To head the cowboys off at the pass, Emma Earley is getting 1000s of women into AI

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0:49Hello and welcome, Woodriga Mawarra from the Gadigal lands here in Sydney. It's Startup360. I'm Simon Thompson. And beside me is the terrific, radiant, ecstatic, loyal and loving... Julie Trell. Welcome. I love this. Look at this. I'm not sure you get something like this if you use my surname. But tell us what's been going on in your life. I decided to step back into the classroom year five as a substitute or casual teacher. And I remember being in year five and what it was like to have a substitute. There was, you know, chaos. It's kind of exciting, though. It's exciting and chaos. As a student, ooh, we have a new person.

1:31We can test the boundaries. How quickly can we send them in sign? And they didn't get me there yet, but before 10 a.m., this young girl made me this sign. As they were working on their canvas slides, we were making Greek gods. Oh, wow. Using Latin bases. They'd gone full Odyssey. Yes, yes, they'd gone full Odyssey using Latin terms and being creative. Full Odyssey. I went and saw that on Friday. I went to IMAX. I have to say it is an extraordinary movie and I felt a little bit seasick at some stages. We were kind of quite close to the front and you feel like you're in the boat as it's fighting its way through the seas and everything's going a little bit wrong and Matt Damon is doing his thing.

2:22Yes, I quite like sort of having people of colour in a movie, especially a work of fiction. I know that Elmo is carrying on about how he's going to do a historically accurate piece of fiction. Whatever floats your boat, buddy. Just try and get your share price up, I would suggest. I wouldn't worry about being a movie maker. Just, you know, you did the IPO and a lot of people are underwater right now. Just a hint. But that is fantastic. And quite good spelling, I have to say. Radiant, you know. Yeah. She may have, I don't know how she did it, if she used AI anyway, as the gift that was given. It is beautiful.

3:02I love the fact that the tea is like a tree. It is like a tree. A tea tree. It is like a tea tree. So that's going on the fridge. Well, congratulations. Thanks. Not too much to talk about today, but we should talk about who our guest is. Yes. Yes. Today we have Emma Earley, who I met at a Her Tech Circle breakfast, immediately became obsessed with the work that she was doing, her nonlinear career path, working with Remarkables to Canopy HR, the Grapevine, making sure women were seen, were heard, and her 1 ,000 Women in AI workshop that she just created that I went through. I think that is so exciting and so incredible too because she was in her third trimester.

3:51When she decided to launch a new business. And a baby. Yep. In the middle of it. Yep. And she came out here and made time and has wonderful boundaries and she will share how her nonlinear career path. And we go way back to my old career as a restaurant critic at the Good Food Guide when she used to work in hospitality. And so we've circled each other because, of course, I'm a huge fan of Remarkable and many of the things she's done, of course. And we had Sam Garvin in who was her co-founder at Hello Canopy. I'm very excited about this. But before we go any further, I do want to say that Startup360 is supported by a deal.

4:30Hire, manage and pay anyone anywhere. So thank you to them. And now can I get a drum roll for the deal spiel? The big news this week. Yes, that's it. Rattle your jewellery. The Best in Tech Award finalists are out. All 60 across the 15 categories. A huge thank you to you and to, of course, all the judges who took part in what is quite a challenging process. And 265 entries. Oh, my gosh, yes. It was a lot. How was it for you? As a judge, I really enjoyed it. I got to learn about and see companies and people who I didn't know about before and what's out there. and I actually might even become a customer of one of them due to one of my situations.

5:16Oh, excellent. What I found interesting, and I have to say, that 1 ,000 Women in AI is one of the finalists in the Get Shit Done category. Amazing. Along with, or GSD as we call it in polite circles. But extraordinarily, four women. The finalists are all female founders in the experience. We've got great leaders like Annie Liao from Build Club and Paloma Newton from Alita Pet in our Future Leader group. Startup Employer of the Year, two women there. Best Startup Marketing, The Laudery Lady, another great one. I am really proud of the diversity of the people in this. Dr. Alia Heffernan-Marx from Oven AI is in the Best New Founder category.

6:04Of course there's plenty of great blokes in there, I should add, but it's great to see that we have such a diverse group of people across all our different ones. I have to say, start-up of the year, the finalists are Docky, Zefco, Sighthive and Nomad Atomics. Congratulations to them. Scale-up of the year, Gilmore Space, Quilio, Heidi Health and Core Plans. So some seriously cracking companies there. Nomad and Zefco are also in most innovative start-up. Industry champions, Judy Anderson-Firth from Euphemia, Kayla Medica. I see that. Former co-host from Medica is one of our industry champions. Well done to her.

6:45Julian Fayard from LoanOptions.ai. And Paz, one of our winners last year. She and the community collective are in there as industry champions as well. So congrats to everyone. Of course, Startup Daily Best in Tech Awards will be on on September 10. Tickets are now on sale. If you head to Startup Data, you can click on the link and get through to them. You going to come? Yeah. And a shout-out to the judges. That was a lot of work. It was an incredible lot of work. Oh, I'm also, I've got some news. I'm very proud to announce that Allegra Spender is going to be our keynote speaker. Fantastic. The member for Wentworth, independent, formed Australia's newest political party, of course.

7:30But most importantly, and this is one of the reasons why I thought she would be inspiring is she's been a businesswoman probably for longer than the combined breadth of experience of many in the parliament. Along with Zali Stegall who of course is her new co-founder of CSA, the new party, they have long proud business backgrounds and I just think she'll be able to riff on that. But I also wanted the start-up sector to hear a little bit about politics. I've kind of got back into it. I was covering this way, way back this year or 30 years ago. I found this old photo of me sitting in front of Paul Keating during the campaign trail back in 1996, which I'll have to show you one day.

