The Jam: Leadership Edition '26
AKLD

Thank you to everyone who joined us on Friday afternoon at Pipiri Lane in Wynyard Quarter for The Jam: Leadership Edition, the closing event of Auckland Startup Week. Around 150 founders and startup operators filled the room, and the audience involvement was strong throughout.

The Jam is Movac's community tech series, led by Operating Partner Serge van Dam, and the format has proven itself across each edition. Six speakers each had ten minutes to share their most honest leadership story, followed by ten minutes of questions from the room. Leadership is a hard topic to speak about openly, and when a room full of people working through the same challenges hears others share what went wrong and what they learnt from it, the lessons carry real weight, and the room comes away more connected for it.

The common threads

Each speaker’s story was different, but similar themes ran through them. The first was that the journey isn't linear, and several speakers came back to the people decisions that shape it: hiring slowly enough to get it right, given how expensive getting it wrong can be, and acting quickly once it is clear something isn't working. Another common thread was focusing on the inputs rather than the outcomes, along with the reminder that everyone you work with is also dealing with life's other challenges, and that personal and professional spheres rarely stay separate. Decisions take courage, particularly when they need to be made quickly, and clear communication, both upward and downward, sits underneath all of it.

What we heard from each speaker

Claudia Smith, Renti

Experience comes from learning, and learning often comes from expensive mistakes. Claudia's point was that leadership means letting go and giving others the room to make those mistakes themselves.

Phil Thomson, Auror

Phil talked through the trade-off every growing company faces when hiring: the cost of paying for the experience you're after, against the cost of delay, against the cost of getting it wrong. In his experience, getting it wrong is probably the most expensive of the three.

Angie Judge, Dexibit

Angie shared a time where both personal and professional courage were needed at the same time, and we're grateful she did. Her reflection was that challenges in personal and professional life often intertwine, and that how you respond to one is likely to look a lot like how you respond to the other. What she has learnt is that being real and raw, and facing your fears, is the best approach, and that it takes courage to do that.

Barney Chunn, Conqa and Drumbeat

As a company grows and changes, what it needs from its people changes too, and there is a lot of complexity in how to handle that. Recognising that something isn't working is only step one, the real work is in figuring out how to manage it. Barney cautioned that not letting someone down in the short term might mean letting everyone down in the long term.

Alexander Fala, Tend Health

Alex's reminder was that the outcome doesn't define the experience. Personal responsibility can be a heavy weight to carry, and surrounding yourself with the right people brings clarity when things are at their hardest, cutting through the stories you tell yourself.

Alia Bojilova, Movac Operating Partner and Propel Performance Group

Alia covered a lot of ground, drawing parallels between military mission orientation and executive leadership. Both depend on strong alignment and trust within teams, upward as well as downward. She left the room with a question to ask yourself each day: Who do I need to be today?