Every startup wants to ship fast and reach as many people as possible — that’s the right instinct! But speed has a shadow: the auth you bolted on last-minute, the API key hardcoded “just for now,” the customer data sitting one misconfigured bucket away from the front page. Security debt is quiet until it isn’t, and by then it’s an investor walking away from diligence, a regulator asking questions, or a breach notice you have to send your users.

This workshop is about designing security from the start, not patching it in after an incident. We’ll cover how you design your product from the infrastructure level to minimize the security surface, cleanly separate risks, and implement clear controls and visibility. Our topics will include threat modeling for early-stage products, secure-by-default architecture, secrets and access management, and a pre-launch security checklist.

Bring your product. You’ll be grouped with founders at your stage — solo founder, small team, or full engineering org — and our CTOs will pressure-test it and coach you on the risks that actually apply to you. You’ll walk away with a concrete, stage-specific list of what to fix.

Note: Our CTOs volunteer their time. To keep this event free of sponsors and ads, we ask for a small token fee to cover breakfast, refundable up to 1 day before the event.

Agenda

  • 10am: Registration

  • 10:15am: Keynote

  • 10:30am: 5 Breakout Circles with CTOs

  • 11:30am: Networking

  • 12pm: End

Keynote Speaker:Dr. Gaurav Manek is CTO of Ocellivision, an ASTAR deep-tech startup revolutionizing cancer surgery. A Carnegie-Mellon trained scientist, he has taught hands-on AI workshops to 500+ practitioners across the ASTAR research community and local universities. He regularly speaks to founders and developers on building production-grade AI stacks; from observability and cost control to killing tech debt with code gates and adversarial review. He designs and builds AI systems that hold up under real-world scrutiny.

CTO facilitators:Sha-Mayn Teh, Fractional CTO, Potluck TechGaurav Manek, Ocellivision CTOJesse Sng, Core member TechiesLiyana Sulaiman, Co-founder and CPTO of PollenShariff Raffi, Founder and CPO @ Herding CodesRajat Goyal, Co-founder, The Builder CourseJayantika Soni, Co-founder & CTO, RESYNC

🤝 About the Organisers

🏢 JDI Group

JDI Group is a Venture Catalyst driving forward the future of innovation. Since 2016, we’ve jump-started the exponential growth of innovative companies – from FinTech and e-commerce to education and enterprise technology. We empower startups and enterprises with strategic knowledge and resources to scale disruptive innovation from Asia to the world.

🤝 About the Community Partners

🏢 Lorong AI

Lorong AI brings together government, industry, and research to build Singapore’s AI ecosystem. A collaborative hub for AI practitioners to connect, innovate, and shape the future of AI in Singapore through curated programs and a supportive community.

🏢 Techies

We are a 3rd space for devs, dev adjacent and people who want to get deep into technical conversations.

🏢 Potluck Technologies

Potluck Technologies is a fractional CTO and CPO firm that embeds with early-stage and mission-driven startups. We are former Google engineering and product leaders — Sha-Mayn Teh led engineering teams at Google Translate, Google Beijing, AdWords, and ed-tech marketplace TeachersPayTeachers; Yu Chen led product across Google Search, Maps, and Internet Connectivity, and two coding bootcamps. We work inside teams, not as outside advisors. The goal of every engagement is to make ourselves unnecessary.

🏢 The Builder Course

The Builder Course is a practical learning platform for people building with AI. Through live, cohort-based courses and hands-on workshops, participants turn real workflows into working AI products, learning how to frame the right problem, build responsibly, and evaluate what they ship. It’s for builders who want to move beyond demos and create useful, reliable products.