across health, beauty, tech and consumer. Want in, or sitting on US contacts to share? DM me.

→ A founder house is in the works. Holly is building Build Stateside, a NYC-based founder house for Aussie founders who want to plug into the US ecosystem and raise from US angels and funds. She says A16z, Sequoia and three female-led funds are already in the group. If you’re eyeing a US chapter, add yourself to the list. buildstateside.com → · @hollysanderz →

→ Raising help, US-flavoured. A couple of angels have offered to share what they know on raising in the States: Hailey (fundraising intensives for founders, mostly US contacts) and Caitlin Duryea (just off a US growth chapter, on whether US expansion is even the right move). Reach out if you’re raising and need a sounding board.

Put yourself forward:

→ Forbes 30 Under 30 Australia 2026 nominations are open. Finance, VC, media, entertainment, music, arts, retail, e-commerce, science, social impact, sport, AI and tech. Nominate someone. Nominate yourself. This is your sign. Forbes 30 Under 30 →

Drop your asks in the chat.

08 — JOIN THE CHAT

This newsletter is the highlight reel. The WhatsApp is where we actually live.

Every city, growing weekly. The chat is approval-only so we keep the spammers out.

🔗 Join the Aussie Angels →

Overheard this month:

→ “The girls are ON.”

→ “This chat really brings a lot of energy into my life right now.” — Franziska, newly in Sydney

→ “Vibes were high, we were too in it.” — Cathy, on the Adelaide girls’ lunch (no photo survived, because Adelaide girls do it better)

That’s the whole point. Forward this to one girl in your life who’d get it. Tell her to join the WhatsApp.

See you in there. 🤍

Brooke x

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Any excuse to be in a room full of ambitious Australian women is my actual joy in life. It’s the whole reason Aussie Angels exists. So Saturday at Vogue Codes was always going to be a good day for me. The room was beautiful, the speakers were genuinely brilliant, the energy was unmatched, and I left with a gift bag I needed a forklift to carry. Eleven years in, the fact that this event exists at all, that Vogue has spent a decade insisting women belong at the centre of the tech conversation, is a real achievement and I don’t take it for granted.

And. (You knew there was an and.)

I left a little frustrated. Not because the day was bad, but because it was so close to being extraordinary, and I think the women in that room could have handled, and deserved, more. So in the spirit of loving something enough to give it real feedback rather than a polite clap, here are my notes. Vogue, if you’re reading, I am sticking my hand up to help curate next year. More on that later.

Note one: twenty minutes is not a panel, it’s a trailer

Here was the format for most of the day. Three extraordinary speakers, one moderator, two questions each, twenty minutes total. Run the numbers. By the time everyone’s been introduced with the multi-hyphenate biographies they’ve absolutely earned, you have maybe ten real minutes of conversation, split three ways.

That’s not enough time to get anywhere good. You get the headline and the applause line, and then the moderator has to wrap because the clock’s already gone. You never reach the specificity, the how, the part where someone actually teaches you something you can use on Monday.

And when the timing slips, it slips unevenly. In the Big Tech panel, Laura Henshaw, who was excellent, spoke for a good chunk of the slot before the other two panelists had properly been brought in. I’m not mad at Laura. She was great. I’m mad at the container. Three women that good should never be fighting each other for oxygen inside a slot that short.

The fix is not complicated. Fewer panels, longer. Two questions becomes five. Give a brilliant woman thirty-five minutes and she’ll change how you think. Give her twenty and she’ll give you a soundbite. We came for more than soundbites.

Note two: “humanity first” is lovely, but it let us off the hook

The whole day ran on a humanity-first thesis. Slow down. Touch grass. Make things with your hands. Your taste is your own. Protect your nervous system from the algorithm. And look, I agree with almost all of it. The ancestral knowledge panel was my favourite of the day and I’ll defend the cortisol stats from the Unyoked CMO to anyone. (Twenty minutes in nature drops your cortisol by twenty percent. Two nights off grid beats yoga, meditation and CBT by fifty percent. Genuinely useful.)

But here’s my problem. A room full of ambitious women, many of them in tech, retail, media and STEM, gathered at a tech summit, and we spent most of the day being gently reassured that the human stuff still matters. Of course it matters. Nobody in that room needed convincing that they’re a person.

And before anyone reads this as anti-humanity: it isn’t. The human stuff is literally my whole thing. I build community for ambitious women for a living; connection is the soul of everything I do. But that’s exactly why I want more for them. When you get a room of women this capable together this rarely, you owe them more than reassurance.

What we didn’t get was the part where we face into the tech and actually skill up. We talked about AI mostly as a thing to be wary of. Bias in, bias out, true and important. But we barely touched what’s actually coming, or how a woman in that room could use it, build with it, or position her career and her business around it.

We barely touched the word “agentic” all day. Not the AI agents that are about to do real work on our behalf, not what they mean for our jobs, not agentic commerce reshaping how every brand reaches a customer. The single biggest shift in how technology will move through our lives, and at a summit about the future, hosted by Vogue, in 2026, it was essentially absent.

Meanwhile, the week before, in New York, (the self-described Anna Wintour of fashion tech, and honestly the title fits) ran the FASHIONOLOGY Summit with All Things Fashion Tech. Fourteen hundred people. Nine panels. The lineup, just so you feel it: trend forecasting and data, agentic commerce, virtual try-on, the creator economy, wearables, material innovation, and fashion tech investment. A scent salon and a wearables showcase as activations. That is what facing into the tech looks like. That is a room walking out with new language, new contacts, and a map of where the industry is actually going. I almost flew to NYC for it and I regret not.

And the news she’s covering right now is the exact conversation we should have been having. Sephora is partnering with Google so you can research, build a basket and check out inside an LLM, because that’s where discovery is moving. OTB, the group behind Diesel and Margiela, is doing AI try-on with Google Cloud. ZyG just raised sixty million to scale an agentic ecommerce operating system. This is happening now, to fashion and retail specifically, and it is going to reshape how every brand in that Vogue room reaches a customer.

Here’s the part that really got me, and I’ll declare my interest because I work at AWS, so this is my actual day job. Three weeks before Vogue Codes, AWS launched the Agentic Shopping Assistant, which lets a retailer stand up its own branded AI shopping agent in about sixty days instead of building it from scratch over years. The flagship example? The Kate Spade AI Gift Concierge, built by Tapestry, which guides a shopper to the right gift in conversation. That is fashion x tech. That is a handbag brand running a production AI agent, live, right now. Accenture reckons more than thirty percent of online commerce could run through AI agents by 2030, somewhere around 3.1 trillion dollars in transactions. So we had, in one Sydney room, a few hundred of the exact women who are going to have to navigate that shift in their careers and their businesses, and we spent the day talking about whether the algorithm is bad for our nervous systems. Both things can be true. But only one of them sends you home able to do something on Monday.

Vogue x fashion tech should be the easiest, most obvious, most powerful version of this event. The audience is right there. The cultural authority is right there. We could own this conversation in this region the way nobody else can. We just have to be brave enough to go deeper than “slow down and touch grass.”

And the moment that summed up the whole miss: Arms Rosenberg, who has built a global fund run by AI agents trained on her own brain, sat on stage and let investing get waved off as “boring,” just spreadsheets and data. I sat there a little stunned. Investing is not boring. Investing is the single most direct mechanism women have to build actual power, the thing every other panel that day was quietly begging for. We talked about closing the women’s health gap, paying female athletes properly, getting women into the rooms where systems get built. All of it runs on capital. All of it runs on women owning assets and compounding them.

Calling that “boring” in a room full of ambitious women is the problem in miniature: we reached for the relatable, self-deprecating framing when we could have taught the room how to actually do the thing. Arms could have spent twenty minutes on how she thinks about conviction and risk and price targets, and we’d have walked out richer, literally. Instead we got “it’s just data.” That depth was right there, and we left it on the table.

Note three (a brief intermission for the funniest moment of the day)

The Qantas panel, on the psychology of the twenty-plus-hour Project Sunrise flights, was genuinely interesting. Human-centred design, lighting that mirrors your destination so a sunrise rolls from the front of the plane to the back, ten years of research with the Charles Perkins Centre. Cool stuff.

But I will be thinking until I die about the bit where they proudly unveiled, as a design innovation, a “wellbeing zone” so that economy passengers can stand up and move around. The only airline in the world to specifically design a space where the people in economy are allowed to have a body. Girl. That’s an aisle. We’ve reinvented the aisle and put it in a deck. I laughed. I’m still laughing. Iconic, no notes.

What we did cover, and what was actually great

I don’t want the notes to drown out the wins, because there were real ones. The highlights, in scannable form:

On the medical panel (the best content of the day): Professor Kate Drummond’s case for fixing a male-default profession without dropping a single standard is the cleanest I’ve heard. Define the real minimum bar, then actively favour the women who clear it until the culture changes. She’s doing it in neurosurgery right now, because the alternative is waiting two hundred years for equity. Two hundred.

On the women’s health gap: Lydia O’Donnell’s stat that only six percent of sports science research is done exclusively on women explains roughly everything about why we’ve all been training on a men’s plan with the hormones deleted. And the line every founder should pin to the wall: every dollar put into closing the women’s health gap returns three. It’s not charity, it’s the most underpriced market going.

On AI and bias (Dr Amandeep Hansra): train AI on history and you don’t fix bias, you automate it at scale. A heart attack presents differently in women, but the models learned the male version. Sixty percent of women’s-health answers from the top AI tools came back wrong. The only fix is women in the room building the thing, which is exactly the argument for a day like this existing. I just wish we’d spent more time on how to actually get into those rooms.

On the astronaut (Catherine Bennell-Pegg): until 1966 women in the Australian public service had to resign when they married. Banks wouldn’t give a woman a loan without a male guarantor until the seventies. But we put men on the moon in 1969. We could leave the planet before a woman could open a bank account on her own. Her reframe of the old line is the thing I wrote down twice: we say you can’t be what you can’t see, and she added, you can’t be what you can’t see yourself being. Fewer than four percent of engineers in Australia are Australian-born women. We are, in her words, leaving too much talent on the launch pad.

