on founder loneliness

turns out, australia is really far away

Welcome to No One’s in the Kitchen. A newsletter about working solo, building far from home, and the power of shared energy to bring our best ideas to life.

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I moved from London to Sydney in January 2025.

As wheels went up at Heathrow, I knew I was leaving behind my routines, my people, and the steady rhythm of a city I’d spent over a decade building a life in. What I didn’t anticipate was how quickly that absence would turn into something more: a quiet, creeping kind of loneliness.

I was already a business owner. I had systems, strategy, and vision. But what I lost in the move was the momentum that comes from being surrounded by people who are creating too. The friends, brainstorming partners, other founders, and coffee shop acquaintances who made London feel alive with ideas.

Without that network around me in Sydney, things began to feel flat. Quick.

I still loved my work. My clients bring light to me daily and going to the beach at lunch is, well, magic. Lifestyle wise, I feel I was made for this country.

But I felt the difference in my energy. My ideas had fewer places to land. The feedback loops disappeared. I was building, but in isolation.

Loneliness is more common than we talk about, especially in Australia where so many of us are expats and solopreneurs trying to find our crew of people 10,000 miles from home.

We go from coffee chats to silence. From spontaneous brainstorms to solitary decisions. From being surrounded by stimulation to wondering if we’ve disappeared.

I’m not here with answers (yet, trying though). I am here to explore the problem in public.

No One’s In the Kitchen will be part journal, part research lab, part builder’s digest.

I'll be writing about:

• What happens to our nervous systems when we go from team to solo

• What the absence of belonging does to our creativity, motivation, and risk tolerance

• Why traditional solutions (co-working spaces, casual meetups) often miss the mark

• What we can learn from artist residencies, communal spaces, and alternative business cultures

• My own attempt to build something better: residencies focused on connection, not just productivity

If you’re tired of being told to “just network more,” this is for you.

I’m keen to build something that feels better to build and I hope you’ll stick around to join me :)

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PS. I’ll be using AI as a research companion for this project. Asking it questions, digging into trends, and letting it co-create alongside me. Not to automate the human out of the process, but to amplify it. I want to see if tech can help us get closer to each other, not just scale further apart.

My brother works in AI tech sales and kindly suggested that I “get with the times, Gaba”. I’ll share any tips I pick up along the way so you too can build.