Nine years after the company was born, Storyation co-founders Lauren Quaintance and Mimi Cullen are set to depart the company and leave their brainchild in the hands of existing staff.
Originally founded back in October 2013, the content marketing agency was acquired by Medium Rare in 2019, with News Corp now owning a controlling share in the media agency and Storyation as a result.
The business has been recognised as a Fast Starter by the Australian Financial Review, and Quaintance has previously won Entrepreneur of the Year at the 2018 B&T Women in Media Awards.
In an emotional LinkedIn post, Quaintance said: “In 2013 Mimi and I left big, exciting jobs leading teams in an ASX listed media company that had more than 3,000 staff. And then it was just the two of us in my spare room (me with a new baby on my lap.) There’s no question it was a risk.
“We might often be confused for the same person, but we’re really the same but different. When we started Mimi was, at heart, a salesperson with a love of the craft of storytelling, and I was a creative with a love of strategy who got a kick out of reaching commercial goals.
“Before Storyation, I’d had responsibility for significant P&Ls but I’d never had to ‘sweat the payroll’. In our early finance meetings my father (then our unpaid CFO) would say ‘If you don’t sell another thing you’ll run out of money in X months.'”
“I’ve always said that the team own that culture, Mimi and I didn’t create it, we just got out of the way and created the space for it to happen. And it will continue long after we’ve left the building under the guidance of the ebullient, irrepressible Andrés López-Varela. I couldn’t think of a better person to lead the agency into the future.”