On ancestral knowledge: Maeva Heim of Bread Beauty said the thing I’m still turning over: the value of making things with your hands, the one skill AI can’t touch, and how that human craft gets more valuable as the world automates, not less. It flips the AI-doom framing on its head, the most human things you can do become your edge. A genuinely great idea, and I’ll be honest, also a comfortable one for a tech summit to land on. I wanted the panel pushed one step further: okay, so how does a founder actually price and protect that human value when the machines are this good?

That’s the follow-up we ran out of time for. And Liandra Gaykamangu of LIANDRA gently dismantled the whole morning by noting we’d spent hours talking about going to space to save the Earth, when Earth is already great, and maybe the constant push to be the best, the most, the fastest is the actual problem. Indigenous knowledge has held “by less, but better” for tens of thousands of years. Fashion’s discovering it this season and calling it new.

On money: Lucy Kough of Tap the Gap said start now, because time is the only ingredient you can’t buy back. Super compounds like a snowball, and a third of Australians have never once checked one of the biggest investments they’ll ever own.

On work: work is a mindset now, not a place, with three in four people already working across multiple locations. And the people hiring aren’t buying technical skills, they’re buying mindset: curious, adaptable, willing to back yourself. The TechnologyOne leader who said it traced her own adaptability to a childhood spent constantly moving, always the new girl. The thing you think is your messy backstory is often the exact thing that makes you hireable.

On founders: the angel investor’s filter for whether to back someone, are you real or performative, grounded in three things. Execution: do you have a product and talk to customers, or just a beautiful story? Feedback: when she gives you a note, do you act on it? Iteration: are you making the thing better than yesterday? She’ll watch a founder for months before writing a cheque. It’s a sharp filter to turn on yourself, too.

On AI, the reframe that stuck: Arms again, with the most useful answer to AI anxiety I heard all day. Her agents aren’t replacing her, they are her, accelerated: four decades of investing experience built into the system with her judgment at the core. The AI doesn’t sideline her expertise, it scales it. Which is the thing the whole day kept circling. Train AI on the male default and you automate the male default. Build it with women in control and it’s just leverage. So the better question isn’t “will AI take my job,” it’s “how do I make it an extension of my own brain before someone else’s becomes the default.”

That, right there, is the conversation I wanted the whole day to be. Who’s holding the pen, and how do you, woman in row 14, get your hands on it.

So here’s my pitch

I went to 3 large enterprise tech events last month and walked out thinking about a different gap. The rooms skewed heavily male, and for all the brilliant content, it wasn’t really designed to feel like an open door for the every girl just finding her way into this world. That’s not unique to one event; it’s most of the industry. And I say it as someone who loves this stuff and builds in it for a living: we have a long way to go on making these rooms feel like they’re for her too.

A month later I’m at Vogue Codes, which is the opposite room, full of exactly the women enterprise tech struggles to reach, and yet the conversation still didn’t quite hit the level I know it could. One kind of room has the access but not the audience. The other has the audience but doesn’t always push it. The summit that nails both, that gets the every girl in the room and sends her home able to talk about agentic AI like she owns it, doesn’t really exist here yet.It should. And it could be this one.

So Vogue, genuinely: call me. Let me help curate next year. Longer panels. Fewer of them. A real strand on what’s coming in retail and commerce and AI, taught in a way that makes a woman feel powerful rather than warned. Keep the humanity, it’s the soul of the thing, but pair it with capability so we walk out upskilled, not just inspired.

Because the women in that room already get it. That was never the question. The question is whether we’re going to hand them the soundbite or the toolkit.

Give them the toolkit. They’ll build the rest.

— Brooke x

May was a big one — macro, raises and AI all moved. This is the fluff-free version: what actually happened, and the so what for where you put your money, time and energy. Here’s your brief going into June.

Aussie Angels is Australia’s answer to the serendipity Americans take for granted — the room where founders, operators, corporates and creatives are all in the same group chat, and it turns out they needed each other all along. These are the girls who get it.

01 — THE MACRO

The RBA hiked another 25bps to 4.35% in May. Headline inflation now tipped to peak at 4.8% in the June quarter (petrol, the Middle East, the usual). Markets are flirting with 4.7% by Christmas; CommBank is praying they don’t. Business confidence still grim (NAB -24). Consumer confidence ticked to 83 — still nobody is buying big-ticket items.

The one gift: the 12 May Budget made the $20k instant asset write-off permanent from 1 July, and lifted VC caps (VCLP $250m → $480m, ESVCLP $50m → $80m).

→ So what: borrowing is dear and customers aren’t stingy, they’re genuinely struggling — #cozzielives is real. Back founders who can grow without burning cash, and tell them to make the runway last.

Over to you: how are we all feeling about the small-business tax changes — permanent $20k write-off, bigger VC caps? Leave a note in the comments. I want to know if it actually moves the needle for your portfolio or your biz plans, or if it’s a headline that changes nothing on the ground.

02 — THE CHEQUE-IN

The boys raised $81m this month.

→ Ordermentum (Sydney hospo SaaS, 45,000+ venues) — $55m from Five V Capital. Boring B2B middleware always prints money. I’m just salty I didn’t do anything in this space back when Matt and I had this exact problem with our hospitality businesses.

→ Arkeus (Melbourne defence drone AI) — $25m Series A at a $100m valuation, led by QIC Ventures.

→ Lume (digital music platform) — backed by Lorde. Coolest cap table of the month, no notes.

Also worth clocking: a former Up Bank crew raised $4m pre-seed for Extraordinary Money (agentic AI for consumer finance, co-led Airtree + Triple Bubble). And ProcurePro pulled $15m for AI-in-construction.

YTD: $1.63B across 69 ANZ rounds, up 64.6% YoY. But rounds under $2m have declined four quarters running.

So what: rounds under $2m keep drying up, so genuinely good early founders can’t get funded. If you’re building, plan your raise around it. If you’re investing, that gap is exactly where angels do their best work — less competition, better entry price.

03 — THE GIRLS WHO ARE BUILDING

The number that keeps me up: in 2025, all-female founding teams got less than 0.5% of VC. Zero. Point. Five.

Three things worth looking at:

→ NSW finally launched its $4m Diversity Pre-Accelerator. UNSW Founders is running Impact X — free 10-week health pre-accelerator, scholarships cover childcare and travel (a novel concept apparently). Apps open 1 July. Newcastle’s FLIP NSW goes statewide backing 188 women founders, 50% reserved for regional. This is angel deal flow in 18 months. Track it.

→ UQ Empower demo day (7 May) — two to clock: Saipriya on RAPID (AI hospital triage — health + lived experience + real pain, the sweet spot). And Katherine building HomeHunter (one-stop rental search, big TAM, fragmented incumbents). Worth a coffee — DM the UQ Ventures team for intros.

→ Also keep an eye on Proseek Bio — Brisbane founder Michelle Hill just closed an oversubscribed $1.5m seed for OC-Triage, a blood test for early ovarian cancer detection. Up to 80% of suspected ovarian cancer surgeries are ultimately benign. She’s fixing that.

So what: women founders get backed early or not at all. If that 0.5% ever moves, it’s because someone wrote the cheque at demo day — not five rounds later once she’s “proven” and twice the price.

04 — THE MARKETING NOTES

Three things to clip and save.

→ Australian Made Week (18–24 May) — Andy Lee’s mockumentary fronted the 40th anniversary of the green-and-gold logo. 93% of Australians trust it. Free trust premium if your product qualifies. Consumer founders, take note.

→ IAB Australia dropped its LLM Prompting Framework on 20 May — aimed at fixing inconsistent AI use across advertising and marketing teams. The first vendor-agnostic playbook, built with Google, Adobe, News Corp and Reddit. The “everyone secretly uses ChatGPT” era is over. Read it before your next brief.

→ City of Melbourne’s “Melbourne at its most Melbourne” (Town Square × Zenith) — leaned all the way into winter apathy instead of fighting it. Masterclass.

So what: the thing people complain about most in your category is usually your strongest brand angle. Melbourne owned the cold instead of apologising for it. Find your version.

05 — THE AI CORNER

AI news this month, because it’s moving too fast to leave out.

→ Google’s Universal Cart landed at I/O (19 May) — one AI cart that follows you across Search, Gemini, YouTube and Gmail, hunts deals in the background, and can check out on your behalf via its new Agent Payments Protocol. Launch brands: Nike, Sephora, Target, Shopify merchants. The checkout rolls into Australia in the coming months.

→ Mastercard just ran Australia’s first agentic transaction — the agent-buys-for-you era isn’t a US thing anymore. 64% of shoppers say they’ll let AI help them buy, and a fast-growing slice never visit the retailer’s own site at all. My theory? Agentic shopping is fantastic for commodity or repeat items. Fashion? Luxury? Not so much.

→ Anthropic shipped Claude Opus 4.8 (28 May) — runs multiple sub-agents at once and works solo for longer stretches. The point for us: building software keeps getting cheaper and faster, so the moat is distribution, not code.

So what: shoppers are starting to ask an AI what to buy, and the AI only picks from products whose data it can actually read. If your listings aren’t structured for machines to find, they get skipped — even when they’d win on a real shelf. Tell every consumer founder or retailer you know to get AI-readable now, while it’s still a head start and not table stakes.

06 — THE MONTH IN ONE LINE

Expensive money, an $81m month, a 0.5% problem, and AI at the checkout. May was loud. None of it gets fixed by the funds alone — it gets fixed in rooms like this, where the people who build, back, buy and consume actually talk.

See you in the chat 🤍
Brooke x

Join the group chat. The conversation lives on WhatsApp — jump in here.

We launched the directory. Want to be listed? Fill in the form and we’ll add you.

Find us on socials @aussie__angels @brookekmoody

On the other side of a honeymoon and a W penthouse with fifty of you in it. We have levelled up.

We hosted three angel meetups (Brissy, Sydney, Sydney again) in the last few weeks and welcomed so many new faces. I am obsessed with this community!! We also dropped merch. If you missed out and want a cap DM me and I’ll see what I can do.

Going fully offline for seven days was just what the doctor ordered. A lot of the much needed brain space was spent dreaming up what’s next for us. That is of course when I wasn’t dreaming of my next pad thai, ordering yet another coconut marg, swimming in the Koh Samui sea, forcing my gorge new husband to make White Lotus tiktoks with me or reading 2 truly fantastic books.

