The Year That Was for Founders: What CDH Saw in 2026

Across 2026, CDH has run events almost every week, from Lunch & Learns to Founder Days, welcomed over a thousand founders and startup-curious people through our doors, and held hundreds of meetings and coffees with founders working to grow and scale into strong businesses. That puts us in the epicenter of Melbourne's startup and innovation ecosystem, with a clear view of where founders get stuck.

Founders come through our events, VC Deck Breakdown, coffees with the team and Clubhouse, and we spend just as much time with the investors, corporates and government people on the other side of the table. The products were all different, but the problems rarely were.

We've seen a few themes keep coming up. Technical founders working out how to sell, commercial founders looking for a hand with the build, founders prioritizing the solution over the problem, and a gap between people liking a product and people paying for it.

On Tuesday 24 November, Alan Tsen (CDH's GM) and Sravanthi Kalepu (our Operator in Residence) lay out what we saw and our advice on how to tackle it. No names, just the patterns.

What we saw in the ecosystem:

What really changed for founders in 2026

Why building the product keeps getting easier while getting it in front of customers doesn't

Where Melbourne's startup scene heads in 2027

The advice we gave on repeat:

A rundown of the advice we gave most often at CDH this year

The mistakes we saw again and again, and how we steered founders around them

For founders at pre-seed or a step or two past it. This is Part 1 of our year-end double header, and The Year That Was In VC follows the week after.

Free and filmed, with end-of-year drinks after.