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?
AI agents are no longer a lab experiment. They are becoming the default way ambitious companies get work done, and the gap between teams who understand them and teams who don't is widening fast. Felipe Salinas, founder and CEO of Houston, will pull back the curtain on what agents actually are, how they differ from a chatbot, and why they are reshaping how companies operate.
Felipe will move from first principles to real business use cases, showing how teams are using agents to automate processes, connect tools, and turn ideas into finished execution without writing a line of code. Then he will build one live: defining an objective, configuring skills and tools, and testing the agent in real time, so the audience sees the entire process rather than a polished end result.
Attendees will leave with a working understanding of what AI agents are, where they create real value inside a business, and how to start building one of their own.
Security rarely becomes urgent on a founder's schedule. It often arrives with an enterprise prospect, a vendor questionnaire, an audit, or a board-level question and can quickly become a blocker on revenue.
Join moderator Nicole Hart and panelists Ahrar Naqvi, Eric Galis, and Elijah Cedeno for a practical conversation on building a defensible security baseline that fits your company today and matures as you grow.
What you'll learn
- What "secure enough" looks like at each stage, and how to build it without breaking the bank on tools that do not deliver.
- When do-it-yourself security has reached its limit and outside expertise can help.
- What enterprise buyers and auditors expect, and how to demonstrate readiness without a full-time security team.
- How NIST, CIS Controls, and Zero Trust can help you decide what to address now and what can wait.
Who should attend
Founders, co-founders, CTOs, technical leaders, and anyone responsible for growth at a startup or small to midsize business. No cybersecurity background is required.
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?
AI agents are no longer a lab experiment. They are becoming the default way ambitious companies get work done, and the gap between teams who understand them and teams who don't is widening fast. Felipe Salinas, founder and CEO of Houston, will pull back the curtain on what agents actually are, how they differ from a chatbot, and why they are reshaping how companies operate.
Felipe will move from first principles to real business use cases, showing how teams are using agents to automate processes, connect tools, and turn ideas into finished execution without writing a line of code. Then he will build one live: defining an objective, configuring skills and tools, and testing the agent in real time, so the audience sees the entire process rather than a polished end result.
Attendees will leave with a working understanding of what AI agents are, where they create real value inside a business, and how to start building one of their own.
Security rarely becomes urgent on a founder's schedule. It often arrives with an enterprise prospect, a vendor questionnaire, an audit, or a board-level question and can quickly become a blocker on revenue.
Join moderator Nicole Hart and panelists Ahrar Naqvi, Eric Galis, and Elijah Cedeno for a practical conversation on building a defensible security baseline that fits your company today and matures as you grow.
What you'll learn
- What "secure enough" looks like at each stage, and how to build it without breaking the bank on tools that do not deliver.
- When do-it-yourself security has reached its limit and outside expertise can help.
- What enterprise buyers and auditors expect, and how to demonstrate readiness without a full-time security team.
- How NIST, CIS Controls, and Zero Trust can help you decide what to address now and what can wait.
Who should attend
Founders, co-founders, CTOs, technical leaders, and anyone responsible for growth at a startup or small to midsize business. No cybersecurity background is required.