Annabel Zhou
Co-Founder at Toastie
Annabel Zhou is co-founder of Toastie, an AI-powered health platform that helps people with chronic illness record, understand and act on their health information, addressing a problem that affects roughly one in two people globally. She built Toastie with fellow UNSW alumna Vivian Shen while completing a Bachelor of Engineering (Software, Honours) at UNSW; the pair, both later software engineers at Google, designed the app drawing on their own experience of chronic conditions. Toastie's tools include AI-powered meal photo recognition, speech-to-text logging, and digitised lab reports and imaging, and the app has built an online following in the millions. The startup won multiple prizes, including first place, at UNSW Founders' New Wave Showcase. She discussed building Toastie as a student on In The Blink Of AI with Georgie Healy.
Key moments
Jump straight to the part of How to Build a Side Project That Goes Global Before You Graduate with Anna and Viv from Toastie you want.
- 2:20 AI Hacks and Life at Google Sydney
- 7:00 How They Met and Their Hackathon Wins
- 10:51 What is Toastie and Why It Matters
- 13:50 The Personal Stories Behind the Product
- 16:23 How They Use AI (And Where They Don't)
- 17:37 The Cold Email That Landed a Global Partnership
- 20:00 Why General AI Models Aren't Enough
- 23:25 Building, Prioritising and the Competition
- 25:13 Why They Refuse to Call Themselves an AI Company
- 27:57 Trust, Security and User Feedback
Connections
Spot something wrong? Suggest a correction Updated 25 September 2026
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