The backbone of Venture Café – come meet the community and make connections with all different kinds of innovators. How will you make your serendipitous moment come true?
In the startup world, reaching $1M in revenue is a milestone, but getting to $5M is a transformation. It requires new systems, sharper focus and tough choices.
As part of “Architecting What’s Next” series, this interactive roundtable will bring together founders and experts to share candid stories about what worked, where they stumbled and what they would do differently. You’ll walk away with practical frameworks for breaking through the $1M barrier, pitfalls to avoid – from expanding teams to positioning the business.
This isn’t a lecture. It’s an active conversation designed for founders who want to compare notes, share challenges, and leave with new strategies to apply immediately.
Who should attend: Founders and executives who are looking to accelerate growth, prepare for fundraising or strengthen their company’s market position.
A collective building. Creating a language, utilizing a process, and completing the creative cycle. 45 minutes.
In Session 1 we defined, located, and developed some of your ideas on creativity, revealing the creative process in your own practice.
In Session 2 we looked at how to know you are engaged in a creative process, introducing a methodology and metaphors you could use in opening the space for innovation.
In Session 3, April 30, we are going to put those insights into practice. Moving from idea, through building and creating, in a process that can be learned and developed in real time. This workshop will encompass quickly ideating to find a salient path, then defining and committing to a core idea. As a group we will begin reframing, reflecting, and then building a final project, concluding with a storytelling component in the form of a future history.
You will likely design and develop with someone you have just met, building on the synergy of the moment.
Come with high expectations and a willingness to engage. Paper and pen are the best tools for this session.
From the desk of Program Manager, Tricia Bitetto: This is an opportunity to learn about and test a new platform that connects with LinkedIn and allows you to make connection notes to help you collaborate into the future. Meet Founder Yuliia Volchenko as she walks attendees through what it looks like, test it out, and offer real-time feedback!
From Yuliia:
How many times have you gone to a networking event, met amazing people… and then completely forgotten them a few days later? You connected on LinkedIn, swapped business cards — and now you’re left wondering: who are all these people in my contacts? That’s okay. We’ve all been there. We built Connexa — a mobile app designed for networking events — to help you capture context in the moment, remember who people are, and actually use your network when it matters. In this session, we’ll share practical tips on how to become a more intentional, high-impact networker — not just someone with a big network, but one that works for you. And to make it fun (and competitive), we’re hosting a live networking challenge with cash prizes. Come join us — and turn your next connection into something meaningful. To participate in the networking challenge, you’ll need to download the app and connect it to LinkedIn. Do it ahead of time and come prepared 👉 https://getconnexa.app/
AI is transforming work, education, and daily life faster than most organizations can track, and the leaders being asked to navigate that transition are largely doing it without the frameworks, the language, or the people in the room who know how to protect human value under pressure.
Not If, But How is a community-facing panel that brings equity-informed AI practice out of theory and into the room. Four practitioners working across HR, mental health, education, and technology share the frameworks they're actively building and using to answer the questions most AI conversations skip:
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What are we actually protecting when we say we value people? Felisa Nobles introduces the People Value Quotient (PVQ), a framework for measuring the gap between what leaders say about people and what their AI decisions reveal.
-
Who gets considered, and who gets erased? Sheila Thomas draws on real-world case studies of companies that have either stayed true to their who (their customers, communities, and workforce) or lost it, and what that clarity or its absence is costing them in the AI era.
-
What does equity-informed practice look like inside a real build? Anatasia S. Kim introduces the Equity Audit Tool, a multi-domain framework for evaluating whether an AI system is advancing equity or simply scaling existing assumptions. She draws from her work building AARI Care, an AI-native operating system for the mental health ecosystem. Vaibhav Garg, AARI cofounder and CEO, grounds the discussion in what this looks like under the hood of a real product.
This is not a tech talk. There is no demo. What attendees will leave with is a set of named frameworks, real case examples, and a handful of questions they haven't asked themselves yet about the AI decisions being made in their own organizations, right now.
Designed for: builders, founders, HR and people leaders, educators, workforce strategists, and anyone whose work is being reshaped by AI, whether they're ready or not.
