What a Year of Pitching and Starting Get Out Actually Taught Me
I didn’t set out to build a startup. I set out to prove to myself that I could put an idea into the world and not abandon it when it got hard.
That was the real dare.
When I applied for the Enterprize Tasmania Elevate program, I half-expected a polite “not this round.” Instead, I was one of ten. I pitched in front of 200+ people - investors, community leaders, friends - and said out loud what I’d mostly only written in my notes app: loneliness is coming for queer people in suburbs, regions and small cities, and we can build the infrastructure to fight it.
That night looked like a launch. It wasn’t. And that part is on me.
The work we actually did
Across the year, we didn’t just “have an idea.” We built things.
A volunteer matching tool - because connection isn’t just drinks and drag, it’s service, purpose, and showing up for someone else.
A national queer events calendar - honestly one of the most versatile, most useful, most lovingly curated calendars in the country. You can find queer salsa, craft groups in Toowoomba, youth groups in Hobart, Feast Festival in Adelaide, and drag karaoke in Sydney - in one place sorted by handy filters.
A community hub - a space capable of hosting online events, forums, and conversations for people who can’t always get to Oxford St or Collingwood.
That’s not nothing.
But here’s the part most founders won’t tell you in public: capability does not equal adoption. We built the runway, but we didn’t get the plane off the ground. The calendar is powerful, but under-used. The hub is ready, but quiet. The sports-team matching tool was scoped, then shelved, because the developer disappeared into a new job and I didn’t have the time or headspace to go back to market.
So no, I don’t yet call Get Out “launched.” Not because it isn’t real, but because the community isn’t humming. Infrastructure without people is just tidy software.
Where I got it wrong
I thought I had to be the face again.
When I started this, I thought I needed to rebuild my personal brand - get back on Instagram, do the founder-as-influencer thing, post Reels about loneliness, talk about sobriety, pitch the vision. That’s the current startup religion. But the truth is: I like not being online. I like training, volunteering, working, seeing my friends, and not filming it. And it would be hypocritical to preach healthy, balanced, low-addiction queer community and burn myself out chasing engagement.I underestimated the cost of content.
Not financial cost - energy cost. Shooting, editing, subtitling, posting, replying, tagging: all of that is work. And for me, right now, doing all of that on top of a full-time comms job in one of Sydney’s most dynamic hospitals going through a Parliamentary Inquiry, EBA/Salary Packaging vote negotiations, and a government acquisition … it stops being joyful. It becomes a tax. Get Out needs someone who thinks, “Oh fun, let’s make five clips,” not “Ugh, I have to be seen.”I overestimated organic momentum.
“If we build a truly useful product, people will use it.” That’s the lie product people tell themselves to avoid doing distribution. Communities don’t grow by osmosis; they grow because someone is out there every day inviting, nudging, tagging, DMing, replying, showing their face. I did that in sprints - but not at the cadence needed to get to critical mass.I designed for the future community, not the current capacity.
I built the house for 1,000 people when 100 were ready to walk in. That creates friction: too many rooms, not enough voices.
Where it actually worked
The idea resonates. Every time I talk about queer friendship over queer dating, or “swipe right on real community,” people nod. Every time I say “we shouldn’t have to move cities to find our people,” people tell me their story. The problem is real.
Partners want in. Organisations love a central community calendar. They love a safe, non-competitive platform that says “we’ll send people to you.” That tells me we’re in the right niche.
The tech is good enough. We’re not blocked by software. We’re blocked by human energy.
What I learned about myself
This might be the most important part.
I learned that I can be deeply committed to a vision and not want to be the social-media-every-day founder. That doesn’t make me less serious. It makes me honest.
I learned that sobriety, mental health, training six days a week, and working in healthcare comms are non-negotiables - and anything that consistently pulls me away from that isn’t sustainable, no matter how noble the mission.
I learned that I actually like being present. I like not having to perform. And if Get Out requires constant performance, then Get Out needs more than me.
So, what’s next?
I’m going to pay someone to help... Not a full-time headcount, not a unicorn, just a smart, community-obsessed person who can:
post consistently from our calendar/content bank,
engage partners and events,
make it fun for me to show up (get me out of my head),
and grow the membership so the hub isn’t a ghost town.
I’ve got a budget. How many hours we get depends on the person. But this is me, publicly, doing the founder thing I tell everyone else to do: stop trying to do everything yourself.
If that’s you - or if you know someone who lives online, loves queer community, and wants to help build this - email me: brodie@getout.global.
Because here’s what hasn’t changed:
Queer people are still lonely.
Dating apps still aren’t solving it.
Suburban and regional queers are still under-served.
And I still believe this thing is meant to exist.
We’re not starting over. We’re starting again - better resourced, clearer on the offer, and far more honest about what I can and can’t do alone.
The foundations are done. Now it’s time to scale the community. Here’s to the next 12 months being about growth, not just groundwork