Steph Brook didn’t set out to build a new social platform. She just wanted to find a book someone mentioned on a podcast.
But when that simple search turned into a dead-end scrolling, Googling, backtracking through episodes, Steph realised the internet is great at showing you everything, but terrible at showing you what matters to you.
So she built Rave.
What is Rave?
Rave is a platform for sharing recommendations with people who share your taste. It's part social feed, part bookmarking tool, part internet rabbit hole. You create a profile, save links to content you love (articles, books, recipes, podcasts, videos), and share them with friends or followers. Rave auto-generates titles and images, and lets you add your own context, why you loved it, and why it matters.
There’s no explore page. No trending tab. Just people you trust, sharing stuff they genuinely rate.
In an internet flooded with AI-generated content, fake reviews and endless noise, Rave is building something radically human: a recommendation engine powered by real taste.
From Atlassian engineer to solo founder
Steph's path into tech was anything but conventional. She started in science at Melbourne Uni before falling in love with coding during an elective. That led to a major switch, a role as a software engineer at Atlassian, and later, a return to campus to teach the very computer science class that changed her life.
But after a career break spent working at a ski resort in Canada, Steph came back ready to try something new. She joined Startmate Launch Club with no idea, no co-founder, and no startup network, just a gut feeling that there was something out there worth building.
Then came the podcast moment.
The spark: solving her own problem
Frustrated she couldn’t find a book mentioned on a podcast she loved, Steph realised it wasn’t just about the book, it was about trust.
"I didn’t want any book. I wanted that book, because I trusted the hosts’ taste," she explains. "That kind of social trust applies across everything: movies, restaurants, books, articles. And there was no platform built around that."
To validate the idea, Steph built a scraper that pulled every recommendation ever mentioned on the podcast. Then she cold-DM’d it to the hosts.
They loved it.
They shared it.
It got 10,000 users in eight weeks.
That podcast was Shameless (boasting 100 million downloads).
From scraper to social platform
That early traction confirmed Steph was onto something. But she didn’t stop at podcast recommendations.
"Everyone I spoke to said the same thing: 'There's something here.'"
So she started building the real thing: a social platform where people could save and share all kinds of recommendations. The app lets you:
- Bookmark links privately for later
- Share content to your profile and followers
- Add comments and context to spark conversation
It’s still early, and Steph’s building solo. But the vision is clear: build the most trusted recommendation feed on the internet.
The big, audacious goal
"There’s a huge gap between Pinterest’s inspiration vibes and Reddit’s anonymous trolls. I want to build the middle ground. A place where people share the stuff they love, with no agenda other than: this made my day, maybe it’ll make yours too."
The long-term dream is a social platform that fosters community, curiosity, and connection—not clicks and controversy.
And maybe, just maybe, it reclaims some of the internet’s soul.
The challenge: contribution vs consumption
The hardest part of building Rave isn’t getting people to use it—it’s getting them to contribute.
"Everyone would use it if everyone’s recommendations were already there," Steph admits. "The challenge is figuring out how to spark that initial sharing loop."
She’s experimenting with beta testing groups and a niche-first approach, aiming to find a core audience that will shape the product through real use. It’s scrappy. It’s early. But it’s moving.
The Startmate spirit
Steph embodies the Startmate founder ethos: bias to action, build fast, and solve a problem you actually care about.
She built the prototype. Cold-DM’d influencers. Coded the app solo. Now she’s inviting early users to help shape what comes next.
Her advice for other founders? "Have a bias towards action. Don’t sit around mapping the future of your product. Just start. Even if it’s small."
Want to try Rave?
Steph is now opening up Rave to beta testers. If you:
- Love discovering new content from people you trust
- Constantly send recs to friends
- Want a home for the things you love online
Then Rave wants you.
Download the Rave app on the App Store and reach out to Steph for an invite code.
Because sometimes the best part of the internet is the stuff your friend DM’d you.
And now there’s finally a place for all of it.
