My Short Life Story

Read this on victoriaprew.com​

Read time: 3 minutes

Hey! Happy Monday.

I want to tell you something I've never quite said out loud in this format.

Not the LinkedIn version, where I listed the milestones and made it look like a clean arc. Not the press version, where the narrative is always tidy and the hard parts get smoothed into something palatable. The actual version. The one that was happening underneath all of it, while everyone was watching the headlines.

I started a business at 25. I had absolutely no idea how hard it would be. It was still the best decision I ever made. But here's what nobody tells you — the milestones and the feelings are almost never the same thing. The year you get the Forbes 30 Under 30 isn't the year you feel like you've made it. The year you raise the big round isn't the year you feel most alive. The year you hand over the keys isn't the year you feel most lost.

So this is the inside version. The one I wish someone had sent me when I was in it.

Age 25: Terrified. Quit a stable career in property with no idea if I was making the biggest mistake of my life. I told approximately three people. Too scared to tell anyone else in case it didn't work. I remember sitting in my flat thinking: what if I'm wrong about all of this? I started anyway.

Age 26: Launched HURR from my bedroom. Felt completely out of my depth every single day. Ran on adrenaline and the refusal to admit I didn't know what I was doing. Looking back, I don't think I did know what I was doing. I just couldn't afford to believe that.

Age 27: Got a meeting with the Creative Director of Selfridges. Said yes to every request before I knew whether I could deliver any of them. Figured out how later. It worked. I filed that lesson away and I've used it in every room I've been in since: say yes to the table, work out the logistics after you've got the seat.

Age 28: Forbes 30 Under 30. BBC. Sky News. Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman of the Year. On the outside: peak success. On the inside: running on empty and completely disconnected from anything outside the company. I couldn't keep up with the pace of my own growth. I didn't know how to say that, so I didn't. I just kept going.

Age 29: Signed the biggest brand partnerships of my career. NET-A-PORTER. Selfridges. John Lewis. 130+ premium brands. Also the year I started actually sleeping. Started moving my body again. Started remembering I was a person, not just a founder. Those two things, the biggest commercial year and the first year of taking myself seriously, happened at the same time. I don't think that was a coincidence.

Age 30: Raised $10M in total venture capital. One of the 2% of female founders who actually get funded. Urgh. Should have felt like the moment. Mostly felt exhausted, and quietly wondered who I was outside of HURR. I'd built something extraordinary. I just wasn't entirely sure I was the best person to scale it.

Age 31: Hired a CEO. Handed over the keys to someone ten times better than me at running the thing I'd built. Felt every feeling about that, more than I expected, in both directions. And then, slowly, felt something I hadn't felt in years. Space. To think. To breathe. To ask, for the first time in a long time, what I actually wanted next.

Age 32: Building something new. Writing about all of it for you in this newsletter every Monday. Trying to give you the inside story while they're still in it, not six years later when it's safe to say.

[the information]

Which jobs are actually safe from AI?

My recent instagram reel on this caused quite the stir. I broke down data from the latest Anthropic report — it's well worth a read, I'll link it below.

AI isn't replacing jobs equally. It's targeting tasks. And some roles are built from more automatable tasks than others.

Right now, AI usage is clustering in:

• Computer and maths
• Business and finance
• Office and administrative
• Legal, education, and parts of media

Not because those jobs are worse. But because they're built on language, logic, and repeatable workflows — which AI handles well.

Meanwhile, these are much harder to automate:

• Construction
• Agriculture
• Installation and repair
• Transport
• Healthcare and personal care (hands-on)

These rely on presence, judgment, and real-world interaction.

The simple filter: if your work is predictable, digital, and repeatable.. it's exposed. If it's physical, context-heavy, and human-led.. it's more protected.

​Read the full Anthropic report here.

[the update]

I'm completely obsessed with saunas

My sauna protocol, adapted for women.

Most sauna content is based on research done on men. Here is what actually matters if you are a woman.

3 to 5 times per week. 15 to 20 minutes. 80 to 100 degrees. Electrolytes over water alone, you lose sodium through sweat, not just fluid. Cold shower after.

One thing the research almost never covers: your luteal phase changes how your body responds to heat. You may need shorter sessions or cooler temperatures in the second half of your cycle. Pay attention to that.

The research on sauna for heart health, brain function, and longevity is some of the most compelling I have read. And you do it sitting still. That's the whole thing.

Until next week,

Victoria