If you have ever saved a beautiful hotel to an Instagram folder and never laid eyes on it again, Molly Cooper has been thinking about you. “You find somewhere beautiful, save it, lose it, and end up booking a room you feel nothing about weeks later,” she tells The Modems. Curated Spaces is her solution.
It began, as the best businesses often do, sideways. “It started with the Curated Spaces podcast,” Molly says about her Apple Top 10 UK Travel & Places show through which she interviewed chefs, designers and hoteliers, then watched listeners flood her inbox asking where, exactly, that farmhouse was. For six to twelve months, that was the entire business: a microphone, a network and an Instagram that took off.
Then came the part that would have required a development budget five years ago. “My co-founder and I both experimented with low-code and vibe-coding to build the tech ourselves,” Molly explains. “There’s something genuinely cool and exciting about being able to turn an idea into working software that quickly.”
Enter Alex Oldfield – startup strategist, best friend, and the co-founder tasked with positioning a product in a category with no shortage of competition. “Travel is a hugely saturated market,” Alex says, “and we realised early that our USP was the creator network – weaving their travel stories into the actual planning process.” The catch is a three-sided balancing act: stays, creators and bookers, each wanting something slightly different.
It has worked. Launched in August 2025, rebuilt in January 2026 and expanded into Europe by April, Curated Spaces now carries over 200 handpicked stays – Beaverbrook, Thyme, Broadwick Soho – and tastemakers including Laura Jackson and Estée Lalonde. Funding stayed deliberately lean: friends, family, and angels from hospitality.
And the engine room? Increasingly automated. “I’m deep in an agent wormhole right now,” Molly says. “I think they’re the untapped superpower of AI.”
From the agents quietly running her company to the supplement she genuinely rates, scroll on to see how Molly and Alex work smarter, not harder…
The Download With… Curated Spaces Founders Molly Cooper And Alex Oldfield
The inspiration to start Curated Spaces….
Molly: It started with the podcast. I’d been interviewing some of the most interesting voices in travel and culture, chefs, designers, writers, hoteliers, and every conversation was a treasure trove of the places that had genuinely moved them, shared by people whose taste you’d actually trust.
And listeners kept reaching out – where’s that farmhouse she mentioned, how do I book the place from episode twelve?
The recommendations were brilliant, but there was nowhere for them to live. It’s the same problem as Instagram – you find somewhere beautiful, save it, lose it, and end up booking a room you feel nothing about weeks later. So Curated grew out of that. We built a permanent home for the best travel stories from the world’s most interesting voices – somewhere discovery and booking finally live together. That gap, between falling for a place and actually going, is exactly where independent stays were losing out. So we closed it.
Molly Cooper
The initial steps we took to bring the business idea to life…
Molly: For the first six to twelve months, all we had was the podcast – which, in hindsight, was the best possible way to start. It built our network, gave us a really deep understanding of the problems and challenges people in this world were actually facing, and turned out to be a brilliant community-building tool. Our Instagram took off, and those OG podcast listeners are still among our greatest supporters today.
Once we decided to evolve Curated into a platform, my co-founder and I both experimented with low-code and vibe-coding to build the tech ourselves. There’s something genuinely cool and exciting about being able to turn an idea into working software that quickly.
What were some of the biggest challenges you faced during the early stages of your business?
Alex: Travel is a hugely saturated market, and we realised early that our USP was the creator network – weaving their travel stories into the actual planning process. The flip side is that it means we now have three customers rather than one: the stays, the creators and the bookers. Finding our positioning across all three was challenging at first, and there’s a constant balancing act in every product and marketing decision – making sure we’re catering to three quite different personas at once without losing the thread for any of them.
Alex Oldfield
How we’ve secured funding…
Molly: We’ve deliberately kept things lean and scrappy. Alex and I have both done the crazy startup journey before, and we’ve seen first-hand how a big raise too soon can do more harm than good. We raised from a mixture of friends and family and angels from the world of hospitality, and we’ve assembled some brilliant advisors – people like Laura Jackson – who’ve been great at helping open up additional resources.
