If we're not innovating, and we're not trying out something different, then what's the point?
Business leader, journalist, presenter and commentator, Sam Koslowski is the co-founder of The Daily Aus alongside Zara Seidler.
The Daily Aus is Australia's leading social-first news organisation targeted at young Australians with an audience of over one million Australians per month engaging with its social accounts, podcasts and newsletter.
Current Work:
Sam and Zara not only run the business and produce the content, but also anchor the flagship TDA daily podcast. It has become one of Australia's most-followed news podcasts with largest under 30 audience and a community that is ever-growing. Having started out providing news for family and friends through Instagram posts in 2017, Koslowski and Seidler have expanded their audience to young Australians with The Daily Aus through social media feeds, podcasts, and daily newsletters.
The duo say they aim to introduce quality journalism to young audiences to build a healthy and consistent media consumption habit. The Daily Aus audience is nearly all under 35 years old, with most readers citing it as their primary news source, and the flagship TDA daily podcast is one of Australia's most-followed news podcasts. On Instagram, their community is now one of the largest news audiences on social media in Australia, and the largest under 30.
In 2022, Sam & Zara were listed in the Forbes 30 under 30, and their first book with Penguin Random House, is set to be released in mid-2023.
Talking Points
The AI Generation: What young Australians actually think about artificial intelligence - at work, in the world, and through their screens
Every organisation in Australia is rolling out AI. Most have assumed they know how their youngest employees and consumers feel about it. The data tells a more complicated story.The AI Generation: What young Australians actually think about artificial intelligence - at work, in the world, and through their screens
Sam Koslowski is co-founder of The Daily Aus and Futureproof, Australia's foremost intelligence practice on young Australians. Drawing on real-time polling of 200,000 opted-in newsletter subscribers, Sam presents the most evidence-grounded portrait of Gen Z's relationship with AI available in Australia.
According to TDA's research, 78% of 18-34-year-olds already use AI tools, nearly double the rate among older Australians. 96% of students use AI for their education. 80% believe AI will be essential for workers within five years. But what young Australians feel about AI in the workplace, what they demand from employers on it, and where the trust fault lines are forming - that's the story most organisations are missing.
This is not a futurism keynote. It is a current, evidence-based read of where young Australians actually stand - and what it means for any organisation trying to communicate, lead, or compete with the generation that gets there first.
Who this is for: Suitable for leadership teams, HR and people executives, communications directors, and corporate affairs leads at organisations navigating AI adoption and the expectations of a young workforce. Particularly relevant for large corporates, financial services, and technology companies.
Key Takeaways:
- A data-backed portrait of how young Australians use, fear, and expect AI at work and in consumer contexts - including the gap between stated attitudes and actual behaviour
- What employers and brands need to say (and not say) to maintain trust with under-35s in an AI-saturated environment
- The organisational failure mode Sam sees repeatedly: companies that are communicating about AI before they have earned the right to lead on it
The Promise Gap: Why young Australians don't trust institutions - and what actually changes that
Australia's largest organisations are spending millions on communications designed to win back the trust of young Australians. The data suggests most of those campaigns are making the problem worse.The Promise Gap: Why young Australians don't trust institutions - and what actually changes that
Across financial services, telecommunications, government, and media, a consistent pattern emerges: organisations are performing trust rather than earning it. Young Australians - the most information-literate, ad-aware, institutionally sceptical cohort in Australian history - see straight through it. The gap between what organisations say and what they do has a name, and it is measurable.
Sam Koslowski has spent eight years in a daily relationship with 2.5 million young Australians through The Daily Aus, holding a 96% trust rating among under-35s. In this keynote, he draws on that relationship, TDA's proprietary polling database, and Futureproof's advisory work with Australia's largest organisations to diagnose where institutional trust actually breaks down - and what the evidence says about how to rebuild it.
Who this is for: Corporate affairs leads, brand and marketing executives, and senior leadership at medium-to-large organisations with a significant young customer base or workforce.
Key Takeaways:
- The performed vs earned trust framework: the consistent pattern across sectors where organisations claim credibility rather than build it - and how young Australians respond
- What TDA's eight-year trust data reveals about the specific behaviours that shift credibility with under-35s - and the ones that actively erode it
- What a recovery strategy actually requires: the structural moves, not the messaging refresh
The Future According to Us: An annual intelligence briefing on where young Australians are heading - and what it means for your organisation
Every year, The Daily Aus surveys over 200,000 young Australians about what they actually think. Not what they think organisations want to hear. What they actually think.The Future According to Us: An annual intelligence briefing on where young Australians are heading - and what it means for your organisation
The result is The Future According to Us - Australia's most rigorous annual study of the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours of the under-35 cohort. Sam Koslowski presents the current year's findings directly to leadership audiences: what young Australians want from work, brands, government, institutions, and each other. The findings are consistently counterintuitive. They challenge the assumptions most organisations are building their strategy on.
