Name: AI Can Build It. Can You Lead It?
Start: 2026-08-27T10:30:00.000-06:00
End: 2026-08-27T11:30:00.000-06:00
Location: Exponential Impact

Southern Colorado Startup Week (August 24–28) brings entrepreneurs, innovators, and community together in Colorado Springs, Florence, and Penrose.

SoCo Startup Week 2026

Thursday, August 27th | 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM

Exponential Impact HQ | Colorado Springs, CO

A working session on what your job becomes at each stage of building with AI, ending with a live check on your own idea.

You built something with AI. It works, until it doesn't, and every new feature breaks the last one. Now you're stuck on the questions that actually cost money: Do I hire an engineer? A dev shop? Can AI just do it? How do I make sure I'm not sinking months into something that isn't what I wanted? And once real customers depend on it, how do I keep shipping fast without breaking what already works?

Every software product moves through four phases: prototype, MVP, paying customers, and scaling. AI's real job is different in each one. What works in one phase is exactly what breaks you in the next, and most founders are running a phase behind where they actually are. Ala Stolpnik has mapped these phases building with AI as the founder of Wisary and coaching early-stage teams as a fractional CTO, after years leading engineering at companies like Google and Roblox.

One of those phases decides whether what gets built is what you actually meant: the MVP, when you first hand your idea to an engineer or point AI at building it. So the session ends there, on your idea, not a hypothetical: bring a laptop and something you're working on, and run it through a live readiness check that scores how ready it is to build. Whatever you hand off is what gets built, so vague in, vague out. You'll leave knowing your stage, what AI should be doing there, and where your own idea really stands, so what you build next is what you meant.

For Colorado founders and early-stage teams, whether you're already building with AI or still figuring out what adopting it would take. Bring a laptop and an idea you're working on.

Use the doors on the south east side of the building where the Exponential Impact sign is on the building.