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Lived experience, Think Autism Melbourne 2026
Founders at Think Autism Melbourne described startup networking as a major barrier
In short
At Think Autism Melbourne in 2026, founders at the autistic entrepreneurs showcase said some of their hardest barriers lay in the events, calls and conversations around the business.
Read it instead, 4 minutesThe transcript
The story
One of the big barriers Jeremy Nagel named in building his company was a lack of belonging. Speaking at the autistic entrepreneurs showcase at Think Autism Melbourne on 30 May 2026, the founder of Focus Bear said his perception of a lot of entrepreneurship events was that they tend to be “very loud, very boozy, very bright lights”. He did not like those environments, he said, and had found it hard to find his tribe.
That description has support in research on autistic adults’ sensory experience. A 2025 interview study of 12 autistic adults in the United Kingdom, published in Applied Acoustics by Carmen Rosas-Pérez and colleagues, found that high sound sensitivity affects every aspect of life and that the acoustics of everyday environments can be an important barrier. The authors found those difficulties were aggravated by social attitudes to sensory differences and by preconceptions of what is normal.
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Sources the story draws on
- Accessing social entrepreneurship: Perspectives of people with disabilities and key stakeholders (opens in a new tab), Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 38(1), via SAGE Journals (Sarah Parker Harris, Maija Renko and Kate Caldwell)
- More than noise: Lived experiences of autistic people in real-life acoustic environments (opens in a new tab), Applied Acoustics, vol. 233, via Northumbria University research portal (Carmen Rosas-Pérez and colleagues)
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