Alex Cooper Fights Back Against Allegations, Calls Out Double Standard

When you’re building something from scratch in a high-stakes industry, the spotlight doesn’t just follow you—it can turn into a searchlight. That’s the position Alex Cooper found herself in this week when she finally addressed the firestorm surrounding her media startup, Unwell, and its day-to-day operations.

Speaking at Journal House in Cannes, France on Wednesday, June 24, the 31-year-old entrepreneur didn’t shy away from the controversy. Multiple outlets—Bloomberg in April and Vanity Fair earlier this month—published damaging allegations about her husband Matt Kaplan, 42, who runs the company’s operations. The stories painted a picture of a toxic workplace where staff members allegedly faced verbal abuse, uncomfortable questioning, and threats about their industry future. Vanity Fair’s piece cited more than 40 sources, including former and current employees.

But here’s where Cooper’s response gets interesting. Rather than point-by-point rebuttals, she leaned into a broader critique: the unfair standards women face in entrepreneurship.“I think, unfortunately, being a woman in this industry is extremely difficult because you’re held to a completely different standard,”she told Wall Street Journal editor Suzanne Vranica. She acknowledged the difficulty of reading negative stories about herself, but framed her resilience as exactly what’s enabled her success. It’s a calculated move—not denying the allegations outright, but recontextualizing them within a larger narrative about gender bias and smear campaigns.

Cooper also emphasized what she sees as the company’s real story: pride in what Unwell has built since launching in August 2023, and a workforce she believes is genuinely happy. A source close to Cooper told Us that the Vanity Fair reporter had“a clear agenda”and went to great lengths to find damaging material while ignoring positive testimonies. Whether that claim holds water depends entirely on who you ask—and which version of events you believe. What’s clear is that both sides of this dispute are now fighting in the court of public opinion, each with their own narrative about what’s really happening behind closed doors at Unwell.

The tension here reflects something larger about how startup culture operates: rapid growth, high stakes, and clashing accounts of workplace dynamics. Cooper’s willingness to engage with the narrative directly shows she’s not going to disappear quietly, even if the allegations remain contested.