My hot recs for this fornight:

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke — tradwife influencer wakes up in 1805 and has to actually live the life she’d been performing online. Anne Hathaway is producing the film. The people angry about it are the point. Read it.

Call Girl Confidential by Blue-Eyed Kayla Jade — half memoir, half CEO playbook. Hannah Ferguson wrote the cover quote. I’ve been a fan since the counting-money TikToks. She’s a storyteller like no other.

The Rally is dropping on the app store and this is the workout / mindset shift we all need. A supercharged beat-based daily walk designed for busy girls with busy minds. Our angel Rachel Lai out of Austin, Texas is on the founding team. I've been in on the beta and I’m sick for it. My new fave workout. Oh, did I mention we're a global girl gang?! Aussie Angels is a mindset, location is irrelevant.

Big June. Vogue Codes Summit, 13 June, Sydney — we’re going as a group. Pre-meet coffee details to drop soon. Make sure you have you tickets.

Forward this substack to one girl in your network who’d get it. Add her to the group chat. We’re taking over.

Love Brooke x

Aussie Angels is Australia’s answer to the serendipity Americans take for granted. The room where founders, operators, corporates and creatives are in the same group chat — and it turns out they needed each other. These are the girls who get it.

02 — NOTES FROM THE ROOMS

Spotify’s creator session in Sydney and the Social Summit in Melbourne. Two big rooms. Here’s what you need to know.

→ Community is the new luxury. Australians are spending 2x more on experiences than things. The brands winning aren’t building communities to serve the brand — they’re building for the community, with the community, and protecting that trust like it’s sacred. I will scream that last bit from the rooftop.

→ Reach is losing aura. Likes are underweighted. Shares, saves, watch time, retention are what actually matter — because a share means I’m putting my name on this. Josh Henry Hicks (Insightly Media) hammered this from the stage.

→ Niche + POV beats reach. Take a boring category and make it culturally desirable. Touchland did it for hand sanitiser. Layla at Dr Diamond is doing it next.

→ Independent is the future. Substack-flavoured, boutique-creator-flavoured. Brands scripting podcast ads are killing the medium. Let creators create. Jordyn told podcasters from the Spotify stage to stay independent and know their worth before going to a network.

→ Shoot Your Shot Wednesdays. Anna Mackenzie sends one cold outreach per week. That’s 52 opportunities a year. The math is the math. Pick one and send it this week — I want to hear who you DM’d. I’m reaching out to Anthropic and ShopMy.

→ Squeeze the lemon. Maddison Sullivan Thorpe on production days: if you’re investing in a shoot, bring every camera and every format. Phone, DSLR, tiny mic, your mum, your best friend. Mix lo-fi and hi-fi. One shoot day done right is five months of content. Stop over-producing single moments.

→ Good content beats production value. Shameless Media shoots its podcasts on iPhone. They built a media empire with a tripod and a perspective. You don’t need a production house, you need a take and the discipline to publish.

→ Sam Wood said agencies are dead. I disagree. From the Social Summit stage — Sam Wood saying agencies just spend your money on croissants. Lizzie Waley (Sundae Body), Monica Upton (Veritisi) and Loren Tomlinson (The Social Collective) sat with the take. My read: reckless advice for the scale and enterprise operators I work with. The agency model is changing, not dead. Boutique is where it’s at.

→ Listen-first or get left behind. Josh Henry Hicks again (the man earned his slot): brands need to stop running product-led calendars and start running listening systems. Track cultural signals, feed them into creative fast. The brands still on 6-week creative cycles are losing to the ones moving in 6 hours.

Full debrief on Amy’s 1800 Chatline pod — see Receipts.

03 — ANGEL OF THE FORTNIGHT

Meet Hayley Westoby. Sydney · Founder of Gambit Collective + Date Night + Top of Mind + SpicyBoi.

What are you actually building right now? Gambit Collective — a pay-as-you-go marketing agency specialising in marketing, brand experiences and personal branding. I also recently launched Date Night, an intimate female founder dinner series creating a safe space for women to genuinely connect beyond surface-level networking. I’m continuing to build my podcast Top of Mind — third year, top 10% of video podcasts in AU/NZ for the last two years, and finally entertaining sponsorships. AND I have a crispy chilli oil business called SpicyBoi. Safe to say I’m building a lot.

Most unhinged thing you’ve done for your career? First year of my business — got a Cannes Lions invite with a brand I’d idolised, two weeks notice, had to get myself there. Nine days out, I dropped close to $5k on flights, got a new passport, and got my ass over there.

What are you gossiping about right now? The friendship recession is real and nobody is talking about it loudly enough — women are lonelier than ever while being more “connected” than ever, and that’s actually one of the reasons I started Date Night. Also: cycle syncing as a business strategy. The women who’ve figured this out are operating on a different level and I’m obsessed with it.

The thing you’re most embarrassed to admit you want? Honestly? Nothing anymore. Everything you actually want lives on the other side of embarrassment. I want to build something that genuinely helps great people. Specifically women in business. Turns out when you stop gatekeeping your ambitions they start moving faster.

What do you want the angels to find you for? Founders who need a marketing, brand experience or personal branding partner. Female founders who want to come to Date Night. Anyone needing speakers around personal branding, marketing, women in business.

Where to find her? @hayleywestoby on everything · @datenight.aus · Hayley Westoby on LinkedIn · Top of Mind podcast.

→ Want the angel of the fortnight slot? Reply to this email and pitch me.

04 — WHAT THE AUSSIE ANGELS ARE MAKING

Beyond. You are all doing the most.

→ Remy Tucker — ON THE HOUSE just raised $1.7M Seed AND deployed 50 new machines nationally. Somehow at the same time. Brisbane-based, Purpose Ventures led, with UniQuest Extension Fund and Startmate backing. The product: wall-mounted dispensers in high-foot-traffic bathrooms that give you free organic period products, fully funded by the brand ad on the 32-inch screen above. The numbers are deranged: 94% uplift in brand trust, 76-second average dwell time (the rest of out-of-home gets 4 seconds). 4,300 boxes dispensed, 13,000+ free products, ~3,000 women served. Afterpay, Pillow Talk, Forty Winks and Frontier Touring already on the network. If you’re a CMO with a media budget and a soul, this is the buy. onthehousegroup.com →

→ Rachel — THE RALLY launches publicly and globally on 3 June. Our angel in Austin, Texas is on the founding team building the world’s first supercharged beat-based walk for busy women with busy diaries. Soulcycle energy meets running playlist meets meditation — a workout / brain reset you can actually do on a Tuesday at lunchtime. Life changing. Get on the waitlist. therally.co → · @therally

→ Rosie × Laura — Collagenie x Golf Fore Her. Rosie’s been quietly cooking on Collagenie (yes — collagen peptides for pets, Real Housewives partnership incoming, can’t make it up) for six months. Posted in the chat. Within days, locked into Laura’s Golf Fore Her show bags. Launching this week. The chat literally did this. @collagenie_pets →

→ Michelle / OVA — funded. Telehealth launches July, making women’s health and fertility integrative Chinese medicine accessible to regional Australia navigating IVF. Plus a TGA-listed Chinese herbal capsule for sleep landing later this year that actually works. Michelle applied for the $5k funding round we posted in the chat and got it to support the OVA expansion. This is what it’s all about. @ovaacupuncture

→ Ari — Athlinq launched in March. The app connecting athletes, agents and brands. Some of the biggest names in the country are already on it across AFL, AFLW, NRL, NRLW and cricket — plus beauty brands chasing athletes off the back of the Alyssa Liu Olympic moment. The Aussie women’s sports economy has been waiting for exactly this. joinathlinq.com →

→ Kirby — The Match Deck is officially in beta with clients already searching. Brisbane engineer in Defence by day, building this with me on the side. Matchmaking for founders who need to find their next tech resource, dev or designer without going through six agency intros. thematchdeck.com →

→ Jordyn — hosted Spotify’s creator session in Sydney and I walked out with five things worth tattooing on the back of my hand. They’re up in the notes from the room. Spotify is making moves and Jordyn is the one to watch.

→ Arielle / Process the Podcast (1) — Social Summit Masterclass live cut. Panel: Arielle (Cinema Thom + Process), Lizzie Mulherin (yes — our Lizzie from Solo Co, who also rebranded her cultural reads substack to How We Live by Lizzie (feat. a hot take on Emma Grede’s book this week), and Anna Mackenzie (portfolio career mentor), moderated by Rosie Boccamazzo. Topic: Reverse Engineering Your Creative Career. Spec work to land Mecca and Vogue. Building without burning out. Personal brand as the anchor. Listen →

→ Arielle x me — Process the Podcast (2). Arielle had me on to talk community and the whole episode turned into me gushing about this group. The Butler vs The Leader. The 50% engagement matrix vs traditional media’s 5%. The first 20 in the room before the 650-person waitlist. The entry question that skips surface small talk. Why we never automate community chats. I am in love with this community. The frameworks are mine. The receipts are yours. Listen →

→ Amy / 1800 Chatline — the full Social Summit debrief, with me. Amy Dickinson - the number 1 diva who birthed the summit — had me on for the whole download. The MAFS producer who tried to pitch me onto the show at year twelve of my relationship. The great honour of meeting little dad phil IRL. Fashions on field. And the actual hot takes that didn’t fit in this newsletter. Listen →

→ Sumana — Damn Gina hit market. Australia’s first Ayurvedic-inspired haircare line. Bootstrapped, founder-mum, pushing toward retail next. Needs an intro to anyone with distribution chops in the low–mid range. DM her.

Shipped something? Drop it in the chat.

05 — IN THE DIARY

Where we’re showing up.

3 June · Sydney — The Argonauts Series: The Open Boardroom (CEO Survey 2026 Launch). Havas Village, The Rocks. A real C-suite intel session, opened to the public for one night only. Sophie Auyeung, Paris, Mel, Levina, Izzi and Anne are already in. Email melanie@uagentertainment.com to get added.