For any organisation that makes decisions about young Australians as customers, employees, or citizens, this is the intelligence briefing unavailable anywhere else.
Who this is for: Board-level and executive leadership across sectors. Particularly suited to organisations with large young customer bases, substantial under-35 workforces, or strategic planning that depends on an accurate read of generational direction. Well-suited to leadership retreats, strategy days, and board programs.
Key Takeaways:
- Current-year findings from The Future According to Us across work, money, AI, institutions, media, and identity
- The three most costly misconceptions about young Australians that are currently driving poor decisions in strategy, marketing, and talent - drawn directly from the data
- What the year-over-year trend tells us about where young Australians are heading: the generational shift currently underway that most organisations will not see until it is too late to respond to
The Gen Z Workforce: What young employees actually want - and what most organisations are getting wrong
By 2030, Gen Z will make up the majority of the Australian workforce. Most organisations are still managing them the way they managed Millennials. The data is clear: they are not the same cohort, and the strategies designed for one do not transfer to the other.The Gen Z Workforce: What young employees actually want - and what most organisations are getting wrong
Sam Koslowski has spent eight years building a media organisation run almost entirely by under-30s - while simultaneously advising Australia's largest organisations on their young workforce strategies through Futureproof. He draws on both the longitudinal data from The Future According to Us and the lived practice of building a team of young Australians who chose to work for a mission-driven organisation with no external funding, and stayed.
This is not a keynote about perks, flexible work theatre, or purpose statements. It is a data-backed diagnosis of what young workers actually require - and a clear account of what employers who are winning the competition for young talent are doing differently. Sam also addresses the AI workplace question directly: what young employees expect from their organisation on AI, where most employers are falling short, and why getting this wrong is increasingly a retention problem.
Who this is for: CHROs, people and culture executives, heads of HR, talent acquisition leads, and senior managers responsible for attracting, engaging, and retaining workers under 35. Well-suited to leadership development programs, HR conferences, and executive team strategy days.
Key Takeaways:
- The four factors that predict Gen Z workforce commitment - drawn from national polling data, not management commentary
- Why employer brand investment is underperforming with young talent: the structural gap between what organisations communicate and what young Australians require as evidence before they extend credibility
- The AI workplace question: what young employees expect, where most employers are falling short, and why it is becoming a retention issue faster than most leadership teams realise
Built on Trust: How The Daily Aus reached 2.5 million young Australians - and what every organisation can learn from it
In 2018, Sam Koslowski and Zara Seidler started a news outlet without a newsroom, without external funding, and in an industry that told them it couldn't be done. Today, The Daily Aus reaches 2.5 million young Australians every month, holds a 96% trust rating among under-35s, and has remained independently owned and profitable across eight years. It is one of the most unusual business-building stories in Australian media - and the lessons extend far beyond it.Built on Trust: How The Daily Aus reached 2.5 million young Australians - and what every organisation can learn from it
The question Sam is asked most often by large organisations is some version of: "How do you get young people to actually trust you?" The answer TDA found is counterintuitive, the proof is longitudinal, and the implications apply to any organisation trying to communicate credibly with a generation that has every reason to be sceptical.
In this keynote, Sam presents the decisions, principles, and failures behind TDA's growth - not as startup mythology, but as a case study in what earned trust actually costs, what it produces, and why the shortcuts most organisations reach for make the problem worse. He connects the lessons directly to the corporate context: what the TDA model teaches us about employer brand, consumer communications, AI transparency, and the long game of credibility-building with the most trust-resistant audience in Australian history.
Who this is for: Communications executives, innovation and transformation teams, leadership development programs, HR and people teams, and industry conferences focused on trust, leadership, media, or generational change. Also well suited as an opening keynote for events where credibility with young audiences is a central theme.
Key Takeaways:
- The three decisions TDA made early that proved more valuable than any marketing spend - and the underlying principle that connects them
- What a 96% trust rating actually requires from an organisation, and why most institutional communication strategies are structurally incapable of producing it
- The commercial case for earned trust: how the TDA model scales without advertising dependence - and what it implies for how organisations think about their relationship with young Australians
Video
The Daily Aus is building a brand universe | The Mentor Podcast | Sam Koslowski with Mark Bouris
The Daily Aus is Australia's leading social media-first news publisher, and it's quickly becoming the most trusted news publisher amongst young people, and traditional media is taking note. Co-founder Sam Koslowski joins Mark Bouris to discuss how the publisher continues to reset the thinking of traditional media, why the assumptions of young adults are usually wrong and how TDA is changing that.Sam was excellent and brought such a unique viewpoint to our panel. He's a natural storyteller and had a lot of chemistry with our other panellists. ... keep reading Kronos Australia Pty Ltd. a UKG company
