Michelle Battersby is gross and wants to make you rich

She's created the pretty Patreon for those who make content and know their worth.

She's created the pretty Patreon for those who make content and know their worth.

If Australia had a Tinx - the popular US influencer who is legitimately funny, thoughtful and bright - it's Michelle Battersby.

You'd be familiar with her viral movement, “Gross Girl Tok”. Her first video on the topic chalked up more than 2.9m views and now the hashtag is even catching the attention of fashion labels keen to leverage it into merch.

@michellebattersby_

Gym at 7am, shower at 7pm (on a good day) #grossgirltok

♬ original sound - Michelle Battersby

However Battersby is not an influencer, she's influential.

Sure, she has the talent for being in front of the camera, but it's behind-the-scenes where she shines. 

The former Bumble executive - the woman tasked with introducing the dating app to the Aussie market - took a leaf out of her former boss Whitney Wolfe Herd's play book and has now launched a business of her own, Sunroom. Together with co-founder Lucy Mort, who previously worked at another dating app Hinge, they found a gap in the "content" market and went for it.

Sunroom is like Patreon but prettier. It's a platform where people (originally aimed at women and non-binary folk) can create content and make money online, without being judged for it.

It has a TikTok style interface, "pretty" is how some users describe it, and - unlike other apps - it has safety and freedom of expression front of mind for users. The launch took longer than expected due to the groundbreaking technology that prevents screenshots. There is no limit to what people can share and monetise.

"I heard so many stories from mostly women and non-binary creators who really had a hard time on platforms like TikTok and Instagram with the sorts of content they were doing," Battersby told The Oz. 

"Sometimes it was more body positive content, sometimes they were doing sexual wellness content and Instagram and TikTok just got to the point where they’re were heavily, heavily moderating that content… these creators were shadow banned, their accounts were taken down without notice, they didn't get the same distribution on algorithms that they typically did."

"There are creators that sit in that space of what Instagram allow but they don't want to take it as far as OnlyFans, which can't happen on Sunroom as we're an app so we can't allow porn but there are some creators doing some amazing things around female empowerment and embracing all body types. One of the creators, called Comfortable In My Skin, does a series called 'Titty Talk' where women sit in beautiful settings, like studios or by the beach, and they're topless but it's not sexual at all but they sit there and talk about their relationships with their boobs and their deepest, darkest insecurities and they've come to love their boobs. You would never see content like that anywhere else on the internet because normally a topless woman is for a male gaze, it's not really female gaze. When content like that started rolling out of Sunroom I had people DM-ing me saying they were in tears as it really is very moving seeing those connections."

"The word 'influencer' was becoming kind of dirty yet it's a big business, 30% of American kids want to grow up to be 'YouTubers'. This is the way the world is going so we really want to unlock that third revenue stream for creators because traditionally, they've only had brand deals and ad revenue share agreements to make money and those can be tricky and unreliable and they can strip people of their authenticity, so if you've got an audience, you can make money off them directly in Sunroom," she said.

Battersby is a virtual force of nature. Everything she touches turns to gold - which is why the name of her new chapter is both presumptuous and accurate. Sunroom launched four months ago with about 100 creators on board and one of the investors is "angel" venture capitalist Cyan Banister, who was one of the initial investors in Uber.

During her three years there, Bumble locked in 3.3 million registrations to the female-led dating app. From there she moved onto the wildly successful Keep It Cleaner platform which launched a heap of spin-offs including food ranges, clothing collaborations, and an app during Melbourne's lockdowns.

But to make Sunroom successful, Battersby packed up her life and relocated to LA - mid pandemic. Seems nuts? Wrong. Covid, Battersby said, lead to platforms like OnlyFans breaking through. 

"The sex work industry was severely disrupted by Covid and they went to OnlyFans and really blew it up. We were really conscious of the pandemic and wanted to launch while people were still in lockdown because so many people were spending time on their devices. But the app took so much longer than we thought to build, but that's what happens when you launch anti-screenshot technology. It's an industry first, it's never been applied to a product like ours before," she said.

Her departure was a loss to the Australian start-up space, especially for other women in tech and content creation losing a pioneer, but she felt the environment here wasn't ripe enough, yet.

"The allure of LA was the creator economy it's been blowing up for the past couple of years, but when Lucy and I started talking about Sunroom back in 2020 I hadn't actually heard the term but it was really starting to be thrown around in the US and it's just the sheer size of the market over here. You have access to so many people, so many bodies, so many eyes, so many wallets. So if you're going to build an app and really try to grow it to a large size, being in the US definitely helps," Battersby said.

"Nothing against Australia, it's such an amazing market and I felt the benefits of a tech company focusing on the Australian market. I felt that when I was at Bumble. Putting people in countries like Australia, Germany, the UK, really helped expand Bumble's growth so I would love one day for Sunroom to get to the stage where we can hire a team in Australia and it makes sense to have people on the ground there. But right now we get the best of both worlds because I'm Australian, Lucy's Australian and we already have an understanding of the Australian market so we're able to focus on both, we're just based in LA because there's a bit going on over here."

Michelle will appear at Vogue Codes Summit on Saturday, June 18.

Register here vogue.com.au/vogue-codes