Hi everyone!

We hope you all had a glorious weekend. It was payday for The Curve team so we’re all very excited.

We’re all making the most of the last of the Summer (cannot believe we’re going to be technically in Autumn in 2 weeks time), but the city is certainly needing it with the drought we’re in here in London, more on that in today’s episode (and how it’s affecting everyone’s bank account, no matter where in the world you are).

We’re also covering why Spotify is about to start telling you if your favourite artist is actually AI, how Alix Earle has quietly built her own little VC firm (and how you can be doing a version of it too), and why Alex Cooper’s media empire just got valued at half a billion dollars.

As always, we’ve read the finance news so you don’t have to.

Have a great week.

Soph, Vic & The Curve team x

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This week’s finance news, minus the jargon.

Spotify is about to tell you if your favourite artist is actually human.

From mid-September, Spotify’s rolling out an “AI Persona” badge. It’ll sit on the artist’s profile, show up in search, and land right next to their name on your playlists. Tagged acts will also get dropped from personalised recommendations by default.

Why is this important?

Spotify pulled 75 million AI tracks off the platform last year, out of a catalogue of about 100 million (!!!???). Nearly the size of the whole legitimate catalogue. AI artists are cheaper for Spotify, no royalties to pay, so this badge is them front footing the backlash before it costs them real artists and real listeners. Convenient timing too, it landed the same week as their quarterly earnings results.

Alix Earle is quietly running her own venture capital firm.

Forget the brand deals, Alix Earle has been taking equity in the companies she promotes, and she’s developing an impressive portfolio. Turns out that’s a pretty solid answer to anyone calling her and Stassie “yacht girls,” something she addressed in her latest GRWM TikTok, pointing out she can fund her own holidays just fine.

Why is this important?

A VC bets on early stage companies with high growth potential, spreading money across 10, 20, 30 companies because most fail and you’re hunting for the one unicorn. Alix knows when she posts about a brand, it goes off, so now she takes equity instead of just a flat fee. That’s the bit people miss, she gets paid twice on the same bet. Poppi is the proof, she invested before PepsiCo bought it for close to $2 billion. Her latest, Cymbiotika, just raised $25 million with The Weeknd, Zac Efron and the Jonas Brothers also on the cap table.

Alex Cooper’s media empire just hit a $500 million valuation.

Unlike a public company, where the share price tells you the value every day, a private company only gets valued when money changes hands. That just happened, Silver Lake and another media firm took a stake in Unwell, the business behind Call Her Daddy. They’ve been profitable since day one, so this is fuel to grow, not rescue money.

Why is this important?

The audience explains the price tag, 89% female, mostly 18 to 35, around 100 million followers. It's also a good lesson in how media companies make money, rarely just the thing you watch or listen to. SiriusXM pays Unwell over $30 million a year just to host the podcast exclusively, then there's TV deals (their new dating show Let's Marry Harry just landed on Netflix - terrible TV but also a guilty pleasure if you haven’t watched yet), live events, and a drinks line with Nestlé (not for much longer eek). Key takeaway: the valuation isn't about one podcast, it's about turning an audience into a whole ecosystem of income, and a strong marker of the women's economy's real value.

Wondering why your coffee suddenly costs more? Blame El Niño.

We flagged this back in June, and it became one of our most downloaded Curve Weekly episodes ever. This year’s El Niño is tracking as the strongest since 1950, and it’s already hitting crop sensitive commodities hard. Arabica coffee is up around 30% since June, its biggest jump in 47 years, cocoa is up over 60% at its peak (you can imagine how devo Soph is about the cocoa).

Why is this important?

A strong El Niño adds roughly 9% to global food prices on its own, and coffee and cocoa are two of the most globally traded soft commodities, so it hits your basket fast (especially in NZ and Australia, some of the highest per capita coffee spenders in the world). Cost is the top reason people skip sustainable options, and nobody should feel guilty for choosing cheaper when money's tight. Key takeaway: the bigger lever isn't your daily shop, it's where your KiwiSaver, super or ISA sits (and Vic won’t be skipping on takeaway coffees), as well as who you vote into government.

The holiday hangover nobody talks about: your bank account.

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Hannah Hart is back for her third, and final, IOU episode, and she’s saved one of the best for last: how to save for the stuff you actually want without giving up on your future.

From reverse engineering a Japan trip to tripling a renovation budget she swore she’d priced properly, Hannah walks through exactly how she splits her money into short term “mini goals,” why an emergency fund is the least exciting, most important thing you’ll ever build, and the number she wishes she’d known before she started.

