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Steph Brook didn’t set out to build a new social media platform. She just wanted a better way to find great recommendations from people who actually get her.

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“You know when you send a book or bar rec in a group chat, and it just disappears?” Steph laughs. “That stuff deserves a home."

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Enter Rave, a new kind of social platform built around taste. 

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Not followers, filters, or viral hacks, just real recommendations from people you trust - Rave lets you share what you love and see what your friends are into, all in one place. At its core, Rave flips the traditional review model on its head. Instead of wading through Google reviews or Amazon star ratings from strangers, Rave taps into your social graph. If you follow someone’s taste, you get their recs.

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“Consumers are four times more likely to buy something if it comes from a personal recommendation,” Steph says. “But we don’t have a central place online to actually do that. It’s word of mouth, DMs, random TikTok saves. It’s fragmented."

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Steph describes it like Instagram, but instead of photos, you post short, snappy recs. The app makes it easy to search, save, revisit, and discover things without the noise of ads for new bed linen or wading through date night spots you’ve saved on Google Maps.

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The first time I came across Steph was during Startmate's Launch Club where Steph zeroed in on a simple insight: podcasts were quietly becoming recommendation engines. “A lot of Aussie lifestyle podcasts have these little 'what I loved this week' segments,” she explains. “Listeners weren’t going to the podcast for recs, but they loved that part. And there was no way to find those recs after the fact."

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So Steph built a scrappy MVP: Pod Recs, a site that aggregated recs from popular podcasts like Shameless and The Imperfects. She cold-DM'd the link. Shameless shared it. Then things literally exploded.

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“We got 6,000 users in two weeks, 35% retention, and hundreds of people reaching out saying how much they loved it,” Steph says. “It was insane.”

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What started as a hacky site turned into a real product. Steph launched a Pod Recs app with pre-loaded recommendations from 10 podcasts and quietly onboarded 50 beta users. When she added a simple pop-up announcing the app, 350 users joined in a matter of days. Side note: if you haven’t noticed already, Steph is a building machine. 

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But the most surprising feedback? People didn’t just want to save recommendations. They wanted to see what their friends liked. “That was the lightbulb moment,” she says. “The utility was nice. But the social layer? That’s what people got excited about."

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Steph came into Launch Club with an ambitious idea. She came out with real traction, hundreds of user conversations, and a sharper instinct for building. “It taught me to act before I’m ready,” she says. “I didn’t know how Pod Recs would lead to Rave. But building it helped me learn from real people. It’s messy, but that’s how you get somewhere real."

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What’s next for Rave? 

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With a full Rave release on the horizon and Pod Recs now live on the App Store, Steph’s just getting started.

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“At the end of the day,” she says, “it’s about discovering more of what you love, from people you actually trust. That’s the future we’re building."

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🎙️ Download the Pod Recs app to start exploring real recs from real voices.
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📩 Are you in the podcasting space? Connect with Steph!

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