When we hear of the word ‘new media’, we often think of social-first platforms, newsletters, podcasts and websites. A lot of the time, we’re seeing young people, including many young women, with no traditional media experience creating their own content that speaks to them, and their audiences. It’s engaging, and relatable and arguably democratising the media landscape in some sense.
But what about a world where experiences from these two distinct media styles come together? Centennial World founder Lauren Meisner is a notable name in Australia’s media landscape, particularly when it comes to being someone who took the leap to new media after an established traditional media career. It plays a significant role in what makes her founder story in this rapidly growing space so fascinating.
Having worked as a beauty and entertainment writer for long-standing legacy women’s publications such as Elle and Harper’s Bazaar in Australia, Lauren saw traditional media dismiss internet culture and the creator economy. She didn’t just tweet about it – she quit her job, put in $5K of her own money, and launched a world-first Gen Z–focused brand three months later in December 2019. What began as Centennial Beauty – with co-founder Jordyn Christensen who has since exited the company – rebranded to Centennial World in 2023 to focus on internet culture: think creators, social media trends and viral topics online.
This month marks exactly six years since Lauren became a founder, and in her latest interview with High Agency Women podcast host Natasha Gillezeau, she’s brutally honest about what it actually takes to grow as a founder.
Unpacking the very un-glam and real side of building a new media company from scratch, she speaks candidly about bootstrapping versus taking on a bank loan, surviving the chaos of COVID, ad budgets, navigating a co-founder exit, and evolving from a classic “.com” publisher into a personality-led podcast network.
One of her biggest pieces of advice to aspiring founders is to identify where their strengths and weaknesses lie.
“I would say, very early on, identify what you need to work on, which honestly, will probably be very obvious to everyone,” she tells High Agency Women. “Understand where your strengths are, what you really need to work on, and don’t avoid working on those things.”
Referring to her personal experience, Lauren says that her core strength in the early days, being her editorial instincts, became somewhat of a hiding place from the parts of the business she was less confident in. She’s now learning to confront those weak spots head on.
“I think I was able to hide from those tough parts that really challenge me in the early days, because I had a co-founder, because we were running more of like a lifestyle business than a business that had, I guess, the vision to scale,” she says.
“And now that I am trying to scale and build something that is much bigger than myself, I am having to do that work now in the middle of that, as opposed to, if I had been able to work on that earlier on, I’d be in a much better position now,” Lauren continues.
As she reiterates that her biggest piece of advice for founders would be to “identify the things that really challenge you”, she says it’s also about sitting through the discomfort and taking action to widen your skillset. “Just you have to get through that… you have to lean in and you have to go all in and attack those things,” she says, to which podcast host Gillezeau responds, “I think that’s such valuable and actionable advice”.
As she looks to 2026, Lauren hints it’ll actually be a “year of no scaling” for Centennial World, and we can’t wait to see what’s in store for her and the brand.
If you’re a creatively-driven founder, aspiring media entrepreneur, or just ‘chronically online’, and curious about what it takes to turn that obsession into a business, tune into the rest of Lauren’s interview on the High Agency Women podcast here. We can guarantee that conversation will hit home (and follow Centennial World while you’re at it).
The High Agency Podcast is sponsored by Blackbird.
Top photo – Pictured: Lauren Meisner, Source: Instagram/laurenmeisner_ (with additional design by Missing Perspectives)