Why I Built withHer The Story Behind Australia's First Women's Lifestyle and Safety App

I never set out to build a women's app. I set out to help one woman, and it grew from there.

Her name is Ashleigh Ross. She's my partner, and three years ago she came out of an abusive relationship that nearly destroyed her. What happened to her didn't end when it ended. The recovery took years. I watched someone I love rebuild herself piece by piece, and I learned what that kind of fear does to a person long after the danger is gone.

The moment it all started

The idea came to me in the most ordinary way. I was at a five-day business conference, and about a week before, I'd received a message on my own Instagram that we believe came from her past. It didn't rattle me. It lit a fire in me. So I was sitting there at this conference, in a session that pushes you to find the emotional connection behind your ideas, and on a lunch break it clicked. I called Ash and I asked her something I'd never asked anyone. Would you be comfortable if I built something based on what you went through, so other women don't have to go through it alone?

She hesitated. Of course she did. I was asking her to turn the hardest chapter of her life into something public. But she sat with it, she spoke to her mum and dad, and she came back and said yes. She wanted to help other women. That decision, her choosing to turn her pain into protection for others, is the reason withHer exists. She's now part of the team.

Building something I'll never use

People tell me it's strange that I'm building something I'll never use myself. And they're right, I never will. But when you love someone, a partner, a sister, a mum, you just want them safe. That's the whole thing. I'm not the customer. I'm just someone who refuses to accept that the tools out there are good enough.

Because here's what I learned. The big players in this space aren't really in it for safety. One of the biggest made sixteen million dollars selling people's location data. That's not protection, that's a business model dressed up as care. I wanted to build the opposite. Something that exists for the woman holding the phone, not for whoever wants to buy her data.

What withHer actually is

So let me tell you what withHer actually is. It's three things in one app, built around how women really live.

Safety that stays quiet until she needs it

This is the heart of it. When a woman first sets up withHer, she chooses a small circle of people she trusts, the people she'd want to know if something went wrong. Then she forgets about it, because it just lives in the background. If she ever feels unsafe, she double clicks and holds the action button on her iPhone, and instantly her trusted circle knows she's in trouble. They get her exact location, a live ping that follows her in real time, and the app quietly records twenty seconds of audio in case the worst happens. No opening the app, no fumbling, no drawing attention to herself. And because some situations don't look dangerous from the outside, that whole safety side can stay hidden. To anyone glancing over her shoulder, it just looks like a normal lifestyle app. We built it on iPhone first, and we're working on ways to bring that same one-tap protection to every phone.

A real community of women

The other thing I watched Ash struggle with was loneliness. She found it hard to make friends at this age, and so many women do. So withHer has a community feed where girls genuinely get behind girls. It's a real women's community. You can find someone to do Pilates with, walk the Tan, hit the beach, or grab a coffee. You can ask other women for advice, find out about a new cafe or restaurant that just opened nearby, or just be part of something. For a woman coming out of a hard situation, that feed is a place to connect with others who get it, without it ever looking like a safety app. It's the warmth that sits on top of the protection.

The withHer Card

This is where the lifestyle side comes alive. We partner with all the brands women already love, and not just the obvious ones. Think anything a girl loves doing. Nails, hair, Pilates, cafes, matchas, walks, shopping, online stores. Members get exclusive deals at all of them through a digital card that lives in their Apple Wallet. And it works both ways. The woman gets a discount on her coffee, and that cafe just got two new customers it never would have had. For our brand partners, it means reaching exactly the audience they want, and they can even speak directly to our community through the feed. Everybody wins.

The world I'm trying to build

That's the world I'm trying to build. Where a woman makes a lifelong friend through the app. Where an everyday girl answers a brand's post, crushes it, and ends up with a real brand partnership that changes her life. Where a woman gets a discount at her favourite cafe and the local business grows because of it. And where, on the worst night of someone's life, she gets home safe because of something in her pocket.

If one person makes it home safe who wouldn't have otherwise, that's the best outcome I could ever ask for. That's why I'm telling this story. That's why withHer exists.