SORTD co-founders Alexis Aaron and Jodine Wolman share what they learned raising $3.26 million as young female founders and scaling to 450,000 users.
We didn’t set out to build a tech company. We set out to make online shopping feel calmer and more considered.
Alexis Aaron and Jodine Wolman did not set out to build a technology company. They set out to fix a problem they lived with every day, and in doing so, ended up building something 450,000 Australians now rely on.
The problem was online shopping. Not the buying part. The bit before that.
“Sortd started from a very real and very personal frustration,” the co-founders say. “As lifelong friends, we were constantly sending each other shopping links, screenshots and wishlists. We loved discovering new brands and pieces online, but managing that discovery felt chaotic. We’d have 15 to 20 tabs open, items saved in Notes, screenshots buried in our camera rolls, and a constant fear of losing something we genuinely wanted to buy.”
When they spoke to friends and family, they realised everyone had their own system and none of them really worked. Tabs would close, screenshots would disappear and wishlists were siloed across different websites.
The problem nobody had named
What Aaron and Wolman had identified was what they now call the messy middle, the gap between discovering something you love and actually buying it. Search helps you find what you want. Marketplaces help you buy it. But nothing helped you manage the decision phase in between.
“We didn’t set out to build a tech company. We set out to make online shopping feel calmer and more considered. We realised search helps you find something when you know what you want, and marketplaces help you buy it, but nothing helped you manage the decision phase in between.”
That insight became SORTD, a platform where shoppers can capture anything they find online, organise it into curated lists, track price changes, share wishlists and come back to items when the timing is right. The platform officially launched in November 2023, having started life as an early concept called Walah back in 2020.
Today, more than 450,000 shoppers use SORTD, over 20 million items have been saved into curated lists and millions of dollars flow through the platform annually. In Q4 2025 alone, the numbers told a striking story: platform users grew 96 per cent compared to Q3, revenue increased by more than 600 per cent, referral activity jumped 300 per cent, and $8 million in sales flowed through the platform in November and December.
Building infrastructure for intent
Aaron and Wolman are deliberate about how they describe what SORTD is. They are not trying to replace retailers or become another discovery feed. They are, in their words, building infrastructure for purchase intent.
“We sit in a category that historically hasn’t had a clear owner,” they say. “Retailers handle transactions. Search engines handle queries. Marketplaces aggregate inventory. But the biggest part of shopping actually happens between those moments. The consideration phase, where people compare options, plan purchases, wait for the right timing and decide what is actually worth buying.”
That framing becomes more significant as AI begins to reshape how people shop online. Discovery is becoming abundant, they argue, but decision-making is becoming the bottleneck. “The platforms that win won’t just show people more products, they’ll help them confidently choose between them.”
The scale SORTD has reached validates the thesis. “Intent isn’t passive behaviour, it’s commercially powerful,” they say. “Millions of dollars flow through the platform annually, proving that helping consumers manage intent creates real outcomes for both users and retailers.”
Jodine Wolman describes the long-term vision simply. “Our vision long term is to one day bring the entire online shopping experience into the platform, so that you can browse, compare, save, purchase, return, exchange and track all in one place. Your complete end-to-end shopping companion.”
What raising $3.26 million taught them
The founders raised $1.26 million in pre-seed funding through Antler Australia’s accelerator program alongside private investors in 2022, before securing a $2 million follow-on raise from private investors in 2025, bringing total funding to $3.26 million. Both Aaron and Wolman were named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for 2025.
Raising that capital as young female founders required a level of preparation they now describe as one of their most important early lessons.
“Raising $3.26 million as young female founders required us to deeply understand our numbers, our market and our long-term strategy. Investors don’t just back ideas, they back clarity. In rooms where we were often the youngest founders, preparation became our leverage. Knowing our metrics, user behaviour and business model in detail gave us confidence and credibility, and shifted conversations from ‘do you deserve to be here?’ to ‘this is inevitable’. We learned that confidence doesn’t come from personality, it comes from preparation.”
The early challenge of convincing investors that saving an item online translated into a real purchase intention required more than conviction. It required evidence.
“New categories don’t get validated by explanation, they get validated by evidence. Today, with millions of items saved and millions in sales flowing through the platform, the data tells the story better than we ever could.”
Focus as a competitive advantage
“Startups rarely fail from lack of ideas. They fail from lack of focus.”
One of the most consistent themes across the SORTD story is discipline. In the early stages, the temptation to do more, add features, pursue partnerships and expand into adjacent markets, was constant. Aaron and Wolman learned quickly that trying to do everything slowed them down more than doing nothing.
“Our biggest growth moments came when we doubled down on one behaviour instead of expanding into adjacent ones. Sustainable growth has come from discipline. Saying no to features, partnerships or opportunities that don’t align with our core user behaviour has been critical.”
The lesson they distil from that experience is direct. “Startups rarely fail from lack of ideas. They fail from lack of focus.” They also point to a broader insight about timing and market behaviour that has shaped how they think about their own category. “One of the most important lessons has been that behaviour changes before the industry recognises it. People were already saving screenshots, sending links and keeping mental shopping lists long before the category existed. Our job wasn’t to convince people to act differently, it was to recognise a pattern early and build infrastructure around it. Timing a company isn’t about predicting the future perfectly, it’s about noticing what people are already doing that the market hasn’t named yet.”
The strength behind the business
Building a company with a lifelong friend introduces its own dynamics. Aaron and Wolman are candid about both the advantages and the work required to make it function well.
“Building a company as lifelong friends has been one of our greatest strengths. We understand each other deeply, when to push and when to support. During moments of pressure that trust has made hard decisions easier. Entrepreneurship can be isolating, but having a co-founder who understands not just the business, but you as a person, has been invaluable. We’ve learned how to disagree productively, separate emotion from strategy and protect the friendship while scaling the company. The strength of our partnership has been just as important as the strength of our product.”
For two founders who started with no prior tech skills, building from personal frustration rather than technical blueprint, that combination of partnership, preparation, focus and evidence-based conviction has proven to be a formidable foundation.
Alexis Aaron puts the current moment simply. “Over the past few years, our focus has always been on listening to our community, refining the product, and proving that better organisation leads to smarter shopping. We have succeeded in simplifying the way people shop online, and this is only the beginning.”
Keep up to date with our stories on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
