High Agency Women
High Agency Women
Podcast Description
Welcome to High Agency Women, featuring weekly conversations with inspiring leaders about what they’re building, how they’re building it, and their unique approaches to commerce and creativity. Hosted by journalist, product manager and media strategist Natasha Gillezeau, brought to you by Missing Perspectives.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast explores themes such as entrepreneurship, fundraising, health and fitness, and data science. Episodes feature discussions like Di Challenor's story of raising Australia's largest seed round and Laura Henshaw's insights on building Kic, emphasizing the importance of perseverance and maintaining core values in business.
Welcome to High Agency Women, featuring weekly conversations with inspiring leaders about what they’re building, how they’re building it, and their unique approaches to commerce and creativity. Hosted by journalist, product manager and media strategist Natasha Gillezeau, brought to you by Missing Perspectives.
When Centennial World founder Lauren Meisner saw traditional media dismissing internet culture and the creator economy, she didn’t just tweet about it – she quit her job, put in $5K of her own money, and launched a world-first Gen Z–focused internet culture brand… three months later.
In this Yeah, But How mini-series episode of High Agency Women, host Natasha Gillezeau sits down with Lauren to unpack the very un-glam and real side of building a new media company from scratch: bootstrapping vs taking on a bank loan, surviving the chaos of COVID, ad budgets, navigating a co-founder exit, and evolving from a classic “.com” publisher into a personality-led podcast network.
Lauren is brutally honest about what it actually takes to grow as a founder – especially when your strengths (for her, editorial instincts) can become a hiding place from the parts of the business you’re less confident in. She shares how she’s learning to confront those weak spots head on, why 2026 will be her “year of no scaling”, and the mindset shift that came with deciding Centennial World needed to be bigger than just her face and voice.
You’ll hear Lauren and Tash dive into:
- How Lauren spotted (and moved fast on) a global gap in the market for serious coverage of internet culture
- What really happened behind the scenes of bootstrapping Centennial World, from the first MAC Cosmetics deal to taking a bank loan in 2024
- Navigating a co-founder breakup while staying friends – and keeping the business alive
- Why she killed off Meta and deprioritised the website, and went all-in on podcasting
- Building a personality-led media brand that sits across both media and influencer budgets
- Learning to trust your instincts in business when you don’t feel like a “numbers” person
- The power of shamelessly asking for help (including the story of emailing Anna Wintour – and getting a reply)
If you’re a creatively-driven founder, aspiring media entrepreneur, or just ~chronically online~ and curious about what it takes to turn that obsession into a business, we can guarantee that conversation will hit home (and follow Centennial World while you're at it!!).
Sponsored by Blackbird.
Disclaimer
This podcast’s information is provided for general reference and was obtained from publicly accessible sources. The Podcast Collaborative neither produces nor verifies the content, accuracy, or suitability of this podcast. Views and opinions belong solely to the podcast creators and guests.
For a complete disclaimer, please see our Full Disclaimer on the archive page. The Podcast Collaborative bears no responsibility for the podcast’s themes, language, or overall content. Listener discretion is advised. Read our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy for more details.