3 June · Melbourne — Foundher (EOFY edition). Vee’s incredible-women-of-Melbourne gathering. Founders and leaders from across tech, legal, culture, funding, beauty, sexual wellness and marketing — sharing, connecting, swapping opportunities and having a cheeky vent. No pitches. No panels. No networking that feels like work. This month has a special EOFY add-on to get your house in order before June 30. StandardX hotel. Free. RSVP →

4 June · Sydney — Create Your Lore by Ponnd (Remi and Bella). Anti-networking, networking. An hour of honest conversation on finding your voice, building a brand people actually buy into, and making them stay. Panel: Jessy Wu (founder of Encour, AFR columnist, debut novel with Pan Macmillan), Holly Chapman (ex-Head of Brand at Papier — scaled collabs with The Met, Headspace, Reese’s Book Club). Hosted by Remi Dooley (Ponnd co-founder + CMO) with Kelsey McCormick (Coming Up Roses). 6pm at Ace Hotel Sydney. Early Release $45 / Standard $60 (wine + networking included). RSVP →

6 June · Sydney — Female Entrepreneurs' Wellness Reset by Sophie Auyeung (MYRRAR) and Bridg Tran (DUMP Breathwork). Transformational breathwork, goodie bags, light nibbles, real friendships not surface networking. 12:30–2:30pm at Hot Dog Yoga, Double Bay. $35 MYRRAR Inner Circle / $45 general. RSVP →

Roughly 11–15 June · Sydney — Maeva's BREAD-alum founder dinner. Maeva joined the chat this fortnight and the room went full code blue — founder of BREAD Beauty (sold last year), raised over USD $7M from Imaginary Ventures, Emma Grede, Rachel Zoe and the Harrys fund, locked a Sephora USA contract before product existed. Now she's hosting a curated dinner for physical goods brand founders. Topic shaped by who's in the room. EOI open in the chat.

13 June · Sydney — Vogue Codes Summit. A properly stacked lineup. The collective angel moment of this fortnight — we’re doing coffee beforehand. Reply if you want in. Details →

13 June · Mornington Peninsula — Empowered Her day retreat at the hot springs. Mindset, panels, meditation, sheet masks, hot springs, the women who get it. Built by angel Jess Jackson — go. Details →

17 July · Sydney — UNSW Founders Female Founders Showcase. Hosted by angel Wonyoung. A night inspired by women who’ve done it, in a room with people who get it. RSVP → · EOI open until June 7 for founders who want to pitch, demo, exhibit or collab. Also calling in female DJs, food vendors and creatives to make the night. Interest form →

Next round of Aussie Angels IRL meetup dates dropping soon — Syd, Melb, Bris, Adl, GC? Watch this space.

Running something? We want to know about it. DM me.

06 — THE CLASSIFIEDS

The angels need things. The angels have things.

Asks:

→ Amelia — content buddy in Sydney (lower north shore). Filming solo, losing the inspo. Sophie, Levina, Paris and Hollie are already in. Jump in. @ameliabaweja

→ Polly — Sydney speakers on confidence and personal branding. Used Stef (Fuck Being Humble) and Daisy (The Self Hood) in the UK and is hunting Sydney equivalents. My recs: Andrea Clarke for women’s leadership, Alison Rice for the different angle.

→ Marika at HerHive — wants intros to women in health or finance. DM her.

→ Me — Singapore next week for NRF APAC with the NORA crew. Epic program for the Aussie retailers in town. If you’re heading over, LMK.

Offers:

→ Alycia / Project C Studios (Brisbane). Podcast production house + studio just off James Street — cyclorama wall for product shoots / headshots, plus a boardroom for hire. Mention us when you book. @project.c.studios →

→ Lizzie / Solo Co — free Builder Blueprint diagnostic for early-stage and idea-stage. joinsoloco.com/builderblueprint →

→ Jess Barker — transition coach for women bailing on the corporate gig to build their own service business. 3–6 month partnership, or a long weekend 1:1 retreat in Ibiza.

Capital:

→ Mercy / Zorentia — raising pre-seed via SAFE at $8M cap with a 20% discount. The platform helps founders launch tech startups. Just landed Macquarie University as her first institutional customer, with more universities and schools in the pipeline locally and internationally. Looking for angels writing cheques, or anyone who can warm-intro her to one. One-pager + quick call available. DM Mercy.

Co-founder seats — still open via Jade at Willis Global Family Office:

→ Death-Tech / Legal-Tech — Co-Founder & CTO. Technical, fast-moving, fluent in modern tools, joining a founding team of three. Gold Coast preferred, Syd/Melb/Bris on the table. willis.global →

→ E-commerce Consumer Brand — Co-Founder & CEO. Operator with e-com + China sourcing experience. Fitness-adjacent, not apparel or supplements. willis.global →

Drop your asks in the chat.

07 — JOIN THE CHAT

This newsletter is the highlight reel. The WhatsApp is where we actually live.

200+ angels, every city, growing weekly. Approval-only now so we keep the spammers out. You know you’ve made it when the JOIN OUR INVESTMENT bots are chasing you. DM me Aussie numbers anytime.

🔗 Join the Aussie Angels →

Overheard this fortnight:

→ “115 glorious angel messages to catch up on this morning — and the content didn’t disappoint.” — Kim Kerton

→ “I am craving female friendships who are into entrepreneurship.” — Sumana

→ “I can’t believe this group exists. It’s great to see a space like this.” — Sofia, newly joined

That’s the whole point. Forward this substack to one girl in your life who’d get it. Tell them to join the WhatsApp.

See you in there. 🤍

Brooke x

Hi angels 🤍

^^ Editors note if you prefer to listen.

You’ve probably noticed it’s taken me a little longer than a fornight to get back in your inbox with the These are the girls who get it newsletter. In the words of Gabbi Whipps, we’ve been going through some things but I am so stoked that we are here now.

Two weekends ago I watched Jemma Sbeg backstage at DomeFest and I don’t have the words for what it feels like to watch an Australian woman operating at that level. And then on stage — Mundanara from Black Magic Woman, Abbie Chatfield, Big Small Talk, Gabbi Whipps, Ebony May from R U O’Cake — every single one of them brought their community into that room and the Hordern Pavillion was completely electric. I’m so honoured to have a played a small part. Chookas to Soph & Bella for pulling it off. So proud. Women who’d found their people, in a room, being absolutely feral about it in the best way.

That’s the whole brief. That’s what we’re building here.

And then while I was still coming down from all of that, some news dropped in the chat. What came back stopped me.

“You built this from the ground up.” “The Australian community wouldn’t exist without you.” “Wherever you go next, we’re following.” Honestly yep, I have very little words. So grateful.

So. Here we are. Aussie Angels — properly ours now. New home, same women, same energy.

You told us what you need: IRL events worth leaving the house for, introductions that actually go somewhere, women in your city doing real things. Getting practical. That’s the brief. That’s what this is.

Speaking of which — Sydney, we’re on. IRL meetup next Tuesday 21st April. RSVP here. I’m itching to see everybody. 🤍

Fortnightly. No fluff. Just us. Let’s go. x

Aussie Angels is Australia’s answer to the serendipity Americans take for granted. The room where founders, operators, corporates and creatives are in the same group chat — and it turns out they needed each other. IRL events, real conversations, and the introductions that actually change things.

These are the girls who get it. And this is where they live.

02 — ANGEL OF THE FORTNIGHT

Meet Sophie Augyen. Sydney · Founder of MYRRAR.

What are you actually building right now? MYRRAR — an AI-powered beauty app that helps women understand their unique facial features and discover the looks, techniques and products that actually suit them. It started from a personal problem: most beauty guidance isn’t personalised, it’s just filtered product recommendations dressed up as advice. MYRRAR is building something genuinely different — real guidance, based on your face.

What’s the most unhinged thing you’ve done for your career / business / a dream? I tend to do things because my gut says it’s a good idea and it’ll work out exactly how I want. Latest example: I decided a makeup touchup station at a club would be interesting. It’s never really been done before. I wanted to do it, so I made it happen.

What are you gossiping about right now? Two things. One: the beauty industry is run by old white men who have no idea what women actually want — so they manufacture unrealistic beauty standards and sell them back to us as aspiration. Two — and I’ll let this one land — pretty privilege doesn’t exist. Under the patriarchy, being pretty is a punishment.

The thing you’re most embarrassed to admit you want? I’ve become pretty shameless throughout this journey, but here it is: my gut tells me MYRRAR will become a multi-billion dollar company that ends up on the NYSE. Said it.

What do you want the angels to find you for? Collabs with beauty brands, and honestly — help growing the email list. If you’re building in beauty, wellness or tech and see a way to work together, I’m here for it.

Where can we find you? @_myrrar · @sophieauyeung_· myrrar.com

Want to be featured? Reply to this email.

03 — WHAT THE AUSSIE ANGELS ARE MAKING

The output from this community right now is not normal.

→ Dr Diamond — Layla left her job at HiSmile to back herself on this one following the kind of serendipity moment you can't manufacture: she slipped the product into Hailey Bieber's hands in Sydney, and now her IG bio reads "as seen in Hailey Bieber's handbag." Iconic. Last week they launched in By Charlotte stores across the country with pop-up events — and if you were at our SXSW Aussie Angels meetup you might have got a sample early. They're currently sold out. I'm hoarding my tube. See the launch →

→ Cat Spanti — the Miu Miu video. Go. Right now. Cat has the best taste on the internet and I say that with full authority — she is the creative director behind KIT, her wedding style business, and she did all of my wedding creative direction and outfits. I am biased. I am also correct. Watch →

→ Cathy Karuga — took Yanneth to New York to launch her Aus made luxury fashion brand and documented the whole trip on TikTok. The kind of content that makes you feel like you’re right there with her — and a reminder that Australian women are building on the world stage, quietly and beautifully. Watch →

→ DomeFest — Sophie Greiner and Bella Filacuridi built Australia’s first podcast festival from nothing and it sold out. The mainstage lineup: It’s A Lot with Abbie Chatfield, Big Small Talk with Hannah Ferguson and Sarah-Jane Adams, The Psychology of Your 20s with Jemma Sbeg, Missing Perspectives, and Momentum with Kat Sasso. I hosted the Conversation Corner — six intimate live shows — and that’s where the real magic happened. And then there was Alison Rice. More on her below. Cannot wait to be back on a stage. DomeFest →

→ Modern Empress — I was in Brisbane and got to Jess Smalley and Andrea Clarke’s Modern Empress event and it recalibrated something in me. Andrea Clarke is a fierce leader and Adapt is the book you need right now — read it. The dinner is 16 women, a private room, a managed conversation about self-leadership, and you leave having made a decision with a commitment to act on it within 24 hours. Melbourne is next. See the diary. → andreaclarke.com.au

→ Kirby — is mentoring for She Codes and building our founder/tech matchmaking platform with me The Match Deck. Watch this space — and if you’re in Brisbane, go to the She Codes+ Showcase. See the diary.

