Dare to start with an audience of one - Malika Favre & George Wu
5/4/20261 hr
Malika Favre is one of the most recognisable illustrators working today — a master of bold geometry, reduced palettes, and images you feel before you decode. George Wu is a graphic designer, event director, product creator, and by her own admission, a jack of all trades. Together, they created I Can't Afford This But Maybe She Can — a curation account that started as a private joke between two best friends and grew into a 350,000-follower community, a newsletter with a 70%+ open rate, and a full concept store with over 300 products from 90 independent brands worldwide.
This conversation captures why that happened — and what it actually takes to build something meaningful without a business plan, a marketing budget, or any intention of selling out.
Key Takeaways
- Friendship is a creative force. Malika and George's decade-long friendship is the foundation of everything — the trust, the honesty, and the courage to post without approval-seeking.
- Curation is care made visible. Their process — going down rabbit holes, translating Japanese craft websites, following follower trails — shows the difference between sharing and truly giving a damn.
- Ego is the first thing to go. George's journey from curating for approval to posting freely mirrors a shift every creative needs to make at some point.
- Innovation vs. perfection isn't a conflict — it's a team. George chases the new; Malika pursues the perfect. Their output is both.
- Building outside the algorithm is an act of resistance. No reels, no faces, no sponsored clutter — and 350k people followed anyway because the care was unmistakable.
- Monetising without compromising is the hardest part. The shop, the newsletter, the auction house commission — each step has been deliberate, values-led, and brutally honest about what isn't working yet.
- The last mile is rarely crowded. Their willingness to go further — to find the fourth-generation kite maker in Japan, to contact every one of 90 brands individually — is exactly why their audience trusts them.
Daring Creativity. Podcast with Radim Malinic
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsGeorge Wu· Guest0:00
[gentle music] I would see all these things that I'd sent you, almost like I was shopping in real time. It was literally every week.
Malika Favre· Guest0:15
I literally had a free personal shopper.
George Wu· Guest0:18
As a joke, as you can imagine, I was torn between insane jealousy and also curiosity of what I could get Malika to buy. I [laughs] made a Instagram account for literally an audience of one. I called it I Can't Afford This But Maybe She Can, me being the one that I can't afford this, and started, like, posting genuinely things that I really loved, and then Malika would comment on the bottom saying, "Hey, I'm buying this one. I'm buying this one," and then they would appear in our house. I left it open to the public because I didn't know anything about Instagram, and who's gonna follow this account anyway? It was just a really silly idea.
Radim Malinic· Host0:56
[upbeat music] Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast, a show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. It's about becoming more of who you already are. My name is Radim Malinic. I'm a designer, author, and eternally curious human being. I'm talking to a broad range of guests