8:16And she asked something online asking one, I wanted to ask start-ups about what do you need from government, which was a line from my favourite show, Utopia. Very, very funny. And I got my picture with her when I became a citizen. Oh, excellent. And what kind of treat did you get? Did you get a calistamine? Traditionally, when you become an Aussie, you get your little plant. I do. I have it. It's not doing as well as I'd like it to be. All right. Maybe I can help you with that. Please. Yes. I can do. I'm AG, actual gardening. All right. So I can bring my plant bot. I have about an 80 % life of my plants.

8:55I have a lot of plants from COVID. Jungle chic. Excellent. Still in my house. Fantastic. All right. Well, enough gardening. Should we get into AI and women and all those amazing things and see how they go together? Yeah, let's do it. All right, don't go away. We'll be right back.

9:12Emma Earley: Founders scale faster on Deal. Set up payroll for any business in minutes. Hire anyone, anywhere and get visas handled fast so you can stay focused on scaling. Deal takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits and compliance. so your team can grow without borders. It's why more than 37 ,000 fast-growing companies trust Deal to move fast. Visit deal.com slash 360. That's D-E-E-L dot com slash 360. Welcome back. And we have, I'm so excited to speak to Emma. Emma Early, who, am I pronouncing your last name right? You are. We have Emma Early, who has an amazing nonlinear career-ish, social impact, tech space, and really behind making women, helping women be successful and giving them all the tools.

10:16And I am so excited to talk to her because I have been involved with her latest endeavor, A Thousand Women in AI. Thanks for having me. It's really exciting to be here and talking about, yes, a nonlinear career and that's what got me to a thousand women in AI. And I have to say, working mum of two with a second recently arrived. Congratulations. Eight weeks ago. Thank you. I'm amazed that you can kind of keep your eyes open at this point in time. And so thank you for letting us steal a bit of your time. I'm amazed too but it's the luck of the draw I think when it comes to kids and maybe worth mentioning I'm not back to work because of hustle culture.

10:52I'm purposefully doing this postpartum a little differently. So I think that's important to mention because sometimes when you're at home on parental leave and you compare yourself to others, you can think, why can I barely get out of bed? And that was me with my firstborn. So this one sleeps a little and that's completely out of my control. So I'm grateful for whatever brain cells actually work today. Whatever gods are watching out of you at this point in time. I appreciate knowing your boundaries. As a yes person, I want to do this. And knowing your boundaries managing. Not saying yes to everything.

11:22It's a hard one to learn, but sometimes burnout teaches it for you. So Emma, tell us a little bit about your journey of this nonlinear career path. What a question. I've had one of those careers and lives where I have never known what I'm wanting to do really and feeling pressure from outside sources that I listened to when I was younger. but now that I'm sort of reaching version 4.0, I'd like to say, it's coming a little bit more from the inside. But, you know, when I finished high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I started studying physiotherapy, changed medical radiation science, and then I finally finished a law degree and I'm not a practicing lawyer.

12:09So, but in that at university, that's when I became aware of the startup ecosystem. And I did the first, I think they called it a creative intelligence internship at the original Fishburners on Harris Street. So that's where I sort of discovered startups. And it not only was a fun community of people just really wanting to make a difference and help each other, I became aware of the mechanism of startups for impact. Not everyone necessarily utilizes them that way, but I do think they are a great mechanism for impact. and, you know, I worked in hospitality. Actually, Simon, I waited on you in my fine dining hospo career, revered and feared.

12:51Oh, gosh. That was a long time ago now. A long, long time ago. I was even a restaurant reviewer at one point for a French restaurant review guide. I had my first start-up. Was that the Gomeo? Gomeo, yeah. I started my first start-up when I was at university and it made not much money. but one of those big learnings and I guess that learning was... Bit like running a restaurant really. Bit like running a restaurant, make sure your customers have money. That was a big learning but a lot of fun in terms of community building. So I sort of grew a community to 18 ,000 people back then in the early days of that sort of food blogging world and I've done some stints in Marcoms.

13:33Ops is where my brain really sort of starts to think, yes how can I make things more efficient how can I do things maybe differently or better and how can all of the moving parts come together and that's something that sort of makes my heart sing even if that sounds a bit nerdy. I just want to go back to the hospitality part that is so important about customers knowing and loving and bringing your customers together to be a good entrepreneur and because you're building something for them that and double clicking on the impact positive impact where innovation can help make the world a better place, the systems that are broken to impact them.

14:10So I just want to call that out. Hospital is a really interesting industry. It is a really hard yet beautiful one. It is, you know, from a human perspective, the people behind both front of house and back of house, but the people behind the business, it's really hard on you mentally, physically, but what you're trying to create is a moment in time that, you know, surprises and delights and creates a beautiful experience for someone and my experience was more in the fine dining side of town so you really had great opportunities to do that but I also did the sort of training and the sequence of service and the SOPs within a bunch of different restaurants so I sort of kept coming back to this operations bit and then that moved me in I went back into more of the, you know, helping startups grow.

15:02So that's where I went back to the OG fish burners, but at the time it had changed to UTS startups. So I was supporting early stage entrepreneurs to begin and continue their startups. Then I had a stint, algae seems to be the flavor of 2026 for a lot of different reasons, but I ran Greenlight Accelerator, which was an algae biotech accelerator program. Fantastic. Go down that rabbit hole. Algae can change the world and, you know, change politics apparently. As well as a disability tech pre-accelerator and accelerator program. So that community-based cohort driven experience combined with startups and then, you know, the operations behind it, that is where I've sort of seen my career and my skills sort of overlap and where I've found joy in something that can actually, you know, be a career.