→ Lucinda at Bayly PR — is in NYC for Ad Week. We’re living vicariously and waiting for the hot takes. Today she was in the same room as Emma Grede who said “I’m not a celebrity CEO, I’m a CEO that’s done so well you know my name”. Follow along.

→ Real Fine Studio — Eliza and Elyse are Brissy girls doing big things in LA and they’re back on home turf for a pop-up tour across the country. If you haven’t been following along, now’s the time — and if you need any more convincing, Meghan Markle was recently spotted wearing their signature puffy heart earrings. See the tour →

→ Perry Howell / Pilates Gang — I went to Perry’s event in collab with Spicy Pilates and Bloch Active and I’m obsessed with what she’s building. Fresh from LA where she was Head of Brand for Tinder and Paris Hilton, she’s now in Australia and building a fitness community that actually has energy. Bloch is back in a big way — I remember begging my mum for jazz pants, a wrap top, and those fancy black jazz shoes all the big girls wore. Seeing the brand have this moment is everything. Get to Perry’s events. Watch → · @pilatesgang_

→ Rolodex Conduit Dinner — Mufaro and Jade hosted at Otto in Sydney and I've got the most FOMO. Loved the takeaways they shared online after: women are not given the same grace as men when startups fail. A man fails and it's a learning. A woman fails and it follows her. That reframe, sitting over dinner with the people actively working to change it, is exactly the kind of conversation we need in Australia. Watch what these two are building.

Shipped something? Drop it in the chat. You might end up here.

04 — WHAT WE’RE YAPPING ABOUT

Coachella. Hot take: Traditional Coachella brand activations have been dead for ten years and Coachella 2026 is just the first time I’ve paid enough attention to confirm it. We’re in a global economic crisis. People are anxious. And brands are spending millions on tents in the desert for an $11,000 ticket crowd (yes I know this is the artist pass, but still). The whole thing feels manufactured at exactly the moment when people are craving something real. That’s not a brand strategy problem — it’s a values misalignment problem.

The activations that cut through right now are the ones that feel like they were made by someone who actually thought about it. Skylar Leah Kate’s sunscreen reapplication station. Hot Girl Pickles glow up recreating their ground up success from 2025. Small, considered, specific. Meanwhile Fayt did a Coachella-inspired event in Australia and we liked it infinitely more, because it was built for us.

The format shift worth paying attention to: brands this year moved away from massive influencer houses stuffed with thirty creators who’ve never met and don’t like each other, to something smarter. One anchor creator, they curate the guest list, and you get their actual friend group. Poppi did this with Jake Shane and Micky Gordon. Friend group content is popping off right now because it’s the closest thing to intimacy at scale. You’re not watching an ad, you’re watching people who actually know each other. That’s the direction. We’ll see more of this on social campaigns in 2026.

The Biebers. Justin headlined as “Bieberchella” and the people who were there for it were absolutely there for it. The moment that got me: mid-performance, singing Everything Hallelujah, he looked straight into the camera and called out Hailey and baby Jack. The online critics had thoughts. Hailey was “SO proud” and didn’t elaborate and didn’t need to. Meanwhile Rhode had a full “Rhode World” pop-up on-site and Justin’s SKYLRK brand ran a 10,000-square-foot Oasis activation. The Biebers didn’t just attend Coachella, they owned it from every angle. Rhode x Patrón — odd it wasn’t with 818, right?

Pinterest went offline. Their whole activation was phone-free, guests locked their devices in a secured pouch at the door and spent the time making custom charms, getting beauty touch-ups, building physical junk journals with stickers and lenticular photos. The question everyone’s asking is: when do we see the content? Maybe never. Maybe that’s the point. In a sea of brands paying to be seen, Pinterest paid to actually be remembered. I keep thinking about that.

Emma Grede’s new book. I saw Emma speak at NRF in New York earlier this year and it elevated my obsession with her to a new level. She is genuinely such a weapon — co-founder of SKIMS, founder of Good American, and someone who has built real commercial businesses with real foundations, not just a personal brand with a merch drop attached. The book lands different when you’ve watched her command a room. We’re all reading it. Book club incoming. Watch this space.

The ecommerce number that should change how you’re thinking: Australians spent $82.6 billion online in 2025 — up 14% year on year, with 24% of all retail now happening online. This is exciting, but here’s the context that makes it really interesting: Asian markets have been sitting at close to 80% online for years. Australia was stuck around 12% for a long time — and honestly, that’s still the reality for many of the billion-dollar retail brands I work with. We are finally catching up, and the gap between where consumers are going and where most brands currently operate is your opportunity. The Australia Post eCommerce Report 2026 just dropped and it’s essential reading. Read it →

Alix vs Alex. Not elaborating. You know where to find Soph Greiner on TikTok for a hot take. I’m waiting for Sofia to enter the chat.

05 — THE AI EDIT

Here’s what I’ve actually been doing with AI, because I think it changes things: I’ve connected my email, Slack, Salesforce, Asana and internal knowledge base into one interface - Claude (ok technically I’m using Kiro/Obsidian with a Claude backend, because #WomenInSTEM) - and I am now essentially working out of that single window. It sounds like a small thing until you realise how much of your day is just moving information between tabs. I have my Technical partner’s Claude backend connected to mine, so we have a giant shared brain.

My favourite workflow so far? I send a lot of partner and client emails. Every single one of those used to mean searching for context, drafting then going back into Salesforce afterwards to log it, update the contact, add notes. That’s all automated now. Email sent, CRM updated, done. And last week I sent 96 personalised event invites to Australia’s Retail C-Suite — each one written with context pulled from what I know about that specific client. Not a mail merge. Actually personalised. At scale.

The angels who are building businesses: this is the unlock. Not AI as a concept. AI connected to your actual systems, doing the actual admin, so you can focus on the work only you can do.

→ Arielle Thomas — the Process podcast dropped an episode on making AI actually practical. Bella from Pondd is featured with her pro tips. This episode is exactly what it sounds like: useful, not theoretical. Listen →

We’re going to keep talking about this. What are you building with it? Drop it in the chat.

06 — IN THE DIARY

No excuses. Here’s where we’re showing up:

18 Apr · Sydney — Hayley Westaby’s first female founder dinner and the response since she announced it has been something else — founders globally sliding into her DMs saying this is exactly what they’ve been looking for. 6–8pm in Darlinghurst. Special guest is Grace from @graceexperiments. A few seats left — DM @hayleywestoby to get in.

18 Apr · Sydney — Polly is hosting a private screening of The Drama this Friday via YSO Cinema Club. Devil Wears Prada 2 sold out in five minutes (of course) but she’s adding 30 more tickets this weekend. Tickets →

21 Apr · Melbourne — Networking drinks for women in taboo industries — sextech, femtech and everything in between. Hosted by Laura Blagys. RSVP →

21 Apr · Sydney — Aussie Angels IRL Meetup. We’re on, angels. Next Tuesday. RSVP so I can lock down the venue — coming solo is absolutely how most of us showed up the first time and it’s always worth it. RSVP here →

23 Apr · Melbourne — The Social Summit. A full-day conference for creators, marketers and brands at Rydges Melbourne — and it exists because angel Amy Dickinson willed it into being. Amy built this from scratch: 500 attendees, a genuinely stacked speaker lineup, and a room that brings together the best of social, content and commerce in one place. Angels on stage: Cat Spanti, Jordyn Christensen, Arielle Thomas and yours truly. Use code ANGEL25 for 25% off. Tickets →

27 Apr · Melbourne — LiftWomen Asia-Pacific Female Founders Grant Pitch Night. Two of our own — Rach Tucker and Stella RiceGirl — are pitching live to investors and VCs for non-dilutive equity. Go back them. Tickets →

30 Apr · Sydney — Blackbird’s Sunrise at Carriageworks. Lineup is stacked. Tickets →

8 May · Melbourne — Modern Empress Supper Club. Private dining room at QT Hotel. 16 seats. A dinner for women who want to be more deliberate about their life — you leave having made a decision and committed to acting on it within 24 hours. Book here → · DM @jess.smalley

23 Apr · Brisbane — She Codes+ Showcase. Kirby — one of our own, mentor for She Codes and building the Aussie Angels founder/tech matchmaking platform with me — is part of this graduation showcase celebrating women entering tech. Come support. Use code MENTORLOVE for tickets. Tickets →

13 June · Sydney — Vogue Codes Summit. Angel Maeva — founder of Bread Beauty — is featured, and the speaker lineup includes astronaut Katherine Bennell-Pegg. This one is genuinely special. Details →

Running something? Tell me. If it’s worth the angels’ time, it goes here.

07 — THE CAP TABLE

Co-founder opportunities, investment intel, and capital that’s actually moving.

Female founders: the number worth celebrating. Startups with at least one female founder captured 24% of total capital raised in Australia in 2025 — up from just 15% in 2024. The strongest result in years. The women making it happen right now: Grace Brown at Andromeda ($23M raise), Proseek Bio (Brisbane startup raises $1.5m to commercialise its ovarian cancer detection blood test), Understanding Zoe ($770k raised for AI platform supporting neurodivergent kids) — and plenty more coming. My money is on Grace Toombs and her work in healthcare.

The funding landscape right now: $1.41B raised across 54 equity rounds in Australia so far in 2026 — a 57% increase on the same period last year. Median deal sizes: $1M at Angel/Pre-Seed, $2.5M at Seed, $11M at Series A.

