Written by Jade Conner & Mufaro Mutowembwa
There are a dozen frozen yogurt shops in the West Village.
They sit within a few blocks of each other, most with a line out the door all day, everyday, and not one of them seems remotely concerned about the competition. Around the corner, on the shelf at Meadow Lane, a bag of MASA tortilla chips sells for US$13. Nobody does a double take, or thinks twice - they are happy consumers.
This is the thing we kept circling for ten days, and it took us a while to name it: New York is not afraid of more.
Rolodex went to New York because we have always been a global company, and this was the trip that let that be visible. We recorded a five-part series at Spotify Studios with some of the best Australian founders building in New York, documenting what Aussie ambition looks like on a global stage. Somewhere between a café that doubled as the best office in the world, a recording studio in the World Trade Centre, and a pub full of Australians on a Friday night, we realised the real difference between Australia and the US is how people think about abundance.
In Australia we treat the pie as fixed. When a competitor wins, we lose, so the instinct is to go on the defensive: don’t let anyone know too much about the business, gatekeep your secrets so nobody can steal your ideas.
New York behaves as if the pie is 1000x bigger and always growing. Ten froyo shops don’t split a market; they build a froyo destination, and the line outside one becomes free advertising for all ten. The competition is the marketing. The $13 chips are pricing strategy made visible, the willingness to charge as though the demand is there, because it is.
That mindset changes everything. How openly people talk about their ideas. How quickly they make introductions. How willing they are to collaborate. In New York, ambition is social currency. People ask what you’re building with genuine curiosity, and nobody rushes to tell you to make the idea smaller, safer, or more realistic.
The proof was specific and felt everywhere, the energy of a city where everyone is building something and nobody is embarrassed about failing, the generosity, the way people opened doors and made introductions. The energy compounds because everyone assumes there is enough opportunity to go around.
That’s the part we want to bottle: believing there is enough space for everyone and everything - and we’re bringing it back to Australia.
Friday 8 May: Leon's Bagels, Bluestone Lane, and a pub full of Australians
First full day together. The sun is out, spirits are high. Mufaro’s already done the infamous CorePower; Jade’s come in from Cape Cod. We meet in SoHo and do what any self-respecting visitor does first: Leon’s Bagels, BEC, ketchup and chilli jam (you’re welcome). From there we walk from SoHo to Tribeca, ducking into Happier Grocery on the way, which turns out to be exactly as aggressively charming as the name suggests.
Nick Stone meets us at Bluestone Lane, and within ten minutes we’ve covered the Australian American Association, Dom Dolla and why every artist who plays Old Mate’s does it for free not because they have to, but because playing there means something, which is the kind of detail that tells you everything about what Nick has built. He mentioned We Wear Australian, which had just opened, and that he’s invested in it alongside Hugh Jackman.
Then came the part we kept coming back to. Nick has been in New York for 16 years. Bluestone Lane now has 65 locations across 11 cities. He followed his wife here, did his MBA specifically to get the exchange visa, and has spent the better part of two decades building something that couldn’t have existed anywhere else. When we asked what he’d tell Australians who want to do the same, it came down to commitment the willingness to say yes and actually go. Our read: Aussies have a risk tolerance problem, and it’s cultural. Nick is what happens when that changes.
He was name-dropping the whole lunch (Scanlan Theodore’s CEO, the Consul General, Donna Hay, the head of the AAA) but never once in a way that felt like performance. Every name came with an offer. I can connect you. Let me make an introduction. He mentioned connecting someone with the head of Macquarie just to help them get a job. That generosity is load-bearing. Without it, none of the network works.
He insisted we eat, ordering us his favourites from the menu. The granola parfait with lemon curd was definitely the highlight!
We left elated, kept walking, stopped into Meadow Lane, and found Seoul Tonic on the shelf. Proud portco moment doesn’t cover it. Coincidentally, we met up with Soph Hood that afternoon for drinks at Fanellis, before heading over to Old Mate’s for May 8 (Mate Day). We flew across the world and found our people in a pub in FiDi. There are worse ways to start a trip.