15:58I still see people, humans at the middle of all of that, making sure it's a joyful, delightful experience for all of them. Irrespective of the format as well. We've moved increasingly digitally for everything that we're doing in the world. But I think what sets apart a good digital experience is how can you conscientiously cultivate a human experience, even if it's behind ...and a computer screen. And while you can use ChatGPT or Claude to check the wine that you're drinking... ...if you want, the trust of a great sommelier, the trust of a good waiter... ...who kind of gets the rhythm of the table and the people involved.

16:39I had a great experience with a bunch of friends at Ash... ...which is the new restaurant from the Bentley Group... ...who also have Boardmans down the road. So I was saying to Nick Hildebrandt who was a school dad at the same time our kids were. But I've known them for 25 plus years I reckon and their kids are growing up. And Nick's daughter works in the restaurant, one of the restaurants nowadays. But what I love about hospitality is, and this is what I remember from being a restaurant critic... ...is even on those winter, cold, rainy nights when the last thing you want to do is go out to dinner...

17:15but I had to for work, a good restaurant and good people on the floor and great food will transform you and in that moment you wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world. And I think it was Ruth Reichel who sort of said that for a couple of hours you are the king or queen of the world in a great restaurant when they look after you, you are the most important person. That to me, that skill base that waiters bring, ...which is part psychologist and, you know, yes there's logistics. There are so many different skills that you apply in that moment. All that context switching to me is a really great skill base to have...

17:57...if you're going into startups, especially when it comes to interacting with customers... ...and interacting with customers who are not happy. Your ability to be able to smooth that over, to win them back, to do all of those things... ...I think are skills that hospitality is just wonderful for. for any sector you work in. Absolutely. If I see hospitality on a resume, I know first of all they've got grit. They can work well under pressure. But it is about caring for people and their experience. And when you're talking about a good sommelier, and I think this is maybe where AI or LLMs cannot beat humans because sure, it can tell you how something tastes.

18:39But a customer doesn't ultimately care how something tastes. They care about how it makes them feel. They want to know the story about something unique about the vineyard or the winemakers and a connection to something that they'd said earlier in the conversation. And I just think that's the human experience that can't be replicated. The other thing they can also do is take you down the road less travelled. And generally AI brings you to the middle ground. It's always the top of the mean of the graph that it recommends to you. Whereas these guys will go, hey, look over here. and we had a magnum of Gamay the other night that was just fantastic and a few others.

19:14I'm amazed I can remember any of them. And all of these things that you're saying also a good wait staff, those are improv tenants in principle. I have to bring it up. The yes and, the listening, the storytelling, that's what you all brought up and making them feel welcome. And you mentioned this is a community that you have built a few communities and with heart and soul and making sure that their experience is a good one. And I can think of a few of them. So you were with Remarkable, built that community. You mentioned another one. Well, there's Grapevine, Housing Women and AI. What did you learn through?

19:47So talk a little, summarize a little bit of those communities and things that you learned, failed at and learned. This could be our Flearnings section. Yeah, well, we're going straight into Flearnings. We're going into Flearnings. It's going to be, this is a nonlinear podcast conversation. So talk about your communities first that you have built. I think what has been, you know, consistent across all of them is that they are a diverse cross-section of often underrepresented people. And they're people that are choosing to come together. And I sort of use the example of when I was at UTS, and I mean this in the most positive way, I'm not trying to shade anything or anyone, but I noticed some different experiences when it was an extracurricular community versus an in-curricular one, because I was also a casual academic for a hot minute too.

20:36And yes, you chose to study your degree and do entrepreneurship and have those workshops and courses. But the interaction and the sort of give a shit factor was much higher in the extracurricular community where people had to consciously say, what do I want out of my life? What impact do I want to make in the world? And who do I want to do it with and surround myself with and what makes a great community is not just sort of yes you want to sort of be have the most impact to the most people but it's not about anyone and everyone you've got to have people that are share similar values and want similar things out of that community and have that desire to help each other the sort of give back nature and I think across all of those communities that has been particularly pronounced in those communities that are underrepresented because you already feel not not catered for who's going to sort of serve me and my needs well put your hand up and you do it and that is also part of a thousand women in AI I got really really frustrated you know International Women's Day already is starting to feel like it's not what I need and a lot of a lot of people are not getting what they need from and fortunately it was on a weekend because I didn't go to any of the events this year and I saw some stats that were last year's stats around women and AI and I noticed myself feeling really furious and I thought I've been in the tech and start-up space for a decade or so now and it feels like not only has nothing changed but we're going backwards.

22:18And I had just wrapped up a startup that was in HR tech, similar mission, trying to, you know, improve experiences and outcomes of women and other underrepresented people in the tech and startup space. And I just felt compelled, even though I was 30 something weeks pregnant, I felt compelled to do something about the gender gap in AI. And it was not a a similar mission to you know other startup work that I had done it was just sort of focused on this new period in time and the need was there and you went we went to the learnings and I guess we're sort of going in and out and around and one of my learnings in life and across these different startup communities is about focus and how much more impact you can make when you are focused and that is both from understanding your ICP and the impact you want to make, how to quantify it, but then also from yourself.

23:16How do you focus your time? How do you learn to say no because it's not going to serve what you need as a person to be able to show up every day but also it's not going to serve your mission? What's the F part of this learning, the specific story that you might be referring to? Well, maybe we can talk about Hello Canopy. Okay. So my co-founder Sam and I, who was on this podcast a few months back, we started off wanting to solve lived experience of sexual harassment in the startup and tech ecosystem and just generally in the workplace. And we built what I thought was a great product. We onboarded our first paying customer and they were using the platform.

