Home featured founder-friday Founder Friday Founder Friday She built a business no one else would. The lessons inside it apply to everyone Yajush Gupta April 3, 2026 From a brunch conversation to one of Australia’s fastest growing service businesses. Anna Grosman shares the lessons that got her there What’s happening : Anna Grosman is the founder of Her Confidant, Australia’s first female-led companionship agency for women, which has grown 400% year-on-year since launching in its current form in February 2024. Why this matters : For small business owners, Grosman’s story is a rare example of a founder who built genuine commercial success by doing the opposite of what her industry normalised. No paid advertising. Rigorous quality control. A client-led model that kept evolving as she kept listening. Anna Grosman did not set out to disrupt an industry. She set out to solve a problem she kept hearing about. “My career in the intimacy industry started over brunch with friends,” she said. “The same frustration kept coming up. High-achieving, financially independent women were exhausted by dating apps and low-effort men. They wanted connection, intimacy, and great sex, without the emotional labour or compromise of a traditional relationship.” That observation became Aphrodisiac Male Escorts, which Grosman co-founded in 2012. It grew quickly, she said, because it removed the sleaze and centred women. Safety, discretion and emotional intelligence came first. But over time, something deeper emerged from the client base that no product in the market was addressing. “Alongside confident, empowered clients who