Library / Watch / Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024
Practice, Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024
An investor told autistic founders that hyperfocus answers the question investors ask
In short
Closing the 2024 Melbourne technology panel, a panellist speaking as an investor said investors want to know whether a founder will go the distance. The founders gave their own advice on staying in the game.
Read it instead, 4 minutesThe transcript
The story
A panellist speaking as an investor closed the technology panel at the 2024 Autistic Pride Day Symposium in Melbourne by turning an autistic trait into an answer to an investor’s question. The panellist encouraged the autistic community to recognise that “our ability to absolutely hyperfocus in the context of entrepreneurship is a goddamn blessing”.
The reason, the panellist said, lay in what an investor is asking, which is “can this person execute? And will they go the distance?” A founder’s relationship with a co-founder has to last longer than the average marriage, the panellist said, and taking a business through to an exit, or simply to a profitable business that earns a living, requires a founder to be strongly connected to it in some way. For the autistic community, the panellist said, finding the thing you are prepared to keep going at is a beautiful thing.
Sign in to keep reading, listening and watching.
Sign in with your email and everything in the Library is open to you: every story, every talk and every episode. It is free and it always will be. If you can, a donation helps keep it free for everyone.
Sources the story draws on
- Harnessing ADHD for business success (opens in a new tab), Technical University of Munich
- Marriages and Divorces, Australia, 2023 (opens in a new tab), Australian Bureau of Statistics
- HBS Prof. Publishes Book on Start-Ups (opens in a new tab), The Harvard Crimson
More from Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024
All 94- 1 minute 47 seconds, captioned Autistic led technology still has to be co-designed, a Melbourne panel heard Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024 At the 2024 Autistic Pride Day Symposium in Melbourne, a panellist argued that user centred design is everything in autism technology, and three founders described how they bring their users into the build.
-
2 minutes 32 seconds, captioned Kaboose had no funding, then one TikTok video brought almost a thousand users Kyriakos Gold A year after her first symposium appearance, Michelle told the 2024 Melbourne technology panel that her community app had grown without investment, and asked the room for an investor. - 1 minute 49 seconds, captioned Karista’s founder said the mothers seeking help were often undiagnosed themselves Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024 Karista’s founder told the 2024 Melbourne technology panel that the company had taken close to 80,000 requests, mostly from mothers of young autistic children, and that many of those mothers were neurodivergent without a diagnosis.
- 6 minutes 45 seconds, captioned A founder asked how to reach ADHD users without exposing them to Meta Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024 At the 2024 Melbourne technology panel, an app founder in the audience said a Facebook ad and pixel would flag users’ ADHD to Meta. The panel answered with the channels they used instead.
-
6 minutes 30 seconds, captioned Sharon Zivkovic said autistic expectations had risen and called it a social movement Dr Sharon Zivkovic, Christina Chun Opening the closing session of the 2024 Sydney symposium, Dr Sharon Zivkovic said the bar for future autistic lives had been raised in two years. Participants then described what the two days had meant to them. - 3 minutes 44 seconds, captioned Stigma is the biggest barrier to autistic employment, Sandra Thom-Jones argued Sandra Thom-Jones At the 2024 Autistic Pride Day Symposium, the researcher told an employment panel that autistic people lose out at every stage of work because of what others believe about them.