AI is moving quickly from experimentation into everyday products, workflows, and businesses. This Thursday Gathering explores what it takes to turn AI from an exciting tool into something that creates real, lasting impact.
From building practical AI skills and choosing the right tools to navigating the technical realities that emerge after an MVP works, the evening brings together founders, builders, and AI practitioners to share practical insights, lessons, and perspectives on what comes next.
Join us for an evening of hands-on learning, honest conversations, and real-world experiences from people putting AI to work — from the first experiment to products built for scale.
In the Demo Table zone you will discover various products, technologies and projects being presented by the founders or startup-representatives.
In the Info Table zone you will find out about projects, organisations and ideas.
Want to present your organisation? Send us an application!
However remember, this is NO HARD SALES zone.
This week's Info/Demo Tables:
- VentureCapital Magazin
- AsiaBerlin Expansion Lab
- ProcTrail
- Hypsh.ai
- kalpiq.ai
- FinestPaw
- Wakeup Buddy
- BCBT
Unwind, connect, and vibe to the rhythm! This lively session blends casual networking with great music, offering the perfect atmosphere to meet fellow innovators, exchange ideas, and forge new collaborations. Enjoy the beats, and build meaningful connections in a relaxed, energetic setting.
Start your night with this quick overview of Venture Café, what we do as a community, and how you can make the most of our weekly Thursday Gathering! Bring a friend, grab a beverage, and plug in to the ecosystem - it’s time to connect, learn, and share 💜
A beginner AI for non-technical people to communicating with AI.
Marc Andreessen the billionaire venture capitalist behind Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and one of Silicon Valley's loudest voices on AI- recently shared his personal AI prompt, including the line "never hallucinate or make anything up." ... If a16z's co-founder can misunderstand how these tools work, so can the rest of us.
This session covers the foundations of how AI actually works, so your first message sets the right tone instead of letting small misunderstandings snowball through the rest of the conversation. We'll cover AI's real limitation and clear up the misconceptions that quietly sabotage most people's results.
You'll leave prompting more clearly, more effectively, and with a lot more confidence than "never hallucinate."
Most of us have tried AI on the work we would rather not do. A few good answers, then it quietly goes back to being a better search box.
A good answer solves today. What we need is something that solves the same thing again next month without any thought going into it.
Where AI is strong right now is unglamorous: work that is structured, repetitive, and needs judgement you can describe out loud. Most of the admin on a founder's desk fits that better than people expect.
What we cover:
- How to spot those tasks in your own week
- How to set one up so it still holds on the second run and the tenth
- Where it falls apart, and what is not worth the effort yet
We will show this on two jobs every small business has:
- Getting the monthly bookkeeping done
- Working out which events and people deserve your time
The gap between experimenting with AI and getting value from it is almost never a better prompt. It is giving context and structure.
Have an idea but unsure what to build first, how AI fits into it, or how to turn it into an executable product?
Join Madhiyazhagan R (Madhi) for Mentor Hours focused on helping early-stage founders move from idea → validation → MVP → execution.
Madhi is a Berlin-based AI Delivery Manager, Startup Mentor, Guest Lecturer and Angel Investor with more than 16 years of international technology and delivery experience.
During the session, founders can get practical guidance on:
- validating the problem and customer need
- defining the right MVP and avoiding overbuilding
- identifying meaningful AI and Generative AI use cases
- creating measurable startup milestones and product roadmaps
- Agile product development and execution
- Responsible AI and human oversight
- improving product positioning and pitch clarity
- building founder visibility and personal branding on LinkedIn
Madhi also brings experience as a Startup Mentor with Pioneers Club Germany and Wadhwani Foundation, Guest Lecturer at SRH University Berlin, Mentor at Imagine Foundation e.V., Startup Advisor, Angel Investor and Founder Institute graduate.
With a LinkedIn community of 27,000+ followers, he can also help founders think about how to build professional credibility, thought leadership and visibility around both themselves and their startups.
The session will be hands-on and founder-focused — bring your idea, MVP, product challenge, AI use case or startup roadblock, and we can work through it together.
AI has dramatically lowered the barrier to building software products.
