 Hungry, the word itself describes a primal instinct, a visceral need, the feeling from the knowledge that we can be better and the drive to make it so. Today I'm going to tell you three stories, three stories about Hungary, an online magazine that we haven't quite figured out ourselves. Co-founder Maddie and I were pondering this a few days ago. It's an online magazine for teen girls, but boys read it as well. And it's not just for teens, people my age read it, people older read it. And it's feminist, but we don't usually talk about feminism and it's factual, though we welcome non-fiction just the same. We talk about body positivity and how you're perfect just the way you are, but we also talk about fashion and makeup and do photo shoots. A friend offered the description, Hungary is the anti-Dolly, anti-cosmo, anti-girlfriend. But then another interjected, no, it's what Dolly should be. I like that. Today we've published five issues. We have a group of over 100 amazing and talented writers and we have a worldwide viewership that even we have no idea how they found us. To this day we are ad-free, spread entirely organically through word of mouth and run completely by user contributions and Maddie's baking onto the stories. The first story is about origins. It was October 2013. I was sitting in a plush leather chair at a men's store waiting while a friend tried on clothes. I picked up a men's magazine. Boy was it different. Instead of a selection of diets, we're how-to's in self-motivation. The gossip section about the star's latest scandals were replaced by negotiation strategies for higher salaries. I showed Emily another co-founder, this magazine, and the three of us started talking. Wouldn't it be great if girlfriend ran cool articles like ones on Marie Curie? What if they wrote about achieving your own goals as well as makeup and fashion? Soon we were dreaming of an alternate past where we, as teenage girls, had something more than pages of pink telling us to be smaller, quieter, how to look perfect for him as if reality was good but never good enough. But of course this was all talk. And it was all talk for another four months. It wasn't until we had all graduated from Otago University and I had a bit of an existential crisis that we finally got together in Wellington and said, hey, let's actually do this. Let's actually do this. Let's get writers writing and let's make the thing. We're going to set a deadline for ourselves, let's set the launch date. One week from now. One week. How do you make your passion into reality? You start. It's the hardest thing. It took us one week to build it, two weeks to reach global exposure, and four months to start. It's the hardest thing. By the way, as an aside, if you don't know how to code, you should learn to code or at least read it. Today and tomorrow we're going to be talking about how awesome open technology and open sources but realize this, open source is only open source for those who know how to code. For everyone else, it might as well just be a black box. But anyway, I went into my windowless cave and started coding. Articles were organized and even a photo shoot was shot. Five days later, a newly designed and built hungry was ready to go. When there exists a vacuum, the pressure to fill it is explosive. When we announced the launch date, we had also sent out a survey to 13 to 18-year-olds. The responses were everything from hopeful to hilarious to heartbreaking. Stop eating or you'll get fat, says a 13-year-old when asked what she would tell her past self. I would tell myself not to be afraid to put myself out there, remarks of 14-year-old. When asked to describe themselves, another 13-year-old sped up, funny and ugly and cool and fat. They're not without dreams, of course. Another 13-year-old looks to go to medical school to become a lab technician. Another 14-year-old aspires to study fashion at Parsons New School of Design in New York City. They want kids, a career, a full and happy life. So often, a teen girls reduced the image of brainless, rampant fans screaming about the next Twilight movie. They deserve a space where their voices are respected, their worries addressed, and their aspirations fueled. When there exists a vacuum, the pressure to fill it is explosive. So we made a Facebook, we made a Twitter, we made a Tumblr, we told our friends, and the site went live. One week. We expected our friends to come and visit, but we didn't actually quite expect what happened next. In the first two weeks, we went from three to 80 writers. We went from zero to over 5,000 unique visitors and over 16,000 page views. When there exists a vacuum, the pressure to fill it is explosive. Before we even launched, Webstop picked us up as one of their startup alley finalists. Ideally, I got wind into the story on us. To this day, we get emails from people all over the world, telling us how much they love the site and asking to write for us. We have no idea how they found Hungary, but they did. When