23:59And we it was one of those things where we knew people wanted to use it. but the willingness to pay wasn't necessarily there. Particularly for HR where budget is limited anyway. Perhaps one of our learnings there was when do you know to persevere versus the signals are not there? And I think sometimes they overlap, sometimes they're clear, but when you're in it it's hard to see those signals sometimes. So we shifted more broadly in HR tech because that problem still existed. But some of the surrounding issues were around communication silos in workplaces, people and culture, as well as, you know, broadly operational everything.

24:51You've worked small, medium enterprise. There's communication and data silos everywhere. So Hello Canopy sort of evolved to solve for that as well. It was how do you connect your people data with organisational context and be able to surface that really easily and then be able to automate and humanise things more efficiently so that your staff can have better experiences at work. And, you know, everyone, we could see what everyone else was seeing in terms of needs and we had started to build that. But AI changed so rapidly in that, you know, three to six month period. and look at how Claude and OpenAI, Anthropic and OpenAI have changed the ability for you to connect your organisational data and context.

25:36So I guess it was part of that saspocalypse and we weren't necessarily able to solve that within the runway that we had. So back to the Fleurning, it's about the humility to see signals that might hurt you as the founder, you know hurt your ego you really want something to succeed but the signals are not necessarily there or your ability to build it within the constraints that you have are not necessarily there and then the focus element having laser focus and sort of the humility and the discipline to know when you're when you the weather's that scope creep and and I'm seeing with all of that You are now a de-influencer of AI.

26:27So, you know, talk a little bit more about what is a de-influencer with all that you have learned in your past work. I think this is as well, maybe me, just getting sick of the hype. Yeah. I feel like there's a lot of AI cowboys out there, not to be confused with Prompt Cowboy, great Australian startup, and I've used them and they've been helpful. I would say an AI cowboy is someone who is super gung-ho, get straight to building which can be great in some circumstances but they are doing it without any care for data security and safety, without any care for how it impacts work, each other, people and also probably…

27:06Who they steal from along the way. Exactly. It's this weird duality in AI of seeing the potentials but then also seeing the difficulties and the ethical quandaries that we see doing it without any sort of sense of what are the ethics behind how I'm working and then combined with the culture at the moment of algorithmic sound bites and viral hooks it's sort of throwing viral hooks down people's throats because that's just how the algorithm has trained us to communicate now as content creators and just telling people build this build that comment brain in a jar below for 25 skills that will save you 90 hours this week with no sense of what am I putting into my systems?

27:55What am I connecting? And whose data am I playing with? It's one thing to be frivolous with your own data, but it's quite another to use your clients and other people's personal sensitive information with no sense of how it's used by AI. And I found a lot of that focus and direction and frameworks and teaching. And I went through your 1 ,000 Women in AI. And as someone who is not a beginner in it, I found it exceptionally valuable. I used a lot of those tools. And say a little bit more of the provenance of Women in AI. You talked a little bit about why you started it, the frustration, where it is now, what the feedback has been, and any learnings from that experience.

28:38Yeah, how far along the 1 ,000 scale are we at this point? Yeah, I also want to say, also, new mom. I just want to reiterate. Yeah, yeah, exactly. 37 weeks pregnant. Starting at 30 weeks pregnant. It just was so beautiful how you did it and it was so focused and easy for anyone to pick up on it. I'm glad because we're often very self-critical, aren't we, Julie? We are. Yeah, I could have done it way better with different resources but I also, that's when I had to learn to say no because I couldn't commit to doing, I know that live or hybrid format is going to be more engaging from a community perspective.

29:10I've got the experience to back that up. But I didn't then have the capacity as a team of one to commit to that. So I made it all online on demand but released each week. But I think maybe this is where I get frustrated with the AI cowboys because every man, woman and their dog is running, they're creating a workshop or some guide to AI at the moment. And some of them are legitimately helpful but a significant amount are written by AI. And I think this is maybe why, thank you for the nice feedback on the course, I'm glad you had that experience but I'm getting a lot of that feedback because I think I didn't use AI to write the course.

29:50It's not an AI slot course like a lot of the ones out there. I literally started on my kitchen bench with post-it notes. I used learning design principles and experience to craft a learning journey, not just how do we summarise key elements that people need to know. And it then became 10 modules originally over four weeks because I know it's hard for particularly women who have not much time outside of work. Certainly the data shows less free time than male counterparts. hearts how do you commit this time when you are juggling so many different things it ended up needing to stretch beyond that because I think I provided a bit too much content for a free thing you're flexible you're adaptable and we need to do that I appreciate it but I think as well it was a free course by design but it wasn't one of those free courses that you do top of funnel because let's do this quick workshop to fill my pipeline and I wanted to make sure it's accessible because I looked at what are all of these reasons why women and non-binary people are underrepresented in AI.

31:00We know that women are using AI 25 % less than men or at least that was last year's data. And we know that in the workplace, early career people, women are not encouraged to use AI as often as their male counterparts are. And when you are encouraged, you're apparently 50 % more likely to adopt. So we have this adoption gap but I think that we need to… Can I stop for a second? I'm just like what the hell is going on there? That is just so weird because I thought the edict was right, everyone start using AIO. We're going to have to start firing a few of you. Paper policy might say that but not necessarily in practice.

31:40And I think it comes down to maybe this is the… That's another hello canopy moment. But exactly, that's the common thread. What people say and what they do again is two different things. But it's the common thread of this is a systemic issue. And systemic issues need systemic holistic solutions. And I think you can look at the adoption gap and think, okay, women just need to use it more, but let's sort of peel back the layers and understand why. There are so many different things and that could be its own podcast, but the sort of access to time and the permission to spend time on upskilling is different than you've got in the workplace, you're not being encouraged to use it.

