Startups and high-ambition innovation companies are increasingly building their competitive advantage on top of (rather than inside) their product or technology. That is when they realise that the key value driver is their ability to find new and retain existing customers.
If you are an entrepreneur, owner or operator of a company, or a leader responsible for product or customer relationships - one of your key objectives must be to evolve and adapt these capabilities (how to find and grow your customer base) in rapidly changing environments.
AI tools, agentic systems, automation platforms and low-cost software are now available to everyone, founders, competitors, suppliers, and customers alike. The barriers to building products are falling fast. New entrants are emerging in markets that were previously difficult or costly to enter. The ability to build products is being consumerised and commoditised.
When technology is widely accessible, products become easier to launch, iterate and evolve.
What remains hard to replicate is genuine connection to people, strong relationships, trust, shared context, relevance and deeper (human) understanding of your customer needs that must also evolve with the changing customer's world.
In this environment, building in isolation for the perfect aha moment launch is very risky. Markets are shifting too fast for “build first, sell later” thinking.
And this is true for bigger companies as well. Look at Meta. They just walked away from billions of investment in the virtual worlds (the cumulative losses in Meta's Reality Labs are over 70B). They believed in this opportunity so much that they even changed their company name to indicate the shift. After the kill decision (pivot), what remains is their connection to customers to whom they will now offer different products. Customers remain, products change.
For those of you who obsess about product, consider shifting your mindset. From product to customers. Build your customer base with rich relationships and deep insights, so they can help you continuously develop the product(s) they (will) need.
You may have wondered if Lean Startup is still relevant in the age of vibe coding and AI rebuilding every profession we know. Rapid experimentation, short feedback loops, and continuous learning from real people will matter more than ever. Both the problem(s) and the solution(s) will keep evolving. The one constant must be your ability to build and maintain the relationship with the "people you create value for".
And that requires presence.
More human-to-human connection. More face-to-face conversations (yes, these can be via digital channel but not with the bots or avatars or asynchornous communication like social media, you want to see and sense real faces, real grimases, joy or frustration in real time that can be felt and empathised with). More time spent listening, observing, and understanding how uncertainty evolves for your customers and how they think (what the fear, avoid or adore) about navigating it.
This creates a new emphasis for the skillset entrepreneurs need to be building.
Creating and nurturing networks. Not just more, but better. Building relationships. Maintaining them, growing them. Following up. Quickly developing rapport with new people in evolving contexts. Being there to forsee, assume, test, pivot. Practicing present participatory learning. Being surprised. Feeling the pains and gains with your customers. Providing confidence and support. Acting as a human companion to the humans inside your customer organisations.
This is why, at the Canberra Innovation Network, we design a mix of events, experiences, workshops, and programs that help founders practice and build these skills. Female founder sessions, showcases, trade shows, investor conversations, mentor roundtables, First Wednesday Connect, collab labs, hackathons, SME accelerators and breakfasts. All are designed as deeply human interactive, informal, unscripted experiences.
They are not meant to be content-unique or overloaded with magic proven "systems" to help you start or scale. They are designed to create rich and varied encounters.
You cannot consume them passively. You need to show up, you need to find the courage to get outside your comfort zone. You will feel what innovation failure and embarassment taste like, and you will do so in a supportive environment intended to make these difficult moments feel safe despite the dicomfort.
Because this is where change and growth find their nutrients: in conversations, shared challenges, introductions, referals, moments of surprise and relationships built over time. You grow as an individual. As someone whose identity becomes to operate outside your comfort zone without the fear. You grow as a leader. As an entrepreneur. As a future mentor, investor and customer. And (our cunning goal) as an amazing contributor to our broader shared innovation ecosystem.
Whether you are building a startup, scaling a company, working in a university, or supporting innovation from government or industry, working in a community organisation - the principle is the same.
Through deep connections with other humans, through networks and shared experience, we build individual and collective capability to adapt. And from that capability comes innovation, resilience, and growth.
So, if you have been isolating for some time, if you have spent too much time in our garage, workshop, lab or a cafe, please join us in the age of presence. There are over 200 events and 20 programs in our ecosystem per year where you can source energy, connections, learnings and drive to help you drive progress through innovation and entrepreneurship from the ACT.
Programs and Events