A turning point that significantly impacted the business was…
Alex: Launching the current version of the platform in January 2026. It was a massive upgrade on what came before and streamlined so many of the historically clunky flows for all our users. Almost immediately we saw an increase in the collaborations taking place and real growth in the content being created on the platform – proof that when you remove the friction, people do more of the thing you built it for.
A setback we experienced and the lessons we learned…
Molly: In hindsight, we brought in marketing support too early – before we’d quite figured out our positioning and messaging. We were still evolving the product and the offering, so all it really did was add coordination and fragment our decision-making. As a founder it’s so important to be able to let go, but you also need to hand something over in a good state, and I think we tried to do that slightly too prematurely. Now we try to never hand over a sh** show – it’s just not going to set someone up for success.
The way we stay motivated is…
Molly: It helps that we’re both obsessed with what we’re building – not only as founders, but as users. It feels so good to be creating something in a world we really care about, and bringing to life the product we always wished existed. We’ve also got the podcast back on the road this year, and those trips always remind me why we’re doing what we’re doing. Meeting the people who’ve poured so much love and energy into creating these special places – seeing the people we’re building this for, and hearing how much they enjoy being part of what we’re doing – is so special.
The advice we’d give aspiring entrepreneurs is…
Molly: In many ways it’s never been easier to start a company. AI and vibe-coding have completely changed the face of building a business, probably forever. I think that’s especially exciting for women, because your real moat now comes from building a brand people want to be part of and finding your tribe – skills us girlies are pretty naturally inclined towards. Starting small is also key. Can you start building a community alongside your nine-to-five? Can you grow your network and credibility, or validate the problem you’re trying to solve, before you quit your job? Things always take longer than you think, so give yourself the time and space to figure out those foundational bits before you go all in.
The top three gadgets I can’t live without…
Molly: My phone – horribly, because I’d love to get rid of it and go back to a Nokia.
My coffee machine – I simply don’t function without a double espresso in the morning.
My Kindle – I literally can’t fall asleep without reading it. Probably linked to the earlier espresso-related answer.
The platforms we use daily to enhance our productivity..
Molly: Notion is our central database, and Claude does, honestly, everything. It plugs into Stripe, our podcast editing software and Canva, and effectively powers most of what we do.
A tech tip that has significantly improved life…
Molly: Not strictly a tech tip, but I track my monthly cycle in my diary – and if you haven’t read Period Power, then you should immediately. Then I try to schedule big meetings for when I know I’ll be feeling my best, and give myself lots of downtime or quiet time when I’m in PMS-ville (cue the more introverted tasks like podcast editing). Working with your rhythm rather than against it makes a real difference.
We stay updated with the latest tech trends…
Molly: Mostly through people, to be honest. My LinkedIn is very founder-heavy, so among all the tech bros there are usually some genuinely good new things that pop up.
The emerging tech or we’re excited about…
Molly: I’m deep in an agent wormhole right now. I think they’re the untapped superpower of AI – a lot of Curated is now powered by agents automatically running and feeding into each other, replacing processes that used to be such a mental and time drain for me.
One social media trend I wish people would stop doing…
Molly: People pretending to be an authority figure when they’re really not. It’s just so obvious when someone’s reading out a Claude-generated script. I’m over it. Show some charisma and have a real opinion that’s actually your own.
Beauty tech we’re loving at the moment…
Molly: Not quite beauty, but I started using DITTO at the start of the year and I’m honestly so impressed. It’s a hormonal supplement that helps with PMS, and it made a difference from the very first month I took it. I’m not usually a supplements person, so I was sceptical – but I’d 100% recommend it to anyone who feels tired and cranky before their period.
Byte-Sized Questions:
💻 iOS or Android?
IOS
🎧 Earbuds or over-ear headphones?
EARBUDS
📱 Text or voice notes?
VOICENOTES
📸 Phone Selfie or Proper Digi camera?
PHONE SELFIE
💡 Dark mode or light mode?
LIGHT
💄 Filters or no filter?
NO FILTER
💳 Apple Pay or designer wallet?
APPLE PAY
📺 Netflix marathon or TikTok scroll?
NETFLIX
📖 E-book or Audiobook?
E-BOOK
🎶 Spotify playlists or YouTube deep dives?
SPOTIFY
🖥️ Desktop setup or laptop on-the-go?
LAPTOP
😀 Most used emoji?
✨
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