The End of the Billable Hour?
What happens when AI can do in minutes what lawyers, accountants, consultants and engineers used to bill hours for?
We bring together founders and investors to explore how AI is reinventing legal, accounting and consulting services—and who will capture the value: established firms, software startups or AI-native challengers.
Eight tables. Eight different perspectives. No panels or pitches. Just small-group discussions with people building, backing and challenging the next generation of professional services.
Agenda:
17:30 — Doors open
17:55 — Welcome
18:00–19:00 — Roundtables with food
19:00–19:30 — Learnings
19:30–21:00 — Networking with drinks
Our guest list is carefully curated to bring together ambitious founders, active investors and innovation leaders from established businesses.
The Roundtables
Table 1 — The AI-Native Law Firm: Will Lawyers Still Need a Firm?
Chief Table Officer: Michiel Van Lerbeirghe — Duely (BE)
Could a handful of AI-powered lawyers compete with a traditional 100-person law firm? Explore how AI-native legal practices are reinventing the delivery of legal work, from specialist expertise and professional liability to client trust and scale.
Table 2 — The End of Hourly Billing: Will Clients Pay for Outcomes?
Chief Table Officer: Rémy Bonnaffé — Falcon (BE)
AI is making legal work faster, but clients aren't necessarily interested in how many hours it takes. Will fixed fees, subscriptions and outcome-based pricing replace the billable hour? And can legal-service providers make these models profitable?
Table 3 — The End of the Accounting Partnership?
Chief Table Officer: Thomas Aertgeerts — Astro.Tax (BE)
AI is automating bookkeeping, tax preparation and increasingly sophisticated advisory work. Will established accounting firms use technology to scale, or will AI-native competitors reinvent the profession from the ground up?
Table 4 — The Invisible Finance Department: Can One Person Run Finance?
Chief Table Officer: Mark Holleman — Thred (NL)
AI agents are beginning to manage invoices, reconciliations, reporting and financial workflows. Everyone is asking how far autonomous finance can go. For many finance and accounting professionals, the question is still: how do we get started? Where can agents take over today, and what role remains for human judgment, oversight and accountability?
Table 5 — Who Needs an Engineering Consultancy?
Chief Table Officer: Alex Zwilling — Morreon (DE)
AI is transforming engineering design, simulation and technical analysis. Could AI-native companies deliver engineering projects with a fraction of today's workforce, or will established consultancies retain their advantage through expertise and responsibility?
Table 6 — The Next Unicorn: Software Company or AI-Native Service Firm?
Chief Table Officer: Frank Appeldoorn — Arches Capital (NL)
For founders building AI-native businesses, the opportunity is enormous — but so are the questions around scalability, margins and defensibility. Explore what it takes to turn an AI-powered service into a venture-scale business, and what would convince investors to back it.
Table 7 — Sell the shovels or dig for gold? AI in legal, accounting and consulting
Chief Table Officer: Akshata Agarwal — Curiosity VC (NL)
One camp makes incumbent firms faster. The other replaces them. Legora and Falcon show both strategies working in legaltech, but only one model can capture most of the value as AI rewrites professional services. Founders from each camp make their case, and we ask the question every investor at the table cares about: where would you put your money?
Table 8 — If AI Does the Work, Who Gets Paid?
Chief Table Officer: Saumitra Dubey — Smartfin (NL)
AI can dramatically reduce the cost of delivering professional services. But how much of that value can you actually keep? Should founders compete on price, protect their margins or reinvent what customers are willing to pay for? Explore how to build pricing power in an AI-driven market, alongside investors and customers who will ultimately determine which business models succeed.