No experience, no backers; just a laptop, a vision, and a willingness to put in the work.
This is what it took for Susannah George, founder and CEO of Urban List, to launch her career as a digital media mogul from her bedroom.
Susannah George’s (1999) journey has been one of courage, discovery, and resilience.
In 2023, she is most widely known for founding Urban List, a digital media platform connecting more than three million Australians, New Zealanders, and Singaporeans to their soon-to-be favourite cafes, travel destinations and more.
She has been a national finalist in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards (2017), was named B&T’s Media Woman of The Year (2015) and Entrepreneur of the Year (2016, 2017), is an ambassador for The Hunger Project’s Unleashed Women initiative, and a member of Entrepreneurs’ Organisation.
But in 2005, before the success and accolades, she was a 24-year-old with nothing more than a knack for finding a trendy coffee shop or friendly bar, and an idea.
It is how she took this idea and made it into a career that is what made Susannah the trailblazing woman she is.
Image: The Urban List
With two months’ notice, no friends, no job, and no French, Susannah took her first courageous step: moving to Paris before her university graduation day. After three years there, she moved to Los Angeles, the place where she first had the idea to found Urban List.
Twice now had she found herself alone in a big city—cities where it was easy to get lost, ‘both literally and figuratively’. With no one to rely on to find her way around, she would turn to the internet to find a ‘place where she belonged’.
‘All I found were directories of user generated reviews,’ Susannah said.
‘No one was curating the city, offering tips they’d stand behind. I wanted a source that I could trust, to help me find a sense of place. And I thought if there was a gap for that in Los Angeles, there might be a gap everywhere.
‘So I came up with a concept that would connect like minds through the internet, channelling them out in support of small businesses I loved.’
She pitched the idea to a few of her most trusted friends, but had no takers.
‘No one thought it had legs. I didn’t have the courage to swing for my dreams, I didn’t trust myself, and I put it in the drawer. (Until) I finally hit a point where the risk of saying “What if?” was worse than the risk of failing. And I backed myself.
‘I moved home to Australia to give it a go and launched Urban List from my bedroom one year later. No backers. No experience. Just a vision, a laptop and a willingness to put in the work.’
Three years later, in 2014, Urban List became the largest lifestyle guide in the country. It expanded internationally, moving into four markets in four months; its revenue and audience doubled, as did its team. Susannah was awarded Australian Media Woman of the Year, and she had also fallen pregnant with her son.
But despite the highs of her professional and personal life, Susannah’s world was ‘crashing down’.
‘I’d lost all confidence in my ability to grow and lead the business, and the more I believed that, the more it was proven true. That loss of confidence and trust in myself hit me like a freight train. The business suffered. I did too. Things slid to a point where I was moments away from losing it all.’
Eventually, she took the biggest leap of them all: she asked for help.
‘The support had always been there, but in the cloud, I couldn’t see. It came from friends, from family and from experts. It also came from having the trust to reach out to those I didn’t know, but whose values and experiences I respected, and as it turned out, they also respected me.’
As Susannah rebuilt her wellbeing, Urban List too rebuilt. From the brink of ‘the edge’, Urban List became Australian Media Brand Of The Year, three times, and is now one of the largest independent media companies in Asia Pacific, serving 30 000 recommendations an hour to an audience of three million people.
‘What made the difference was the courage to trust.
‘Trust myself, trust others, trust that I was, and am, enough.
‘Trust that I could and can ask for help. Trust that accepting it is not a weakness, but a strength.
‘Trust that making mistakes is critical, and if I’m not making them I’m not living boldly enough!’
