What's next in AI & beyond?

We'll unpack what that shift means for founders building in these emerging sectors. And where the smart money is moving towards.

The panel brings together distinct market perspectives and breakdown what this means for founders and how to build for what comes next.

🔸New Moats: As technical execution faster and cheaper, what's the new differentiators between startups that scale and ones that stall?

🔸Pitching Bar: How has investor expectations changed around team strength and meaningful traction metrics?

🔸Capital Rotation: What's driving the shift toward physical AI and robotics?

John Whaley, Founder of Inception Studio & Adjunct Lecturer at Stanford. He is a three-time cybersecurity founder and holds a Stanford Computer Science PhD. He leads Inception Studio to help serial AI entrepreneurs find co-founders and launch their next startup. His honors include being named to the Forbes AI 50, winning the Arthur L. Samuel Thesis Award and working at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center and Tokyo Research Lab.

Jeni Chang, Managing Director at Founder Institute & New Energy Financial ---Our relationship to AI is rapidly changing. As agents shift from tools we use to things we interact with, technology alone is not enough. The untapped potential is not only understanding human drivers but applying that understanding to channel accelerated growth and investments
Sacha Ledan, Co-Founder and COO of Raisable, a founder community and organizer of innovation events including hackathons and accelerator programs. He spent the previous decade at Stanford GSB, StartX, and WilmerHale building founder programs and communities. These included dy/dx, launched with Accel, Index, Lightspeed, and Sequoia, and Stanford Ignite for Ukrainian founders.

Agenda
🔴We will start with a short introduction of our panelists, followed by 45 minutes of moderated discussion, before opening the floor to a few questions from the audience.

About us: Founder Institute San Francisco/Oakland
AI rewrote the rules of company building. The playbook has changed. Skills are no longer the barrier. Direction is.
At Founder Institute, we’ve merged our structured programs with AI agents that help founders do the work, not just learn how to do it.  Learn More: https://fi.co/aifounder
Interested in our program? Meet the Team: Jeni & Lucas - come say "hi" 🌞

➡️ Our upcoming Fall cohort starts soon! Apply by Oct 18th https://fi.co/san-francisco

Additional Resources: Find more Startup Events, explore AI Tools for Startup Ideation and Validation to test what you hear tonight, or take the Entrepreneur DNA test.

Partner & Co-Host: RaisableVC - helping global founders grow faster through Silicon Valley's proven strategies, expert network, capital, and immersive experiences — online year-round, and in person in the Bay Area.