Scaling Businesses With AI | Growth, Fundraising & Hands-On Workshop | Shaping the AI Era
What happens after you've built something with AI? How do you get customers? How do you raise funding? How do you turn an impressive demo into an actual business?
AI rewrote how businesses grow, get funded and run. Teams of three now ship what used to take thirty. Brands test, learn and scale in days, not quarters. And the old question “how do I raise?” now has a rival: “do I even need to?”
This is an evening for founders, marketers, operators and investors who’d rather build the future than read about it. Real stories, straight talk and tools you can use the next morning.
The agenda 🗓️
6:30pm · Doors open & ice-breaker
Please, come early so you can meet the room before the room gets busy.7:00pm · Welcome
7:05pm · From 0 to $$$: the ResQ story
Speaker: Effie Bersoux
How a startup grew to being an established company with real revenue through AI-powered marketing and relentless experimentation. What worked, what flopped, and what they’d do again tomorrow.7:45pm · Panel: AI and the real work of growing a business
Speakers: Laura Cortes, Sarah Sommersguter, Carmen Katz, Aylin Abdullah
What has it actually changed for the people growing companies? This panel skips the hype and goes straight to practice.8:35pm · Professional Visibility and AI
Talk & mini-workshop with Lovable
By Irina Shurmina,official Lovable Ambassador & Lisbon City Lead · Founder, Ladies Who Talk and Talk Academy and an expert in networking and business development.* Why professional visibility matters and how to build trust
* Where to be visible and how to do it authentically
* Lovable hands-on workshop: build your landing page, newsletter or another visibility tool
Participants will leave with a visibility plan and three prompts they can use on Lovable to build their visibility assets.9:05pm · Networking drinks
Lisbon is in full Web Summit fever, and the best conversations happen off-stage. Smaller room, sharper people, drinks in hand.
Expect honest answers, real examples and the lessons nobody puts on a slide.
Voices on Stage ✨
Effie Bersoux, Marketing Consultant & AI Strategist, advising multinational organisations and high-growth startups on AI transformation, business growth, and operational efficiency.
CEO of GrowthGirls, a London-based growth marketing agency.
Co-founder of AI The Academy, delivering tailored AI training and executive education programs for leading global brands.
Strategic Advisor & Board Member to technology ventures, specialising in go-to-market strategy, product development, and AI adoption.
Adjunct Lecturer at NYU Stern School of Business, teaching Go-to-Market Strategy and AI for Business.
Laura Cortes
Founder & CEO, Velaia
Laura spent 20 years leading award-winning creative work for Google, Netflix, Disney and Adidas, and was Head of Digital Creative at Warner Bros. Records. She is a BAFTA and Webby nominee and a Cyber Lion winner. Today she is building Velaia, a maternal mental wellness platform for mothers of young children. On the panel, she brings the founder’s view: what it takes to build a brand people trust and how AI is changing the way a new company gets noticed.
Sarah Sommersguter
Business Angel & Investor Coach, COREangels Lisbon
Sarah supports investors in building their business angel careers and works closely with early-stage founders. On the panel, she brings the investor’s view: what angels look for in the AI era, how AI changes the case for raising money, and what founders should have in place before they ask.
Irina Shurmina
Official Lovable Ambassador & Lisbon City Lead · Founder, Ladies Who Talk and Talk Academy and an expert in networking and business development.
Irina founded the Ladies Who Talk community and Talk Academy, and is an expert in networking and business development. In this talk and hands-on workshop, she covers why professional visibility matters, how to build trust, and where to show up authentically. Then you’ll build your own visibility tool live with Lovable. You’ll leave with a visibility plan and three prompts ready to use.
Carmen Katz
Fractional COO, BizFlow Partners
Carmen helps businesses find what’s really holding them back, using her “Find the Stuck” framework, and then picks the tools a team will actually use. On the panel, she brings the operator’s view: why most AI tools never get adopted, how to work through resistance and fear of job loss, and how to make AI work for your people rather than the other way round.
Aylin Abdullah
Founder & People Strategist - Fractionals Match
Over two decades in People, Culture and Communications Aylin Abdullah is tearing up the traditional hiring playbook. As founder of Fractionals Match, she is moving us beyond CVs and job titles to focus on what people can deliver, and their ability to deliver it time and time again.
Fractionals Match connects businesses with experienced fractional leaders and specialists, starting with the outcomes a business needs to achieve. It connects the dots traditional hiring overlooks: the transferable experience, unexpected career paths and capabilities that don’t fit neatly into a job description. The ambition is to change how businesses recognise talent and bring in the expertise to grow.
As a board advisor and people strategist, Aylin brings a people and organisational change perspective to the AI conversation, exploring how technology can help us see human capability more clearly and build businesses around it.
On the panel, Aylin brings a people-centric leadership perspective on how AI is changing the capabilities businesses need, where experienced human judgement matters, and how founders can combine technology with fractional expertise to grow their businesses.
(more to be announced soon)
Who it’s for 🎉
Founders, marketers, operators, investors and anyone curious about building something, in Lisbon or in town for Web Summit.
Good to know 🚀
Free to attend. Seats are limited and approved on request.
Drinks available to purchase at the Second Home bar. No food is served.
📌 Where: The Studio, Second Home Lisboa, 1st floor of Time Out Market (Mercado da Ribeira).
Hosted by GrowthGirls. Supported by ResQ and GrowthHackers. In partnership with Second Home Lisboa.
Request your spot.
Our Supporters ⚡️
GrowthGirls is a London-based AI & Growth marketing agency responsible for the hyper-growth of well known companies worldwide.
ResQ Jewelry is a female-founded personal safety technology brand that combines innovative technology with elegant, wearable design to empower women to feel safer and more confident in their everyday lives.
GrowthHackers is the largest global community for growth-focused marketers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders, dedicated to sharing insights, strategies, and innovative approaches to sustainable, data-driven business growth.
Ladies Who Talk is an international community where women come together to connect, learn, and grow professionally and personally.