32:14And then what frustrates me to no end is other data that has come out. When women use AI in the workplace, they're seen as incompetent. Whereas when men are, it's just part of their toolkit. That old fucking rope-a-date thing. It's so frustrating. It's like same shit, different technology. Yeah. And it's not just in non-technical. It's technical and non-technical. And then you've got the other, you know, gender bias. There was some study, I can't remember if it was Harvard or Stanford, and they were looking at GitHub code assessments or analyses. And when it was anonymous, women's code was assessed at 78%, you know, strong, whatever it was.

33:03But when the gender was revealed, it dropped to something like 62 something percent. it was the same code. So we do have these biases in play. And that's not even starting to touch the surface of how the models are trained and the bias in the training data. Can I just stop a second and ask because I reckon there's also another gender thing that's also probably going on. I bet the work from the blokes is a little bit looser and probably not as carefully checked as the work by the women. Do you recall what the men's was marked at when it was blind? I don't know off the top of my head. Just a hunch I've got here on this one.

33:42I mean I wouldn't disagree but I don't have those numbers to back that up. But look, if you think about risk calculations, we know that women tend to be a little bit more risk averse and that also comes down to both what the data is showing and what data I was getting from the sign-up data, a thousand women in AI. And it wasn't that I don't want to use AI, It was I don't want to just use it for the sake of it... ...and I want to use it responsibly. Because can I flip that for a second? When you say risk averse, I would argue that there's a tendency... ...to double check your homework rather than just go, oh look that'll be fine.

34:19Let's just go with that. So, you know, that's the sort of thing you want in an organisation... ...when you're dealing with something like this. So let's say for example you don't train it up so that it then goes apeshit... ...and hacks another start up in the process. It's, you know, and escapes the sandbox and sort of goes full fucking Westworld on everyone. And I just think that's probably a really other interesting part about the utilisation. I think the caution is justifiable and understandable. And perhaps if we are going to look at it through a gender lens, the temperament in terms of the implementation of AI is perhaps better suited to be in women's hands than men's.

34:59You said it. I was going to be a bit spicy and suggest that myself. but you said it Simon and I wouldn't disagree and I think that if you look at some of the training out there and how some of the I guess so-called AI influencers and content creators they're going straight to solution mode rather than understanding the fundamental AI literacy and I really struggled with crafting the journey in the course because I thought week one needs to I start with a bang so people feel involved and interested and engaged. Successful. And yet… Right in the bicycle. Yeah, but the first module is to AI or not to AI.

35:41Because I think a lot of people assume, oh, I just need to apply AI to everything. How do I go about doing that? When the first step for me should be to step back and understand what's your problem? What are you trying to achieve here? And then is AI even a candidate within all of the potential solutions? And if so, how? What data are you trading in and then how do you go to solve that? I think we're going straight to solution mode. So solutions and product, and to your point also, is oftentimes, and I'm being very general, is women want to solve social impact problems, not to become the next unicorn, just to solve a problem that they might be struggled with, that others can struggle with, which that can grow, and they're often in the social impact space, which is not as sexy as, again, a unicorn that's going to bring in the millions, billions.

36:29Or trillions, as your short says. And the other thing that I want to say about you not… I don't have a few moments. It's underwater right now, I have to note. I think one of Elon's rockets is about to crash into the moon, but that's slightly different. That's another story, right? And to the point about not charging it, and I felt like safe that I didn't have to be part of a funnel and at the end of this buy something new. And that's a different model. It's a different mindset and safer, I guess, if you will, if you want to talk about risk. And I appreciated that. I think as well that you make a good point about you didn't necessarily say the words but around psychological safety.

37:03And one of the things that I purposefully put in is play and you are an advocate for play in experimentation. And I think a lot of us are going to business use cases too quickly before playing. and there was a reason that I put one of the examples in one of the modules to generate an AI image of a cat licking its paws. What does that have to do with work? Probably nothing unless you work in a pet shop but it was letting your guards down. It's also looking at cognitive load theory. How much can we learn in a time that we're sort of being hit in the face with every new technological change plus the pressure of being told we're behind plus the pressure of being told you're going to lose your job.

37:51So I wanted to make it fun. And that clip would also get you 500 million followers on TikTok. Yeah well Simon also has a question how many did sign up for a thousand women in AI? So I had thought okay what is a reasonable goal that I can work towards in six to twelve months and a thousand is a round number. In two weeks, a thousand and thirty nine people signed up, women and non-binary people. And I was a little bit nervous because I had planned out all of my tech stack to be based on free tiers of maybe a hundred people in the first cohort. And I had to very quickly change my tech stack and because I'm self-funding as well.

38:30So I had to change the tech stack quickly. So in two weeks, 1 ,039 people. And then I just had to close it off because I thought I need to make a decent experience for these people who are trusting me. And then another thousand signed up over the course of the next four to six weeks. And I think I'd have to check the website because it's a dynamic counter. I think we're at 2 ,318 and about to launch cohort two in two weeks. And can I ask how many people stuck through it? How sticky was it? So yeah, looking at completion rates, partial completion is in the sort of 60 % of the cohort. I didn't really know what my benchmark would be but I know I have ADHD.

39:13I sign up for every free thing. The number of comments I've put on some Instagram page to send some resource that I've never looked at but I've now built something to scrape those into Notion which is very helpful. but I knew that a lot of people wouldn't even open the app but I was I was pretty happy with that and because we I had to sort of set a limit on how long you can access I ended up moving platforms just to make it a little bit more financially sustainable to be able to continue providing it for free so many people have reached out to continue access to the course because ...because they've started it.

