Hi angels 🤍
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.
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
Brooke, thank you so much for the Rally feature! I'm sick that you're sick for it & so happy that Rachel introduced you to the beta <3