The unwritten rules of business, and the workarounds autistic founders build around them

Rebecca McCash said the hard part of running FutureTech had never been the enterprise. Speaking on the entrepreneurship panel at Think Autism Sydney on 31 May 2025, she said she loved the work, which was her monotropic interest, and loved spending time with the young people and with her staff, who are all neurodivergent too. She had built what she called a little bubble for herself and left it rarely. As the enterprise grew and wanted to reach more people, she said, she had to step out into the rest of the world more often, and she found that very challenging.

She gave an example she said she had learned only that year. A phone call and an informal chat, she had been told, are considered less intimidating than an email, because putting things in writing makes them official. She was terrified of the phone. “And I need things to be written down so that I can process them.” She had always assumed she was showing other people respect by giving them the same. She said she had probably got herself into trouble many times for not understanding that one small social rule, and drew a distinction between two kinds of barrier: the systems and structures above her, and “a lot of challenges just in the nuance and unclear expectations”.