39:52But oh gosh I wish this wasn't all about gender but it really is. The number of people, I've lost count of how many women have messaged me to say... ...I'm behind because of caregiving responsibilities at home. And I have run accelerators. Let's be honest the emotional labour thing is the second job that most women have. And it's just fact. I'm sorry. It's fact. You know. A hundred percent. And it's not only the logistics of that, it's also the permission to set aside time for you... ...that maybe we've been conditioned out of. And in my decade of doing this... Because you probably see it spike at about 10.30 at night.

40:32You know, everyone else has been put to bed. Or five in the morning. Yep. And, you know, anecdotal, it's just my experience. But in my career I'm struggling to recall a single man that has come to me with that same problem... And I have run workshops and accelerators and programs for thousands and thousands of adults. And I think it's just it's a bit sad, but it's like, OK, how do we move from this data? Like the data is noise, but how do we move into practical? And I felt I had sort of itchy feet. And that's why I thought I've just got to do something. And I built it as I went, you know, and that's just I'm glad that the feedback has been positive.

41:12I think two two themes came out of it that at least made my heart sing and hopefully will make an impact one was the oh wow I thought I sort of knew about AI but now deeply understanding how it works is changing how I think about using it as well as the outcomes I'm getting from using it and some had shared examples of oh my gosh I almost stuffed up something at work because I thought AI would do X and I didn't need to necessarily check. So real impact in terms of an actual, this helped my job. But then the other piece is around confidence. Now that I understand the why behind the what, I feel more confident to make choices.

41:55And I'm okay if people choose not to use AI. I'm okay with that, but I really want it to be based on understanding and a conscious choice, not out of fear of the impacts which are legitimate but to be based on and grounded in fact. So we're told that AI is inevitable, is it? That's such a juicy question. It's inevitable in the sense that it's already here and it's really hard to completely opt out of it. Even the people that say that I'm not using AI, a lot of the products you're already using, you're using AI. It's also a little bit I think like a landline versus the mobile phone. Everything from printed word to the cell phone.

42:37Wait, leave the printed word alone. Well, when it came from cave drawings to printed word, you know, it changed there. So I think this is the next. As a millennial, I'm here for this 90s nostalgia that's creeping back into our culture, even for Gen, what are they? Gen Z? Are they after millennials? Gen Alpha. Gen Z and Gen Alpha, they are taking up this 90s, early noughties nostalgia and I think maybe it's because I've trained my algorithm so I'm getting certain content. But I think we're part of an early groundswell of tech rebellion. And I think your T-shirt sort of says a lot of that, a frustration.

43:19Thank you Alan Jones for this one. Communities. Again, social impact with these T-shirts. I think we are frustrated with duopolies and concentration of wealth that impacts our lives. I was reading a data piece from Paul Krugman who was the former New York Times economist who writes brilliantly on his own substack nowadays. I think the number from memory was that the Forbes top 400, their wealth was something like 2.3 % of income and less than 1 % of national wealth in the 1970s. Now they represent something like 23 % of national wealth and the income I think might have been close to 40%. That's significant.

44:16I mean it's an astonishing shift. Absolutely. Incredible shift because I read that and just went, whoa, and I'm sorry I don't have it in front of me. Might have to correct it. But the growth was obvious and the concentration of wealth is part of what we're starting to see in this social unrest. And I think we are just feeling frustrated by the system and, you know, add on a growing distrust of government and government decision making. I think what I'm seeing, at least in my corner of the internet, I'm seeing a groundswell of analogue as a response to that. So I think there was a little phase of everyone getting a Mac Mini so they could run OpenClaw.

44:58But now I think it's a little bit more of a conscious decision of how do I control my data and what I own? Because business models now have shifted to a borrowing economy. We don't own anything anymore. We have subscriptions to rent them. There's a reason everyone is now going to JB Hi-Fi and paying 80 bucks for a record. But even now external hard drives are so much more expensive now because I think people want to retain their own stuff. And now cyberdecks are becoming all the craze but not sort of this old steampunk, you know, super techy cyberdecks. What is a cyberdeck? your own computer that you build essentially but things that you can use really random things like theoretically you could turn that pot plant into a cyber deck because you just need a shell and then you could start with a raspberry pi or something you know really small but now we're seeing we're moving away from this charcoal tech landscape to I've seen cyber decks in a pink poly pocket not that women need all you know pink and unicorns but it's like how do we rethink a system that's not being designed for us and that's sort of sucking the life out of us how do we add a little bit more whimsy and fun into something that is supposed to improve our life and our work and somehow we're working longer with AI the system's not working the things are not lining up and the other thing you know local AI people are starting to realize AI credits are starting to skyrocket and we're still in the sort of five dollar uber era of AI credits at the moment so So things will change and we'll have to do things differently.

46:38Once the dealer gets you truly hooked. Exactly. That's what they're doing. And, you know, enterprise AI is becoming very expensive. So a lot of enterprises are looking how can we have our own local AI. I know that's something that Cliff at Canva has talked about. They've spent a lot of time transferring it to in-house so that they control it and own it rather than, again, having to borrow it constantly. And I think that's going to be both across business and personal use. Once we sort of get over the hump of how do we do it, but there's a lot of open source stuff out there. Not just, you know, take this to build your agent or whatever, but cloning software that we're used to paying a lot of money for.

