Shipping Real Software in the AI Era, with Francois Ajenstat, Andrew Beers, and Mark Nelson

​AI has made the tip of the iceberg almost free. Anyone can vibe-code a slick prototype and sell a compelling vision in an afternoon. But the mass below the waterline — security, scalability, governance, compliance, performance — hasn't gotten any smaller. That's where products actually get built, where founders spend their hardest months, and increasingly where the real moat lives.

​In this talk, Golden Analytics CEO Francois Ajenstat and CTO Andrew Beers will walk through the "iceberg" problem firsthand: the journey from idea to production-grade reality, what it takes to move from an exciting demo to software enterprises will actually trust, and the "sins" every team pays off on the way there. They both lived this at the largest scale in the data industry — and are living it again right now while building a fast-growing early stage Seattle startup.

​Mark Nelson of Madrona will also join Francois and Andrew. Mark and Francois share deep history — Francois led product at Tableau while Mark led the company as CEO — and Mark's firm is now an investor in Golden. Expect a candid conversation between a founder and a former operator-turned-VC on what separates the companies that cross the chasm from the ones that stall at the prototype.

​Agenda
4:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. — Networking + Pizza
4:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. — "Iceberg" talk from Francois and Andrew
5:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. — Q&A with Francois, Andrew, and Mark Nelson
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. — Networking