​About the Event

​Most founders spend years learning how ad monetization actually works at scale. Al Kallel spent two decades doing it inside Amazon, Skype, and Nokia, then walked away from a General Manager role at Amazon to start over as a founder.

​This week's Build From The Dock is a conversation about that jump: what two decades inside the biggest ad platforms in the world teaches you about building your own, and what it actually costs to leave a job like Amazon for the unknown. Al is now CEO and Founder of Nativeads.AI, using AI to help brands and publishers generate and place ad creative that fits the experience instead of interrupting it.

​"The toughest moment is the moment you jump into a startup," Al has said about leaving corporate leadership behind. This session gets into why he did it anyway, what carried over from twenty years of scaling ad infrastructure at Fortune 500 companies, and what he'd tell an intrapreneur sitting on the same decision today.

​This isn't a panel full of theory, it's a practical conversation for founders, executives, and operators building in real time.

​Featured Speaker

​Al Kallel CEO & Founder, Nativeads.AI

​Al built and scaled ad monetization systems inside some of the most recognized products in the world, most recently as General Manager of Ads for Fire TV and Prime Video at Amazon, where he led the infrastructure connecting brands to hundreds of millions of connected TV customers. Before Amazon, he held product and monetization leadership roles at Skype and Nokia.

​After two decades in corporate leadership, Al left to start Nativeads.AI, which uses generative AI to help brands and publishers create and test ad content at scale without sacrificing brand quality. He's building the company he spent his career preparing to build, one bet at a time.

​Priti Goel CTO & Co-Founder, Nativeads.AI

​Priti spent five years at Amazon Ads, most recently as Senior Manager leading product and engineering for device advertising, where she worked on the infrastructure behind Amazon's publisher-side ad business. Before Amazon, she was a Principal Engineer/Manager at PARC and spent nearly a decade at Tellabs building out networking and engineering teams.

​Now COO of Nativeads.AI, she's on the other side of the table from where she spent most of her career, building the systems instead of just scaling someone else's.

​Agenda

​5:00 – 5:30 PM Coffee, Networking & Build From The Dock

​5:30 – 6:15 PM Fireside Chat

​6:15 – 6:45 PM Open Q&A

​6:45 – 7:00 PM Founder Discussion & Open Networking

​About Build From The Dock

​Build From The Dock is Venture Dock's weekly founder experience designed to create real connections between ambitious builders, investors, operators, and ecosystem leaders.

​Unlike traditional networking events, BFTD focuses on high-value conversations where founders can engage directly with speakers and each other.

​Whether you're building an AI startup, scaling a company, raising capital, or exploring what's next in technology, this is a space designed for meaningful relationships and actionable insights.

​What Venture Dock Offers Founders

​Beyond weekly sessions like this one, Venture Dock is built to be a real part of how founders operate day to day:

• ​Investor introductions

• ​Curated programming: roundtables, fireside chats, and working sessions with operators who've built and scaled before

• ​Peer network: direct access to other founders building alongside you, for the honest conversations you can't have with investors

• ​Visibility with visiting delegations: opportunities to meet founders and ecosystem leaders coming through Silicon Valley from other markets

• ​Ecosystem support: hiring, fundraising, and go-to-market help pulled from the community itself, not a generic playbook

​Become Part of the Venture Dock Community

​Venture Dock is a founder-first community and innovation hub connecting startups with investors, operators, mentors, and strategic partners.

​If you've been looking for a high-signal founder community in Silicon Valley, we'd love to meet you.

​If you've been coming to events and want deeper access, you can apply to join the community here: https://venturedock.fillout.com/t/gHcUcf7Tz8us