We’re proud to partner with BNZ. There’s an art to starting something new, and like any art form, you need the right tools to make it work. Whether you’re flatting, saving to travel, or making a career move, BNZ has the tools to help you master your money from the get-go.

In the red or green this week?

Vic’s in the red, Miso had to get her teeth cleaned, which came to a whopping £360.

Soph’s in the green, she finally sold the bike her ex-boyfriend bought her for £190, plus offloaded a dress that never quite worked on her, netting an extra £220 total, so she spent £40 on some stunning new swimming gear (see iconic pic at the beginning of the newsletter).

The Curve Collection

Everything The Curve crew is loving this week!

• What we’re watching: Kate’s just started Big Mistakes from the creator of Schitt’s Creek. It follows a brother and sister who accidentally steal an expensive necklace that ends up buried with their grandma. Obviously the plot gets very chaotic after that. Dark humour, 20 minute episodes, on Netflix. Perfect to watch while eating dinner.

• What we’re reading (audiobook edition, so also listening): Em’s just finished the Yesteryear audiobook. Absolutely THRILLING... it follows a tradwife/social media influencer through the sudden collapse of her online persona, flicking between different periods of her life, before, during, and after the event that triggers her downfall (no spoilers hehe). Em loved the narrator of the audiobook, she's addictive to listen to: like sickly sweet one moment, harrowing the next. Highly recommend.

• Restaurant recommendation (in London): Lucy went to Bar Etna in Newington Green last week and couldn’t recommend more. Also, £5 negronis - say no more!!

That’s all for this week. We hope you all have a wonderful week!

Soph, Vic & The Curve team x

We hope you’ve had a a relaxing weekend.

We’re so excited to have Vic back in London and on the podcast this week. To say she has been a BUSY gal would be a major understatement. She’s come with an abundance of research for this week’s Curve Weekly episode.

On today's Curve Weekly episode, Vic and Soph get into Bezos cashing out $4 billion, and whether it's actually anything to worry about. Then there's the women's fashion brand that beat the odds and went public, without leaning on the sustainability pitch everyone expected. On top of that, the cost of living is quietly changing who pays on a first date. And to round it off, SpaceX's stock is sliding at exactly the wrong time.

As always, we’ve read the finance news so you don’t have to.

Have a great week.

Soph, Vic & The Curve team x

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This week’s finance news, minus the jargon.

Bezos cashes out $4 Billion - should you be worried?

Jeff Bezos filed to sell 15 million Amazon shares this week, worth about $4 billion. It happened the same week Amazon's market cap crossed $3 trillion for the first time, roughly the size of the UK's entire economy (which is an insane thing to type).

Why is this important?
A founder dumping billions of dollars of stock sounds like a red flag, but if you crunch the numbers he’s only sold about 1.7% of his Amazon holdings. This is the kind of news that's designed to be clickbait, and knowing how to read past the scary number to what it actually means for the company (and whether you should genuinely worry ) is exactly the kind of financial literacy most of us were never taught. On the pod, we break down what to actually look for next time you see a headline like this.

Reformation's IPO announcement was honestly iconic.

Reformation listed on the New York Stock Exchange this week, valuing the company at just under $1 billion. Forget the usual row of men in suits ringing a bell, their launch photos looked more like a fashion campaign, and it's refreshing to see finance in a more feminine light.

Why is this important?

This launch bucks the trend that IPOs need all the fanfare to succeed, demonstrating the quiet, steady debuts are often the ones with real staying power. Also, Reformation barely leant on “sustainability” to sell itself, unlike a couple of brands that have flopped since going public (cough cough Allbirds). So has ditching the sustainability pitch actually made Reformation stronger?

Turns out being chronically single is a legitimate savings hack.

New data from Time Magazine shows the average cost of a date in the US has climbed to $189, and unsurprisingly the majority of Americans say they're going on fewer dates because of it, especially Gen Z.

Why is this important?
The "who pays" conversation was already awkward, now it’s a total minefield. No wonder everyone’s suddenly a coffee date convert. When something as fundamental as human connection starts getting priced out of people's budgets, is it fair to judge someone for splitting the bill?

We'd love to know your thoughts, vote below. Quick note: this poll uses the male/female framing from the original research, not our take on who should be dating who.

*Please note voting can only take place in the Substack app.

