Founders & AIFrom Idea to efficient businesses.

Founders & AI is an event series for startup founders building businesses in the AI era. Each session focuses on practical insights for early-stage founders, helping them turn ideas into scalable, capital-efficient businesses.

Each session brings together experts, leaders and experienced founders for a candid discussion. The focus is on what has actually worked, what hasn't, and the trade-offs behind each decision, rather than general thought leadership.

Founders & AI Session 1: What to Buy, What to Build, What to Ignore

Today, a lean team, or even a single founder, can use the right combination of models, APIs and off-the-shelf tools to ship AI capabilities that once required a sizeable team.

Yet most early-stage founders are still guessing. They build what they should have bought, pay for tools they never needed, and chase viral AI trends detached from customer needs. In the process they burn runway, engineering velocity and market momentum. Get that judgement right and AI becomes leverage. Get it wrong and it quietly consumes runway, engineering time and focus.

Join us for the inaugural Founders & AI session at The Brew, Shoreditch. It's an exclusive fireside chat with Anurag Jain (Founder, Digital BackOffice and Dataflow) and Richard Simon (CTO, T-Systems International). Drawing on decades of technology experience, they will share a practical framework for what to build, what to buy and what to ignore, so every pound you spend drives business value.

Limited places. Register now. Seats are capped with limited founders only, to keep the conversation focused and personal. If you're building a business and ready to scale it with AI, grab this opportunity and secure your place before it fills up.

Date: Thursday, 29 October 2026Time: 17:30–20:00Venue: The Brew Shoreditch, Eagle House, 163 City Road, London EC1V 1NR (https://maps.app.goo.gl/N684brwQdLEo1F2r7)

Run of Show

  • 17:30–18:15: Registration, drinks, food and founder networking

  • 18:15–18:30: Welcome and quick introductions around the room

  • 18:30–19:15: Fireside chat with Anurag Jain and Richard Simon

  • 19:15–19:35: Open Q&A on attendees' product and AI decisions

  • 19:35–20:00: Curated founder networking

Speakers

Anurag Jain, Founder, Digital BackOffice & DataflowEngineering, cloud, data and applied AIAnurag brings the technical lens: what is genuinely worth building, where existing technology is enough, and what founders should understand before committing engineering time and capital. Digital BackOffice works with startups and scale-ups to turn data into decisions, manual processes into intelligent automation, and AI ideas into measurable outcomes.

Richard Simon, CTO, T-Systems International (Deutsche Telekom)Cloud, infrastructure and AI technology leadershipRichard is CTO, Cloud Professional Services at T-Systems International, part of Deutsche Telekom, Germany's largest telecoms company. He is a Cloud Native, Open Source and AI advocate with more than 30 years in the IT industry.He co-hosts The Cloud Therapists video series and speaks regularly at industry conferences and London meetups. Richard will bring the infrastructure and platform view: what it really costs to run AI in production, and when managed services beat building your own stack.