there exists a vacuum, the pressure to fill it is explosive. The second story is about honesty. A lot of people ask us, how did you get so many readers, how did you get so many writers, as if the secret to open sustainable media was handed to three kind of awkward but kind of cool science graduates? As if building safe and supportive online communities could be boiled down to an exploitable formula. Here's the thing. In a virtual environment, being real is the most powerful thing you can do. That's it. In a world where everything is transparent and every life event meticulously curated through tweets and Instagram and Facebook posts, what does authenticity mean? In a world where anyone with a camera and an internet connection can become a YouTube celebrity, how can we tell when lives are lived and not simply performed? In a world where corporations and big businesses can be personified with their own social media profiles, when does authenticity become a cultural currency? A way to get us to click more links and buy more things? See, mass-produced authenticity drives itself into meaninglessness. And on the internet, where it's easy to mass-reduce just about anything, being real and authentic, those interactions are of the highest value. Being real means one-on-one interactions with your readers and writers. It means working with them to perfect an article, not around them. It means welcoming everyone into discussions about where to take hungry. What do we do next? What did you have for lunch today? Lunch, the most real you can get. Being real means welcoming and perfection. No one's going to be openly saying anything if they think they might be condemned for something they knew nothing about. We all screw up, and we are all always learning. Welcome and perfection, especially for women. Has anyone ever noticed that as a woman, there's no way to win? You're either too quiet, too outspoken, too bossy, too submissive, too sexy, too prudish, made up, or doesn't take care of herself. To be accepted is to walk a thin line of perfection. And I think that's the major reason why women get imposter syndrome so much, where they believe that they're less competent than they actually are. Our role models are either non-existent or perfect to a tee. Humans aren't. Welcome and perfection. Being real means designing for authenticity. It means separating your space out into a public space and a safe, private space. There's a reason why our comment section is mostly empty, but our Facebook brims with discussion. More and more comment sections around the web are becoming obsolete. Readers comment within the spaces where they feel safe and secure. There's no big secret to creating a wonderful online community. Just be real with everyone and design for authenticity. People appreciate that. The last story is about not ending. Hungry describes a primal instinct, a continuous need, the feeling from the knowledge that we can be better and the drive to make it so. There was a time in my life when I was super into TED Talks. I was addicted to their un-nuanced optimism and lofty promises. It was 2009, and I was having another bit of a life crisis. And I found a commencement speech for Stanford's graduates of 2005, it was by Steve Jobs. He ended with a quote from a 70s magazine saying, stay hungry, stay foolish. And that's when I realized what my life crisis was, fear. In the face of uncertainty, in the face of fear, I forgot my hunger. My hunger for freedom, my hunger to learn. So after that, I said, fuck it. And I replied for uni a year early. Life crisis over. Last year, I graduated with the first class honours in physics. And any recent grad will tell you, don't ask me what I'm going to do with my life. None of us know. We're all having my life crises. Be gentle with us. But again, in the face of uncertainty, in the face of fear, I again forgot my hunger. I started randomly throwing out job applications to see which one would stick. It wasn't until I met up with my friends again that I remembered we've been hungry for something bigger for a very long time. We were hungry to make the media landscape more positive. We were hungry to make it more inclusive. And so we did. Crisis over. How do you turn your passions into reality? You stay hungry, and you just do it. And if you think you can't, frankly, you're wrong. Margetti once famously said that information, media, the space where you all work in, is the oil of the 21st century. Makes sense coming from a descendant of an oil tycoon, but I like to take it a bit further. Information is the atom bomb of the 21st century. With it, we can shape thoughts and behaviors of entire generations. We can generate fear or energy. We could destroy lives or shine light upon opportunities otherwise buried. In the information age, media is democratized. And we, as individuals, have ultimate power. How do you turn your passions into reality? Stay hungry, just do it. You have never been more powerful than you are right now. Thank you.