The backbone of Venture Café – come meet the community and make connections with all different kinds of innovators. How will you make your serendipitous moment come true?
In the startup world, reaching $1M in revenue is a milestone, but getting to $5M is a transformation. It requires new systems, sharper focus and tough choices.
As part of “Architecting What’s Next” series, this interactive roundtable will bring together founders and experts to share candid stories about what worked, where they stumbled and what they would do differently. You’ll walk away with practical frameworks for breaking through the $1M barrier, pitfalls to avoid – from expanding teams to positioning the business.
This isn’t a lecture. It’s an active conversation designed for founders who want to compare notes, share challenges, and leave with new strategies to apply immediately.
Who should attend: Founders and executives who are looking to accelerate growth, prepare for fundraising or strengthen their company’s market position.
A collective building. Creating a language, utilizing a process, and completing the creative cycle. 45 minutes.
In Session 1 we defined, located, and developed some of your ideas on creativity, revealing the creative process in your own practice.
In Session 2 we looked at how to know you are engaged in a creative process, introducing a methodology and metaphors you could use in opening the space for innovation.
In Session 3, April 30, we are going to put those insights into practice. Moving from idea, through building and creating, in a process that can be learned and developed in real time. This workshop will encompass quickly ideating to find a salient path, then defining and committing to a core idea. As a group we will begin reframing, reflecting, and then building a final project, concluding with a storytelling component in the form of a future history.
You will likely design and develop with someone you have just met, building on the synergy of the moment.
Come with high expectations and a willingness to engage. Paper and pen are the best tools for this session.
From the desk of Program Manager, Tricia Bitetto: This is an opportunity to learn about and test a new platform that connects with LinkedIn and allows you to make connection notes to help you collaborate into the future. Meet Founder Yuliia Volchenko as she walks attendees through what it looks like, test it out, and offer real-time feedback!
From Yuliia:
How many times have you gone to a networking event, met amazing people… and then completely forgotten them a few days later? You connected on LinkedIn, swapped business cards — and now you’re left wondering: who are all these people in my contacts? That’s okay. We’ve all been there. We built Connexa — a mobile app designed for networking events — to help you capture context in the moment, remember who people are, and actually use your network when it matters. In this session, we’ll share practical tips on how to become a more intentional, high-impact networker — not just someone with a big network, but one that works for you. And to make it fun (and competitive), we’re hosting a live networking challenge with cash prizes. Come join us — and turn your next connection into something meaningful. To participate in the networking challenge, you’ll need to download the app and connect it to LinkedIn. Do it ahead of time and come prepared 👉 https://getconnexa.app/
AI is transforming work, education, and daily life faster than most organizations can track, and the leaders being asked to navigate that transition are largely doing it without the frameworks, the language, or the people in the room who know how to protect human value under pressure.
Not If, But How is a community-facing panel that brings equity-informed AI practice out of theory and into the room. Four practitioners working across HR, mental health, education, and technology share the frameworks they're actively building and using to answer the questions most AI conversations skip:
-
What are we actually protecting when we say we value people? Felisa Nobles introduces the People Value Quotient (PVQ), a framework for measuring the gap between what leaders say about people and what their AI decisions reveal.
-
Who gets considered, and who gets erased? Sheila Thomas draws on real-world case studies of companies that have either stayed true to their who (their customers, communities, and workforce) or lost it, and what that clarity or its absence is costing them in the AI era.
-
What does equity-informed practice look like inside a real build? Anatasia S. Kim introduces the Equity Audit Tool, a multi-domain framework for evaluating whether an AI system is advancing equity or simply scaling existing assumptions. She draws from her work building AARI Care, an AI-native operating system for the mental health ecosystem. Vaibhav Garg, AARI cofounder and CEO, grounds the discussion in what this looks like under the hood of a real product.
This is not a tech talk. There is no demo. What attendees will leave with is a set of named frameworks, real case examples, and a handful of questions they haven't asked themselves yet about the AI decisions being made in their own organizations, right now.
Designed for: builders, founders, HR and people leaders, educators, workforce strategists, and anyone whose work is being reshaped by AI, whether they're ready or not.