Angels pitching this fortnight: Rach Tucker and Stella RiceGirl at the LiftWomen grant pitch night, April 27, Melbourne. Non-dilutive equity. Live audience of investors and VCs. [Details here →]

Open seats — via Jade at Willis Global Family Office:

→ Death-Tech / Legal-Tech — Co-Founder & CTO — Technical founder to lead product development and own the roadmap. Multiple funding rounds under your belt, fast-moving, fluent in AI and automation. Joining a founding team of three. Gold Coast preferred, open to Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane. → willis.global

→ E-commerce Consumer Brand — Co-Founder & CEO — Ambitious operator with e-commerce and China sourcing experience. Own everything from ops and product sourcing to supply chain and logistics. Fitness-adjacent, not apparel or supplements. Gold Coast preferred, open to Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane. → willis.global

Have a co-founder role, investment opportunity, or funding news to share? Reply to this email.

08 — THE CLASSIFIEDS

The angels need things. The angels have things. Let’s sort it out.

→ Alison Rice has an open EOI for Serve — her mentorship program. I have to say something about this properly. In 2018 I used to walk home from KPMG listening to Alison’s podcast and cry, because I knew I wanted more for myself and I didn’t know how to get there yet. She was the voice in my ear when I was figuring it out. Spending time with her at DomeFest was full circle. If you’re at that point — or even if you’re not and you just want to level up — this is the one. → Expressions of Interest

→ Cheek Media — Partnerships Manager — Australia’s sharpest feminist media brand, and yes — you’d get to work alongside Hannah Ferguson and Soph Greiner. If you know how to build commercial relationships without compromising the editorial, this is the one. (I’m applying in secret. Don’t tell anyone.) → Apply →

→ Two Aussie brands doing cool shit here & in the US are hiring: SIR — Global Wholesale Manager → Apply → and Mode Mischief Studios — Marketing Manager → Apply →

→ Georgia McFarlane / The Content Files — the content editor who has been quietly levelling up video for some of the best creators in the community. If you need video services, she’s your girl. → @thecontent.files

→ Rach Tucker at Smooch — building a prize pack and needs a connection to an Aus-based lube or condoms brand. Spicy, yes. Also a real ask. DM her. @smooch.drinks

Drop your asks in the chat. We’ll make it happen.

09 — JOIN THE CHAT

This newsletter is the highlight reel. The WhatsApp is where we actually live.

Clarissa said it best: “Industry agnostic — just keen to yap and make friends with others building cool shit.”

200+ angels. Every city. Come find your people.

🔗 Join the Aussie Angels chat →

This fortnight: the serendipity gap is real. The right room, the right introduction, the right moment — Australia has been under-indexed on all of it. That’s what we’re here to fix.

See you in two weeks angels. 🤍

Brooke x

Hi angels 🤍

Not a newsletter. A love letter.

To the ambitious Australian woman who’s been quietly looking for her people - hi, we’re them. You’re not too late. You’re exactly where you need to be.

These are the girls who get it…

And this is the home of the Aussie Angels - born from the Hot Smart Rich community and now very much our own world. 300+ women across every industry, every city, doing the most and loving it.

I’m Brooke. I champion and showcase the women in this community - the things they’re making, the moves they’re shaking, and the events worth actually leaving the house for. Fornightly. No fluff. Just us.

A full re-brand of this Substack is coming, but I decided getting this out into the world was more important than a perfect brand mark. More on this to come.

In this issue you’ll meet Amy, celebrate Bella and the DomeFest moment, and get across everything worth showing up for this month. Let’s go. x

^^ Take a listen to my editor’s note angels.

02 — AUSSIE ANGEL OF THE FORTNIGHT ROUND 1

She’s the reason this community exists. Because I got very excited about this, you actually get to meet 2 angels this fortnight.

Meet Bella Filacuridi. Sydney · Co-founder of Dome and DomeFest, former CX consultant.

What are you actually building right now? Australia’s first podcast fan festival, DomeFest, happening this Sunday at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney, come hang angels, we’d love to see you there! The whole day is all about connecting like-minded listeners and building new friendships around the shows we love (this community is living proof of that!). 10 podcast live shows with some of the most influential voices in media like Abbie Chatfield, Hannah Ferguson and Mamamia’s You Beauty and Jemma Sbeg’s Psychology Of Your 20s. In between shows think: debriefs over cocktails, DJs, food trucks, giveaways the works!

Specifically for the angels, a lot of us are meeting at 10:30 at the Rella brekkie meetup (for women in media, marketing, brand-building) - a great way to meet other angels & head into the day with a crew!

What’s the most unhinged thing you’ve done for your career /  business / a dream Quitting my consulting job, moving back home & convincing Abbie Chatfield to headline a festival where I have no prior event experience whatsoever x

What are you gossiping about right now? The rise of interest-media over social media, and seeing how IRL communities and intentional third spaces are following this same pattern. People are using interests as a social filter and cultural connector, we’ve designed DomeFest around that same thesis.

The thing you’re most embarrassed to admit you want? Not embarrassed (price of entry baby) but I want to grow my personal brand this year and be very intentional with it. Truthfully, it’s always an afterthought and usually the last thing on my list for the day, but it’s just become so much more apparent how critical it is to have one as a founder!

What do you want the angels to find you for? I’m always up for a spicy marg and a good yap with the girls. This community has been so generous and have backed Soph & I as we take a really big (BIG) swing, so if I can support you and what you’re doing, I’m all ears and love to bounce ideas. If you’re building in a similar space, have a podcast, see a creative way we could partner, don’t hesitate to reach out too!

Where can we find you? @bellafilacuridi, @domefest, @homeofdome

Want to be featured? Reply to this email. Don’t be shy — we want to know what you’re building.

03 — WHAT THE AUSSIE ANGELS ARE MAKING

The output from this community right now is ABSOLUTLEY WILD in the best way.

→ Arielle Thomas — our girl launched The Clubhouse — Australia's first community and event venue built around a podcast. Production studios, event space, brand activations and short-stay accommodation all under one roof in Surry Hills. This is what happens when a creative actually builds the space she wished existed. All styled by McMullin & Co. Genuinely one of the coolest things happening right now.

→ Sophie Hood — Seoul Tonic just landed on Revolve and we are not calm. Sophie founded the brand in 2021 with a third-generation Korean pear farmer and has quietly built it into one of the most interesting wellness brands globally - worn at New York and Paris Fashion Week, stocked across health and fitness, and now on one of the world's biggest fashion platforms. This is what building different looks like.

→ Jade Conner & Mufaro at Rolodex Media — wrote the piece on community that every brand marketer needs to read right now. The difference between audience and community, why most brands get it completely wrong, and - oh - they quoted yours truly in it. Give it a read.

Rolodex Media

Community is a buzz word

Written by Jade Conner…

Read more

5 months ago · 66 likes · 8 comments · Rolodex Media and Jade Conner

→ Lauren Kennedy — our angel has been in the US this week at NVIDIA GTC and Shoptalk, representing Verity AI on the world stage. She’s been sharing the whole thing on her stories and honestly it’s the content we all needed. Cannot wait for the debrief when she’s back. Follow along.

→ Mode Office - the best weekly newsletter in Australia, full stop. Adrianna and Maddi cover everything from boardroom moves to Oscars fashion to OpenAI drama, and this week's issue is extra special. They interviewed Natalie Barbu, founder of Rella, who went from $25k in the bank and two weeks from shutting down to $3M ARR. If you're not already subscribed to Mode Office, fix that immediately.

Mode Office

Boardroom Briefing: New CEOs, Oscars 2026, Another Rate Life

Dome Fest is this weekend. It’s all about bringing podcast communities IRL, creating a space to spend the day with your favourite hosts and a room full of people who just get it…

Read more

4 months ago · 1 like

Shipped something? Drop it in the chat. You might end up here.

04 — IN THE DIARY

No excuses. Here’s where we’re showing up:

27 Mar · Sydney — Trivia Night at The Ace, hosted by the girls at Pondd. Teams are assigned randomly so it's perfect for meeting new people — and if Remi and Bella are involved you already know it's going to be a good time. I went to the last round & it was epic. Free! → Tickets

27 Mar · Sydney — Soleil Soirée, International Women’s Day event hosted by Sophie Augyen of Myraar→ Tickets

29 Mar · Sydney — DomeFest — Australia's first ever podcast festival. 10+ live shows, music, food, community. Sophie Greiner and Bella Filacuridi built this from scratch and it is going to be unreal. Brooke is hosting a stage.

The Rella team are hosting a coffee & pastries meetup at 10am to kick off the day. If you’re in or interested media, marketing, podcasts, startups (Which I think TBH is most of us) this is for you (and if it isn’t you, please come anyway)!

Haven't got your ticket yet? The girls have given us 50% off the next 20 tickets purchased — code DOMEINSIDER → Tickets

23 Apr · Melbourne — The Social Summit. A full day conference for creators, marketers and brands at Rydges Melbourne. 400+ people, panels, presentations and workshops at the intersection of content and commerce. Oh and the speaker lineup? Absolutely stacked with angels — Cat Spanti, Jordyn Christensen, Arielle Thomas and yours truly are all on stage. Use code HSR30 for 30% off tickets (code expires 27 March so get in quick!!) → Tickets

30 Apr · Sydney — Difficult Women Doing Difficult Things. 40 women in a room. Tarot, gin, and real talk about real revenue — no pastel aesthetics, no manifesting without a sales strategy. Angel Gab Burke is one of the hosts so you already know the vibe is unmatched. 6:30–8:30pm at 169 Castlereagh Street. $97 tickets → Tickets

Running something? Tell me. If it’s worth the angels’ time, it goes here.

05 — THE CLASSIFIEDS

The angels need things. The angels have things. Let’s sort it out.

→ Ari at Athlinq just launched on the App Store and is looking for brands to join their Perks Locker — putting your brand directly in front of athletes from pathway talent to Olympic level. A discount code, product seeding or ambassador offer is all it takes. If investing in women's sport is on your radar this is the most genuine way to do it. DM Ari to get involved → @athlinqapp

→ Brooke & Kirby are building a matchmaking portal to connect Aussie angels with SheCodes tech graduates for projects — help us shape this by answering a few quick questions.

→ Coral at Coral & Co. Events is Melbourne's go-to for brand launches, influencer experiences and events that actually feel considered — her clients include Forever New, Glasshouse Fragrances and Kmart. If you've got an event coming up, she's your girl → @coralandcoevents

→ Laura Blagys is building The Baths — Australia's first female pleasure festival. Think Sexpo you'd actually want to attend with your girlfriends. Launching February 2027 and looking for follows, intros and women who get it. @meetmeatthebaths

Drop your asks in the chat. We’ll make it happen.

