The AI-First Founder Series: Foundations of an AI-First Startup (Part 1)
Foundations of an AI-first Startup
What does it actually take to build a company that's AI-first from day one, not just AI-adjacent?
In this session, Forum's AI Venture Studio and the team at Make.com will break down the real decisions, frameworks, and workflows that define the best early-stage AI companies before they even have a product.
What we'll cover:
How Forum identifies and stress-tests a company concept before a single line of code is written, and why AI is now central to that process from day one. We'll talk about what makes a company genuinely AI-first versus AI-adjacent, and what that distinction means for how you build, hire, and scale.
How to think about processes and implement AI where it matters most, identifying the highest-impact workflows to automate and build the backbone to make them run smoothly.
Live Make demos with practical, plug-and-play workflows you can take and use immediately
Open Q&A with Forum and Make together, where the best conversations usually happen
Whether you're pre-product, pre-revenue, or just trying to figure out how to build smarter from the ground up, this session is designed to give you a concrete foundation, not just inspiration. Drawn from the real experiences of founders driving growth through automation, infrastructure, and smart tooling from day one.
Coming up in Part 2 - The Agentic Playbook: Once you have the foundation in place, how do you scale it? In the next session we'll go deeper into AI agents, what they actually are, how to set up your processes so they can deliver real business value, and what separates the teams using them effectively from the ones still stuck experimenting.
About Forum Ventures
Forum Ventures is the leading early-stage fund, accelerator and AI venture studio for B2B startups. Founded in 2014, we’re on a mission to make the journey easier, more accessible, and successful for early-stage founders.
Forum is investing in 65+ SaaS companies this year. Pitch Us here.
We're also starting 8 companies in our venture studio. If you have an idea, have lived a pain point, and are ready to start a company with the support of a full stack team, tell us why you’d be a great founder for our AI Venture Studio.
About Make
Make is a visual automation and AI Agent platform that lets startups build powerful workflows without writing code. Think of it as the connective tissue of your tech stack, linking your CRM, finance tools, communication apps, project management, and more into seamless automated processes. With over 500,000 businesses and 3,500+ app integrations, Make is the platform founders choose when they're ready to stop doing things manually and start scaling their operations.