After the biggest IPO launch in history, SpaceX has crash landed.

Literally, a piece of it just crashed into the moon, and its stock has had a rough time of its own. It listed on the Nasdaq in June at $135 a share and popped hard on debut, but has since slipped below its original IPO price.

Why is this important?
There’s more behind the dip than just hype wearing off, making this a genuinely useful case study in ignoring FOMO. At a glance, a huge batch of early investor shares just became free to sell, putting downward pressure on the stocks price. We unpack the full story on today’s episode, so if you were gutted you missed out on the IPO, give it a listen.

Community Comment:

Love this comment so much. Vic & Soph responded on today’s episode.

In the red or green this week?

Soph's calling herself desperately in the red. Absolutely nothing is happening this week unless someone else is footing the bill.

Vic's in the red too, straight out of the microneedling clinic the same week Soph's beauty standards episode dropped. Ironic timing, Vic.

New Episode now live!

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ICYMI: our latest Raising the Curve episode is out now

We sat down with financial coach Hannah Mayfield, who swapped a career in fashion for teaching people how to actually build wealth, not just survive month to month.

In this one, we get into why there’s no single right way to manage money, how to invest with an ethical lens without it becoming all-consuming, and the psychology behind panic selling when the market wobbles. We also unpack the singles tax, the real cost of navigating life solo, and the invisible financial gap that opens up for women after having kids. A mother’s earnings drop 42% in the five years after her first child. Men’s earnings, on average, go up.

The Curve Collection

Everything The Curve crew is loving this week!

• Purchase of the week: Emily & Lucy BOTH fell victim to the Estrid reusable razor ads on instagram, and they’re now obsessed!!! Smoothest legs on The Curve team.

• What we’re reading: The whole team are absolutely loving ’s latest Substack article A Fashion Girls’ Guide to Investing. Very clever and well done! Def worth a read (and follow).

• What we’re watching: We're still planning an episode on Margo's Got Money Troubles. If you haven't had time to read it, it's also available to watch on Apple TV, with Elle Fanning playing Margo, and the money subtext running through it is genuinely so good either way. Come prepared, we'd love all your opinions!

That’s all for this week. We hope you all have a wonderful week!

Soph, Vic & The Curve team x

Hiiii everyone!

You may have noticed that things look a little different this week, and that’s because we’re officially following the trends and shifting over to a new platform (hello, Substack). Same content, just a new (and fun!) format where we can interact with you even more. We recommend downloading the app so you can get involved in the polls etc. within our newsletters.

Firstly, WOWOWOWOW what a response we’ve had to the announcement about The Curve Investments! We’re SO excited that it’s officially live, and honestly can’t quite believe it’s real.

For those of you who have been here since the beginning, genuinely it’s something we dreamed of when we first started six years ago, so thank you all for being here and for continuing to supporting us - we hope you love The Curve Investments as much as we do!!

Vic is (finally) on her way back to the UK after being in NZ for the launch and we can’t wait to have her back on the podcast and on London soil!. The rest of us have been enjoying the London heatwave, sorry to rub it in to our NZ and Australia community but we have all been melting.

Abi’s covering for Vic again this week, joining us on the coin flip everyone’s getting wrong, the New Zealand founder taking on Musk and Bezos, the AI that hacked its way out of a locked test (scary), as well as how one lipstick helped turn around a $38 billion company.

As always, we’ve read the finance news so you don’t have to.

Have a great week.

Soph, Vic Abi & The Curve team x

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This week’s finance news, minus the jargon.

Would you flip a coin for a million?

A YouGov poll asked 4,600 UK adults: take £50,000 guaranteed, or flip a coin for a 50/50 shot at £1 million.

In this UK survey, 73% took the guaranteed money. Split by gender, 82% of women played it safe versus 63% of men… we don’t love to see it.

Why is this important?
The coin flip is worth ten times more on paper, £500,000 expected value versus £50,000 guaranteed. So many choose not to take it because losing hurts twice as much as winning feels good. It’s loss aversion which we have spoken about before. It kind of reflects what we’re seeing in terms of there still being £10.6 billion sitting in UK savings accounts (earning next to nothing), while the market has averaged 11% a year for two decades. People with more financial security tend to take more risk, but we wish everyone knew how important it was for us to all take a little more!

A $40 billion rival to Musk and Bezos is in town.