06 — AUSSIE ANGEL OF THE FORTNIGHT ROUND 2

She’s the reason this community exists. Because I got very excited about this, you actually get to meet 2 angels this fortnight.

Meet Amy Dickinson. Brisbane · Founder of The Social Summit and co-host of the podcast 1800-Chatline.

What are you actually building right now? My main hustle is The Social Summit - a conference for creators, marketers and brands! Our events bring together 500 attendees to learn about everything social media. Our next event takes place on 23 April at The Rydges Hotel and our line-up features names like Rachael Wilde, Sam Wood, Priscilla Hajiantoni, Lizzie Waley, Olivia Molly Rogers and our very own HRS angel Brooke Moody, plus thought leaders from Spotify, YouTube, Shameless Media + more. If you’d like to attend, use code HSR30 for 30% off tickets (ends 27 March!) My side hustle is my TikTok page @amzdicko and podcast @1800chatline

What’s the most unhinged thing you’ve done for your career / business / a dream? When we first launched The Social Summit I created a TikTok series, detailing a story about how I “won’t be attending my best friend’s wedding as she chose to have it on the same day as The Social Summit.” All lies - I just wanted to get the event date out there… and it worked - the post went totally viral with over a million views!

What are you gossiping about right now? MAFS, of course! That’s why I created my podcast 1800 CHAT LINE where my co-host Jayde and I unpack each episode. Also dying over the current Rebel Wilson scandal…

The thing you’re most embarrassed to admit you want? FAME, FORTUNE, AND A BOYFRIEND! If anyone has a hot brother they want to introduce me to, LMK!

What do you want the angels to find you for? Entertainment - follow @amzdicko on TikTok for unhinged dating stories, or listen to 1800 CHAT LINE for MAFS updates

Where can we find you? @thesocialsummit @amzdicko @1800chatline (all on both Instagram and TikTok) ❤️

Want to be featured? Reply to this email. Don’t be shy — we want to know what you’re building.

07 — JOIN THE CHAT

This newsletter is the highlight reel. The WhatsApp is where we actually live.

“I don’t really have anywhere else to share this, so I thought I’d post it here”

— Katherine, dropping her podcast These Are The Learnings into the group chat at 7pm on a Tuesday. This is exactly why we exist. Go give her a listen.

300ish Aussie angels. All of them doing the most. Come join us.

🔗 HSR global chat

🔗 Aussie angels dedicated chat

See you in two weeks angels. 🤍

Brooke x

1. Why SXSW matters more than ever (and why you should be there)

There are few places where founders, marketers, artists, and AI researchers share the same coffee queue, and that’s what makes SXSW Sydney magic. It’s not just another conference; it’s the collision point of culture, commerce, and creativity. If last year was about discovery, this year is about deployment - how ideas move from panels to prototypes, from podcasts to real-world impact.

🧠 Agentic AI goes hands-on. Fewer “what is AI?” panels, more live demos, workflows, and results.

💬 Marketing gets practical. Expect sessions that show process, not just inspiration - prompts, pipelines, and proof.

🎧 Media keeps evolving. With Reddit & TikTok in the mix and a buzzing podcast stage, distribution meeting the message is the meta-conversation.

🇦🇺 Australia’s moment. Founders here are building for scale with clear eyes — watch the collisions between fintech, retail, health, and creative tech.

This year I’ll be on the ground across AWS activations and Hot Smart Rich community moments, catching the best sessions, side events, and people to watch.

2. How to SXSW like a pro (Brooke’s Playbook)

I was on the founding event team for Years 1 & 2 - so I’ve learnt a thing or two about how to actually do SXSW Sydney right. It’s equal parts tech, culture, and good timing - plan your week and then throw it out the window when the vibes take you down the SXSW vortex!

• ☕Anchor your day at the Exec Lounge: coffee, ignore emails, take quick resets between sessions.

• ⚡Follow the sparks: it’s okay to bail on a panel if the hallway conversation is better.

• 💬Say hello to people you don’t know - SXSW works when you engage with people outside your usual circle.

• 💻Talk to the demo teams: ask “show me what’s under the hood.”

• 👜Pack your kit: portable battery, water, charlotte tilbury lip oil & tote for the merch haul.

• 🧭Bookends > marathons: 2–3 great blocks beat 10 mediocre ones. Save energy for night events.

• 🥗Eat real food: grab coffee and bites in the Tumbalong precinct, book dinners early.

• 🎶Don’t be a square - and don’t skip the music: by Thursday, the tech crowd thins and the rhythm kicks in. Go support Aussie up-and-coming musicians — they’re often the best part of the week.

• 🧭 Use the SXSW Sydney app: for live updates, room numbers, and add-to-calendar links. Then close the app and look up - half the magic happens in the halls.

  

  Saying hello to new people was how I ended up on the Primeville carpet with the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City last year.

3. Your Insider Base: The Executive Lounge (Publicis × AWS)

📍 Le Checkpoint, high-traffic area near the Podcast Stage (ICC precinct) 🕓 Open all week

Your SXSW base — part workspace, part idea lab, part cocktail bar. In partnership with Publicis Groupe, AWS will host three speaker sessions and a two-hour evening cocktail event.

✨ Don’t miss: The Game — Agentic AI for Executives — a two-hour leadership cocktail experience exploring how Agentic AI will reshape industries. Think less PowerPoint, more power plays. Register here > 💻 Le Checkpoint: lecheckpointsxsw.com.au

✨Step inside the future of fashion: SmartStyle by AWS uses generative AI and real-time rendering to show how clothes look on you — instantly. Snap a photo, choose an outfit, and watch as the system builds a digital twin and short fashion video in seconds. A crowd favourite at AWS Summit Sydney and Gartner Symposium, SmartStyle returns to SXSW to showcase what’s next for retail, personalization, and customer experience.

4. Hot Smart Rich Aussie Angels at SXSW — Dinner with the girls who get it

HSR Aussie Angels: Rooftop Dinner & Drinks 📅 Wednesday 15 Oct | 🕡 6:30 pm | 📍 Jimmy’s Rooftop

A moment to debrief the panels, the big ideas, and the SXSW vibes — falafels, drinks, city views, and the girls who get it. Spots are limited → RSVP here. Bring your notes, your questions, and your best hot-take from the day. No SXSW ticket necessary.

5. Your weekly rhythm (Suggested)

Mon/Tue: Big keynotes + first-look demos. Walk the precinct. Wed: Deep-dives on the expo floor + HSR Rooftop Dinner. Thu: Customer experience + Agentic AI day + The Game cocktail event. Fri: Follow-ups, intros, and the meetings you promised yourself you’d book. Then a night out at Sydney’s best live music venues.

6. One last thing

SXSW isn’t about collecting lanyards — it’s about collecting momentum. Go where you feel curious, take notes, make one brave introduction a day, and don’t forget to look out over the view of Tumbalong park.

See you out there - I’ll be bouncing between sessions with an oat flat white and a tiny mic glued to my hand.

— Brooke

🔗 Follow: linkedin.com/in/brookemoody/ | @brookekm_

7. Session Guide

Your SXSW Sydney 2025 insider schedule - equal parts culture, chaos, and caffeine should give you the perfect SXSW experience!

Monday 13 October

🎤 11:00 AM — SXSW Sydney Opening Ceremony Culture & Lifestyle | Smoke, song, and the collective inhale that marks the start of the week. Tumbalong Park sets the tone.

🎧 1:00 PM — From Passion to Paycheck: Cracking the Creator Economy Media & Creator Culture | Creators, platforms, and paydays — the evolution from side hustle to full-stack brand.

💅 2:30 PM — The Future of Style in Motion (Hosted by Marie Claire) Fashion & Culture | The gloss and grit of the new fashion economy — AI stylists, digital runways, and a generation remixing identity.

🧠 3:15 PM — Navigating the New Age of E-Commerce AI & Retail | How automation, attention, and authenticity can coexist in the algorithmic mall.

🤖 4:30 PM — How AI Agents Are Changing the Creator Game AI & Innovation | Meet your new creative partner: a bot that brainstorms faster than your team — and maybe better.

🍸 5:00 PM — Tech & Innovation Opening Party (Presented by Accenture) Networking & Innovation | The unofficial first toast. Ideas get louder after dark.

Tuesday 14 October

🧠 8:30 AM — Hallucinate to Innovate AI & Innovation | Ben Moir (AWS) on turning generative chaos into tangible creation. AI as muse and maker.

🎭 10:00 AM — Main Character Energy Culture & Identity | When everyone’s the protagonist — the psychology of self-branding meets the algorithm.

💬 11:30 AM — The Cost of Customer Lies Marketing & Behaviour | Decoding the gap between what audiences say vs do — and the price of believing them.

⚙️ 1:45 PM — Operating as an AI-Native Business: Inside the Future of Work Future of Work | Daniel Palmer (Relevance AI) on re-architecting orgs around automation — not fear.

🎬 3:00 PM — Beyond Reality Live: Behind TV’s Most Addictive Shows Media & Storytelling | Streaming as sociology — what our binge habits reveal about us.

💅 5:00 PM — AWS SmartStyle Demo Launch @ Le Checkpoint Fashion Tech | AI mirrors, digital twins, and instant runways. Fashion gets its neural-network moment.

🍸 6:30 PM — Evening Drinks @ Le Checkpoint Networking & Ideas | Where execs, creatives, and founders swap notes before day two resets the pace.

Wednesday 15 October

⚙️ 9:00 AM — Work in 2035: Moving from Zoo to Jungle Future of Work | The survival guide for hybrid workers — less control, more curiosity.

💬 11:00 AM — The AI Revolution in Marketing Ethics Marketing & AI | Automation meets morality — who’s accountable when the algorithm writes the brief?

⚡ 1:45 PM — Leadership in the New Era of (AI) Marketing Leadership & AI | Jackie Hill (Canva) on creative courage — how to lead when machines can brainstorm.

⚡ 3:30 PM — How to Be a Manager People Want to Work For Leadership & Culture | Less LinkedIn-speak, more human. Practical empathy as competitive edge.

