Holly Fowler built Wable with its users and found investors who wanted that

Anita Aherne asked Holly Fowler at Think Autism Sydney on 31 May 2025 whether there had been pressure to make Wable fit a more typical business model, and whether she had needed to say no to funders who did not understand what neuroaffirming is. Fowler said she had found, surprisingly, the opposite. The investors who got most involved, she said, had come because of the difference the app was already making.

Fowler described Wable as a social networking app for the neurodivergent community, covering dating, friendship and accessible employment. It could be thought of, she told the room, as “a dating app with a few extra bells and whistles”. The idea had a specific origin. During lockdown she watched Michael Theo on Love on the Spectrum while she and her friends, single at the time, were using dating apps that she said were hard going for anyone, let alone people dealing with extra challenges around social connection or heightened anxiety about meeting someone new. The large apps, in her view, were not using their resources well for a community she said makes up to 20% of the population, many of them already customers who were struggling to find their people. She concluded that “someone’s got to do something about it and why can’t it be me and Michael?”