47:22It's available on the internet for free if you know where to find it and how to install it. and things like there's going to be a new wave of cyber attacks coming. Remember in the early noughties when we were all worried about, in the late 90s we were worried about Y2K and nothing happened. Which is good. I still go back to, yeah, that was the whole fucking point. It's necessary. That's why we put the effort in so that it didn't blow up in our faces. You can't then say, oh, it's not real because it didn't happen. No, that's why we did the work. A flooring. It was a flint. But I also think a lot of us laypeople didn't understand what we were supposed to be scared about.

48:03But I do think, well, I don't think cyber security experts are telling us that coming soon is a new wave of cyber attacks. And what's different to the early noughties is that all of our data is now on our laptop or on our phone. We really struggled to access it back then and you would have to download, you have to go to a shop and buy a CD-ROM with an antivirus to then, you know, install on your computer back then. But it's going to be a different wave of attacks. So things like physical security keys for multi-factor authentication, those are now really readily available for something like$20.

48:40Yep. So, you know, everything's changing really quickly and I think we're all struggling to find our feet in what feels like we're just constantly swirling around and no one really knows what they're doing. We're just listening to the loudest voices who say it with conviction. And a lot of them are AI cowboys. It adds to the cognitive overload. And I'm also thinking as a former classroom teacher, there was always the software out there. Play the game, get a score and done. What I really was drawn to was those technologies, not for the consumers, but the creating part of it. And here's a space, here's a landscape, here's a world where we can create the solutions that we need ourselves.

49:21and maybe shift the broken systems and it gets very, very noisy. So something about where people can create their own thing, but they need to learn the safety, the ethical, the safety, what it is that they want to solve and create it themselves. I was watching these kids yesterday in doing their work on Canva. Not one of them asked for help with the technology. They all knew what they needed to do. They were using Canva, whatever, Canva for the kids and prompting images. And it was beautiful. And these were what, 10, 11-year-olds? Hmm? These were 10, 11-year-olds? These were 10 and 11-year-olds on their own using Latin root words to create a Greek entity.

50:02And so they had the creativity and they were all engaged for the most part. My 12-year-old niece created a Canva slide deck the other day to convince my sister on why she should be allowed to go on a surfing trip to China. It was the most creative thing I've seen and quite persuasive. So kids are really creative and I think as adults we forget how to be creative and if we are given a space where we feel safe to be silly, to play, to generate a cat licking its paws, to vibe code now. That has really democratized access to tools and so many women in the course have said I didn't even know what the words vibe coding meant but I've just now created this tool to help my autistic son at mealtime or I have created this habit tracker it doesn't need to go out into the world it's just something that I have created I feel good about but it's also just sort of helping my morning and has the features that they need versus going to a software company say I need to do this this this and the designers and the product developers of a software company it's like we can only do what are you know this lane and maybe that's the trend around the personalization of our tech yeah we've moved to in this era of of sass but from a business perspective i think where because we're jumping quickly to solution mode and everyone's just got access to tools how's anyone mitigating their tech debt and at the moment a lot of the tools are not communicating with each other so it's compounding that tech debt and I'm really interested to see what the next wave and when I say wave I mean in the next two months probably is going to bring.

51:45My dream is to do after work programs instead of after school after work bring kids to the office the adults and the kids play together maybe we call it cat licking its paw because so they can play around with those tools whether it's to create an image whether it's create a deck to convince mom and dad to get a dog to you know all those things so it's bringing the minds I'm just thinking about the slide deck on the pets that's so funny I love that idea though Julie like creating videos or what our kids helping adults with their next um business problem that's another story I call that uh kids being kids sultans but after work programs not to give you another thing to want to do but I just want to drop that seat well I love that I had already thought about doing an AI play day of sorts sometime later in the year when I have some capacity.

52:37And it is about a physical space, I do think. Yes, you could do a digital version, but there's nothing that beats humans coming together to be humans and creating a space that makes you feel like you can create, play, make mistakes, ask questions that feel maybe stupid. And one of the things that I'm guilty of, and I know a lot of people in the first cohort of the course may be guilty of is assuming that their colleagues already know more and can do more than them so they feel silly and don't ask questions as a result but I was surprised there are senior leaders and c-suite in enterprise big scale-ups series a series b scale-ups in the cohort there's employees that are senior managers in big four banks as well as big four management consulting accounting as well as SMEs, individual consultants representing across the cohort.

53:36So I think what that says is irrespective of whether you're getting any type of AI fluency training at work, it's not meeting the moment and it's not giving them what they need to ground themselves in that fundamental literacy, but also have that psychological safety to learn because we're maybe seeing it as just another change management program, another tech transformation thing. But it's not simply bringing in new tools. It's rethinking the way that we work and the way our roles are structured and how we work together. And it's a pretty big, big task, a set of tasks to do. So just like any good change management, grounding that in psychological safety and care for your people, maybe that needs to come from an external source if you're not able to do it internally in a way that your people feel like they have permission to play.

54:27To play. It's very different because play is innovation. It's R &D. It's creativity. It's connection. It's lowering the barriers to trying something, lowering those risk barriers. So you've got two young people who are probably at an era where they'll go what software in about sort of 10 years from now. It's like I just kind of feel like it's the discussions you have around faxes and hard drives and everything else. Dial-ups. Yes, we grew up with. So it's going to be an extraordinary transformation. Well, let's talk about the little… What do you want for them? For my kids? Yeah. And all kids moving forward.

