AI Strategy for Founders

You're a founder or CTO trying to figure out where AI fits in your product, how to staff for it, or whether that vendor's pitch is real. This session is for the strategic layer above the code.

What we cover (pick what matters):

• AI capability assessment: what's feasible with your data, budget, and timeline — and what isn't.
• Build vs. buy vs. fine-tune: honest evaluation, not ideology.
• Team structure: when to hire your first ML engineer, how to structure an AI CoE, what to outsource.
• Vendor evaluation: I'll tell you what questions to ask that the sales team hopes you won't.
• Technical due diligence: evaluating AI claims in pitch decks, acquisitions, or partnership proposals.
• Roadmap sequencing: what to build first, what to defer, what to kill.

I've led 150+ member engineering orgs and built AI CoE vision documents. I know what breaks at each growth stage — and more importantly, what premature decisions lock you into bad trajectories.