💅 5:00 PM — Fabrics of Modern Australia Runway Show Fashion & Design | The country’s creative identity on display — threads of heritage and futurism.

🍸 6:30 PM — Hot Smart Rich Aussie Angels Dinner & Drinks Community & Connection | Rooftop air, falafels, and big-idea debriefs with the girls who get it. Jimmy’s Rooftop.

Thursday 16 October

🧠 8:45 AM — The Future of Agentic AI AI & Automation | Machines that act on intention, not instruction — frontier thinking for founders and operators.

🤖 11:00 AM — Inventing Tomorrow’s Customer Experience with Agentic AI Tech & Customer Experience | David Hyman (Lendi) on AI that listens, learns, and leads.

🌍 1:00 PM — Ethical Tech and the New Normal Sustainability & Society | Innovation without exploitation — tech’s conscience check.

🛍️ 2:15 PM — AI in Retail: From Personalisation to Prediction Retail & AI | How data turns into desire — and where to draw the creepy line.

💬 4:00 PM — Stories Beat Data — Every Single Time Marketing & Storytelling | Why gut still wins over graphs — a love letter to intuition.

🍸 5:30 PM — The Game (Agentic AI for Executives Cocktail Event) Leadership & Innovation | AWS’s signature night — Agentic AI meets strategy (and champagne).

🎧 8:00 PM — SXSW After Dark @ The Checkpoint Sessions Music & Culture | Live sets, late debates, and the kind of networking that only happens after 8 PM.

Friday 17 October

⚙️ 9:00 AM — The Future of Australian Innovation: Next Gen Builders Entrepreneurship & Policy | Start-up stamina and sovereign tech — what building locally really looks like.

💬 11:00 AM — Women Redefining Work Leadership & Equality | A sharp conversation on ambition, burnout, and designing balance on your own terms.

🎧 1:00 PM — The Creator Economy — Act II Media & Monetisation | Algorithms evolve, audiences fragment — the next playbook for sustainable creativity.

🎤 3:00 PM — Closing Reflections: Building What Lasts Culture & Purpose | Final wisdom before the espresso martinis — ideas that stick beyond the week.

🍸 5:00 PM — SXSW Sydney Wrap Drinks @ Le Checkpoint Community & Wind-Down | One last toast to ideas that deserve to live past the lanyard.

Early one morning I typed: “any Aussies here?”

Six women replied. We had dinner. Dumplings, pinot, and the beginnings of something that felt important.

Six months later

Fast forward six meetups and countless late-night voice notes, and last week 50+ women gathered at Bar Tilda in Sydney.

At 8am sharp, flat whites in one hand, croissants in the other, the room buzzed. Founders, corporates, creatives - women scaling startups, climbing ladders, or leaping off them entirely.

There was no networking script. Just real talk. Wins and struggles spilled across the table. Intros turned into collaborations. Plans got made on the spot.

Emily Jean captured it perfectly: “a space that feels like a hug and a power move at the same time.”

And then Madeleine Kinchington floored me: “We couldn’t have done it without Brooke — the ultimate girl’s girl.”

That’s the best compliment I’ve ever had. Maggie built the podcast; I’m scaling the connections locally. I didn’t grow up with a space like this, so I’m making sure it exists for others.

Why it felt different

❤️ No “what do you do?” small talk - just “what are you building and how can I help?”
❤️ Every detail mattered - from the coffee cups to the setting, it felt curated, not corporate.
❤️ Generosity met ambition - zero gatekeeping, just women backing women.

From six at dinner to fifty at breakfast. Seven events. Three cities. Over a hundred women now connected.

This is how community scales.

What’s next

Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide are next - then LA + New York.

The numbers are wild: 1000+ women in the global chat, 150+ in the Aussie one. But the magic isn’t in the stats. It’s in the feeling when you walk into the room: oh, these are my people.

There’s endless opportunities for brands to get onboard and work alongside these types of communities, but above all my mission is clear - fiercely protect the integrity of the community. We’re by the angels, for the angels.

A personal note

If I could have a yap to 24-year-old me, crying in the office bathroom and wondering if she belonged, I’d tell her: one day you’ll walk into a room of fifty women hyping each other up over croissants.

Back then, I thought success meant doing it alone. Now I know better.

You don’t need to go it alone. You need your girlies - the ones who’ll drop a supplier contact in your inbox, DM you an investor intro, or sit next to you at breakfast and whisper: you’ve got this.

That’s the real flex.

👉 Come sit with us. Join the chat here.

This week’s hot recs

Buying: Went straight from Sydney airport to the Intersection Paddington for a quick shop. Picked up another Maiken tank from Henne in black, IYKYK and a pair of relatively skinny jeans which was a surprise to you and me both. I also haven’t stopped thinking about this brown/blue stripped college jersey from One Mile.

Listening to: The Debrief by Business of Fashion on why Gen Z isn’t buying Luxury’s story. With luxury shares tanking, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of luxury brands. No answers yet but it’s top of mind.

Reading: She’s Always Hungry by Eliza Clark. This is a series of 11 or so short stories, on food, sex, gender and power - each story stranger than the next. The format is great for attention poor girlies. One weird little bed time story each night. I also loved her first novel Boy Parts.

Beauty fave: Acupuncture. For me (hormones/sleep), and my mini dachshund (spinal injury). Health is wealth. Beauty from the inside out, etc etc! Chinese medicine has CHANGED MY LIFE.

Manifesting: Expansive opportunities on my LA trip later in October. Currently seeking all must do LA activities please!

I feel like I need a better content production system so that I can keep myself accountable across all channels, particularly on here. If you have any tips for this please DM me. There has to be a better way!

Toodles,
Brooke x

Eight months later? Spoiler: still no Substack.

Why? Because 2025 hit me with full-on total burnout chaos. I sold a business (takes way longer than planned), got sick twice, survived a major car crash (still stuck in analysis paralysis on buying a new car), kept up treatment for my dachshund’s spinal rehab, and to top it all off, broke my arm.

Somewhere in the chaos, I also quit the pill to try and balance my hormones - a total rollercoaster ride. The routines that usually keep me sane? Tossed out the window. Instead, I mastered bed rot, doom-scrolling, drinking way too much, and crying *all the time*. The worst version of me showed up daily. Despite some amazing wins sprinkled in, I couldn’t even appreciate them - too buried in the burnout to notice.

August was my breaking point. Meltdown central.

Now, here I am in Bali, trading brain static for ocean waves, trying to figure out how to get back to me. Yes, it’s very Eat, Pray, Love, but at the ripe old age of 34, I’ll swear by the sun/sea magic combo to fix all manner of things.

After the psychic, I’ve also had a palm reader and a tarot reader tell me the same thing - my creative energy is huge, just seriously repressed. There’s something to be said here for keep asking the same question and getting the same answer. No wonder I’ve been feeling stuck.

Tech in 2025? It’s an endless white-knuckle ride. AI concepts drop weekly and if you’re not an instant expert, you’re already behind. On top of that, the industry’s choking on wave after wave of layoffs. Everyone’s nervous, job security’s a myth and optimism is on life support. The news? A relentless, anxiety-spiking circus ready to send me into a spiral every time I hit refresh.

So what’s the play? I went full-on digital detox, no socials, no doom scroll, for about four days. Then day five, back to 5 a.m. screen time. Breaking a phone addiction? Turns out it’s hard. Did you know the consumers now scroll on average 2 miles per day?! I don’t know what that is in KM but it feels like a lot.

Reset doesn’t come in a detox app or a no-phone rule. It’s in the tiny wins. Like forcing myself out of bed, swapping the iphone for an actual book (yes, the old paper kind), and reclaiming silence without that itchy panic that I’m missing something.

Pool chair politics have replaced TikTok become my latest obsession. I’ve been watching it all unfold like a reality show and inventing full-on White Lotus style storylines for the fellow guests.

YES to protecting my energy, NO to every distraction dripping for my attention. Tiny wins in the age of info-overload feel nothing short of revolutionary.

What I’m gossiping about

Sunscreen gate. Now, I’m not here to throw shade at these brands - I genuinely love Ultraviolet and Naked Sundays and am in awe of what they’ve achieved. I’ve been slathering their stuff exclusively for 3 years (RIP my melasma). So yeah, this sunscreen scandal stings a little more than it should. Independent tests showed SPF ratings as low as 4. Basically, sunscreen or baby oil? Tough call. And it’s not just them, multiple labels (so far 17 have pulled products from the market) using the same white-label formula are scrambling. The quick white-label shortcut? Looks like it is dead as a strategy.

The way it’s been handled? A lot of denial, deflection, and excuses before maybe some independent testing. Sub-par doesn’t even begin to cover it. Consumers want honesty and accountability. Brands, your credibility is on the line, and trust me - it’s not endless.

Hot recs

Buying: A gorgeous polka dot dress by Cielle, a Bali brand designed by two sisters. Another halter style brown dress from Bec & Bridge and a blue one from Sir. Resisting the urge to buy ‘aquatic holiday jewellery’ (as Matt calls it). Eyeing a studded brown suede tote bag at the local stores. Considering if the studded totes are already over and if I’m too late to jump on the trend. Picked up some great holiday looks from Cotton On of all places. Will do a full Bali outfit post later.

Listening to: Nothing. Cold turkey off the pods this week. Trying to buy some brain space back as I’ve realised I’ve become uncomfortable in silence.

Reading: A lot, because books are better by the beach. The Maid by Rita Prose (a pleasant blind date with a book), The Tell by Amy Griffin (excellent but I’ve DNF’d this for now as it was killing my holiday vibe), Hot Milk by Deborah Levy (recommended by the epic HSR angel Georgia).

Beauty fave: Kevin Murphy Supergoo Rubbery Sculpting Gel. This has changed the game for beachy slick-back hair. No muss, no fuss, a perfect slick every time and rinses out with water alone.

Manifesting: My next vacay.

So here we are - a psychic’s nudge, a tropical reset, and plenty of hard-earned lessons later. No magic fixes. Just the sometimes uncomfortable work of showing up for yourself.

This Substack will be a blend of whatever’s on my slashie mind: marketing, branding, tech, retail, culture, consumer gossip, community, and shining a light on some of the remarkable Hot Smart Rich angels I’m lucky enough to meet.

Brooke x

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