55:06From a technology perspective. I was reflecting on this the other day and I think what I want from a technology perspective for them is for technology to simply enable them. I don't want technology yes it might replace jobs and things but at its heart technology is supposed to enable what we're already doing even if we have to change what we're doing it should be an add-on to us as humans having human experiences and using our brain my biggest fear is that it replaces their ability to think and we're already slipping into that trap now putting our brain in a jar sticking it on a shelf and forgetting that AI should be a thinking partner not thinking for us and I did a tour of the primary school that Leo will go to and the principal was talking about how they're already starting to think about AI use in the classroom and I noticed myself getting a bit fearful because I don't know how to how it could or should be used and maybe that is the theme of I don't want to make decisions based on fear or based on ignorance and hype.

56:17It's how do we just understand how things work first and I don't want technology to not only lose our ability to think but our ability to be curious. Curiosity for me is one of the most important skills and that's something that will stand the test of time irrespective of however things change over the next three six month 12 months years I want kids to be able to play and retain that I used to tell my teachers when I was a technology specialist in a middle school and also the curiosity and the critical thinking skills I worry that that's going away is it's a very expensive tool like a tool in a toolbox a hammer a screwdriver and it's getting to the point I worry I start to think about two or three four generations from now those your kids that are going into school where AI is a tool, that it's going to be a no-brainer.

57:10Whereas, you know, generations that were before us, what has become extinct from them that we use every day? Like mobile phones. How can we get around without having a mobile phone? So that, I don't know if that's inevitable, that it's going to happen, that AI, that's how it's going to change the thinking. But we are the last analog-only generation. We grew up where there was none of that digital stuff. and we're coming in with this cautiousness whereas the kids are growing up and that's what they're used to. So the fear is very valid. I'm more concerned actually about the fact that for all of our arguments over AI stealing our ideas and, you know, who's paying for it and who's monetising it, it is a data set of original thinking by human beings.

57:58And my concern would be that two generations from now when the AI is fed on a solid diet of AI and the only thing it knows is AI reinforcing AI, where does the original thinking come from going back to the idea that what you're selling is an homogenisation product? It might be sooner than that even. Yeah. And I think that's where we need to be more conscious and conscientious of how we use it. And I think because, you know, AI has been around for a lot longer than it has been democratised with ChatGPT and Claude. But I think we too quickly folded it into our workflows and now we default to it without thinking, okay, do I actually want to post on LinkedIn?

58:44Do I have something important to say? And why do I want to say it? It's help me craft a LinkedIn post on the topic of X. And it sounds the same as everyone else because everyone else has defaulted to the same workflow. So yeah, the AI slop feeding AI slop is a problem. And I think this is the hard part around having more diversity in all areas of AI. And that includes building it and training it. And did you see the data that came out recently of people who are supposed to be training or checking the training data have admitted anonymously to using AI to do it instead of actually doing it themselves?

59:26So that's why I say it could be sooner than two generations from now. This is how we're going to wipe ourselves out. This is human error. That's human laziness and human choice. I think we forget the autonomy that we have as humans and we need to sort of just take a beat and remember how incredible humans are and need to continue to be. You better bring it home. We are going to bring it home. We're nearing the end. And through all of this stuff that you've shared, your non-linear career path, launching two things at once, a child and a company. What is something you want to leave the audience with?

1:00:04Is there a question, something they can get back to you? What are some words of wisdom that you have? Oh, that's a tough one. Maybe not a word of wisdom but a plea. Great. Think about what type of world you want, without getting maybe overly philosophical, but what type of world do you want? What type of humanity do we want to have now and leave behind and always start there grounded in human values before even considering AI? And I'm not anti-AI. I am pro-responsible AI but always bring it back to humanity. What do we want our world to look like and how do we want our human experience to be? In that context, I'm going to finish with the question I like to ask.

1:00:54what's Emma's idea of joy? That is a hard one because becoming a mum and really losing myself that first postpartum, I've had to really take a long time to sort of rediscover my sense of self and therefore my sense of joy. And I think I really struggle with being present and yet presence is what brings me joy. so I think what brings me joy is a feeling of presence. How human are you? I'm not saying I do it well but it's what brings me joy and it's what I'm striving towards every time and at the moment when I feel like I'm just sort of getting in that newborn, you know, fog, it's weird. I look at my son Tom's little toes and I just take a second.

1:01:51Little baby toes. Yep. I think my favourite parts of being a new parent were just lying on the floor looking at them and they look back at… At the park. Yep. Because I live in Vaucluse and just there's something so hypnotising about looking at the ocean. Yep. And having the sunshine. You can feel it on your skin. And yeah. Or just watching them exploring the world, discovering the world. It's such a beautiful experience to be able to re-experience life through a little one's eyes as well. Emma, thank you so much for making the time to come in today. We wish you all the best with 101 ,000 women in AI.

1:02:31Might have to be a million. Well, I'm just talking about next week. Like next month, you know, with the one million is the next project. But it's been wonderful to have this conversation. Really appreciate it. And also congratulations on being a Startup Daily Best in Tech Award finalist. Yes, very exciting. That was so nice to come into my inbox. Hopefully we can cut a deal so that someone can be parent on September the 10th. I've already booked them in. Oh, good. Excellent. That is it for this week on Startup 360. I hope you enjoyed it. This is a Smart Co Media production produced and edited by the wonderful Matt Jackson.

1:03:07And I have to say, first place this week, James Vass is in helping us out. Really appreciate it. We have the boss doing the job. Thanks also to Ella Walsh and, of course, to Deel for their support. You can subscribe on Apple, Spotify or, of course, watch on YouTube. It's all free wherever you want to check it out. And, of course, StartupDaily.net, just like 1 ,000 Women in AI, is free as well. So jump on, have a read. I'll keep banging the drum on amazing women and the things that they're doing. But, gee, I love that conversation today. And remembering what it was like to be an old scary restaurant back in the day.

1:03:45uh have a great weekend we'll see you next friday bye for now