Rocket Lab, founded by New Zealander (!!) Sir Peter Beck, is now valued at $40 billion. It just agreed to pay $8 billion for satellite company Iridium, a direct shot at Musk’s Starlink. Beck says the deal saves 10 to 20 years of building it themselves.

Why is this important?
Tech is now New Zealand’s third largest export earner, ahead of agriculture (cannot believe we are writing that). It’s a sharp contrast to how Silicon Valley usually treats the country. Billionaires like Peter Thiel (PayPal founder) have bought land there as a doomsday bolthole, Reid Hoffman has called it “apocalypse insurance.” New Zealand’s usual role in these stories is the backup plan in case the world implodes. This time though, it’s the one doing the competing.

One bag and one designer just turned around a $38 billion company.

LVMH’s (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy) fashion division, home to Dior, Loewe, Celine and so many more brands, returned to growth this quarter after seven straight quarters of decline. This division we are talking about, makes up 71% of LVMH’s total profit. That brand was Dior.

Why is this important?
Dior’s move is one beauty brands mastered years ago: sell the bag at four figures, sell the lipstick with the same look at £40 to £50. Same aura, waaay smaller price tag. It also has something some sister brands don’t, a clear identity to sell. Ask what a Loewe woman looks like right now and the answer gets fuzzy. Will it be cool forever?

An AI hacked its way out of a locked test.

This one is a little scary. OpenAI was testing an AI model inside a sandbox (a closed, no-internet environment built for safe testing). It broke out anyway, found a security flaw - and stole test answers from a rival company’s database. Anthropic’s model did something similar during its own testing.

Why is this important?
It happened the same week Apple became the world’s most valuable company, by barely spending on AI at all while everyone else pours in billions. Apple’s up 23% this year whereas the rest of the Magnificent Seven is down. Some of that AI money is just moving in circles, companies like Tesla and xAI selling to each other, Nvidia financing the same companies that buy its chips back. We explain this more in the podcast but the real question isn’t how scary the AI is. It’s how much of this boom is real, and how much is companies paying each other to make it look that way?

Community Question:

Abi was VERY excited about this question. We answered this on the podcast, here.

In the red or green this week?

Soph’s calling herself in the green, though barely. No new income, nothing exciting to report, I just haven’t blown the budget yet and we’re only two weeks in. Small wins.

Vic’s in the red this week too, $400 NZD down in parking tickets, and she’s decided she just shouldn’t drive. Can’t argue with that logic. Good news, she’s back in walkable London soon, where no driving will be required.

In case you missed it: The Curve Investments is now LIVE!

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If you were away from your inbox or living under a rock (i.e. not on our Instagram), here’s the short version. The Curve now has its own FUND (yes, you read that right!!!). Six years of building, one panic attack, and a lot of “we’ll do it properly or not at all” later, it’s finally live.

Vic is officially back in fund management, this time managing money for The Curve Community (!!). You will have full transparency on every investment decision made. There is only a $500 minimum, so (hopefully) most of you feel as though that is achievable.

Want to read the whole story? Relinked below!

The Curve

The Curve Investments: our new fund is live

Six years ago we sat in a dusty, windowless podcast studio with genuinely no idea if anyone was listening…

Read more

15 days ago · 15 likes · The Curve Platform

^{We are so proud to have created a fund that has been designed essentially by you - The Curve Community. Our fund has a preference for female-led companies because we not only want to help you grow your wealth, we also want to see more female CEO’s creating change in the world. To find out more click here.}

^{The Curve Investments Limited is the Manager and Issuer of The Curve Fund. Product Disclosure Statements are available at thecurveinvestments.co.nz. This product is intended for New Zealand residents only. It does not constitute an offer of financial services or products to anyone outside New Zealand.}

I want to invest with Vic!

The Curve Collection

Everything The Curve crew is loving this week!

• What we’re listening to: Lucy’s been seeing clips all over social media to the Nara Smith: Stop Calling me a Tradwife so we’ll be listening to that this week.

• Purchase of the week: Vic’s currently in the air on her way back from NZ, with a suitcase FILLED with Vogel’s bread and Whittaker’s chocolate. Absolute purchase(s) of the week.

• What we’re reading: Teasing a future episode on this one: Margot's Got Money Troubles. We're thinking about doing an episode or deep dive on it. It's also on available to watch online with Elle Fanning if reading's not your thing this month, but the money subtext running through it is so good. Come prepared, we'd love all your opinions!

That’s all for now. We hope you all have a wonderful week!

Soph, Vic, Abi & The Curve team x