Today, a founder can go from idea to working prototype in days rather than months. Small teams are building products that would have required entire engineering departments only a few years ago.
But while building has become easier, operating has not.
As products gain users and complexity grows, founders often encounter a different set of challenges:
- Systems that nobody fully understands
- Technical debt accumulating faster than expected
- Rising infrastructure costs
- Slower development cycles
- Growing operational complexity
- Growing dependence on code and infrastructure that was never designed to scale
This session explores what actually happens after the MVP works.
Drawing on lessons from more than a decade of designing, building, and scaling software systems across startups, enterprise environments, and highly regulated industries, Valters Meirens shares practical observations from the front lines of modern software development.
As the founder of Solveri, a software architecture and product engineering consultancy, Valters works with startups and growing companies that have successfully built products but are beginning to encounter the realities of scale, complexity, and long-term maintainability.
The discussion will explore why many startups discover that the hardest problems begin after the product is launched, and why judgment, communication, architecture, and thoughtful technical decision-making remain critical in an era increasingly shaped by AI.
Topics include:
-
Why AI accelerates product development but not necessarily sustainability
-
The hidden costs of moving fast
-
How complexity compounds inside growing products
-
The difference between building something and maintaining it
-
Why technical architecture matters long before most founders think it does
-
The role of human judgment in an increasingly AI-assisted world
This session is intended for founders, technical leaders, operators, and anyone interested in the realities of building products beyond the prototype stage.
Alongside my industry role, I am:
- Startup Mentor – Pioneers Club, Germany
- Startup Mentor – Wadhwani Foundation
- Guest Lecturer – SRH University Berlin, including mentoring students on startups and product building
- Mentor – Imagine Foundation e.V.
- Startup Advisor – Orrizonte Technologies
- Angel Investor – KonnectNXT
- Graduate of the Founder Institute
I enjoy working hands-on with early-stage teams,helping them clarify the problem they are solving, validate assumptions, define an MVP, establish measurable milestones and convert ideas into executable product roadmaps.
I am also developing doctoral research around AI for product development.
AI is moving quickly from experimentation into everyday products, workflows, and businesses. This Thursday Gathering explores what it takes to turn AI from an exciting tool into something that creates real, lasting impact.
From building practical AI skills and choosing the right tools to navigating the technical realities that emerge after an MVP works, the evening brings together founders, builders, and AI practitioners to share practical insights, lessons, and perspectives on what comes next.
Join us for an evening of hands-on learning, honest conversations, and real-world experiences from people putting AI to work — from the first experiment to products built for scale.
In the Demo Table zone you will discover various products, technologies and projects being presented by the founders or startup-representatives.
In the Info Table zone you will find out about projects, organisations and ideas.
Want to present your organisation? Send us an application!
However remember, this is NO HARD SALES zone.
This week's Info/Demo Tables:
- VentureCapital Magazin
- AsiaBerlin Expansion Lab
- ProcTrail
- Hypsh.ai
- kalpiq.ai
- FinestPaw
- Wakeup Buddy
- BCBT
Unwind, connect, and vibe to the rhythm! This lively session blends casual networking with great music, offering the perfect atmosphere to meet fellow innovators, exchange ideas, and forge new collaborations. Enjoy the beats, and build meaningful connections in a relaxed, energetic setting.
Start your night with this quick overview of Venture Café, what we do as a community, and how you can make the most of our weekly Thursday Gathering! Bring a friend, grab a beverage, and plug in to the ecosystem - it’s time to connect, learn, and share 💜
A beginner AI for non-technical people to communicating with AI.
Marc Andreessen the billionaire venture capitalist behind Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and one of Silicon Valley's loudest voices on AI- recently shared his personal AI prompt, including the line "never hallucinate or make anything up." ... If a16z's co-founder can misunderstand how these tools work, so can the rest of us.
This session covers the foundations of how AI actually works, so your first message sets the right tone instead of letting small misunderstandings snowball through the rest of the conversation. We'll cover AI's real limitation and clear up the misconceptions that quietly sabotage most people's results.
You'll leave prompting more clearly, more effectively, and with a lot more confidence than "never hallucinate."
Most of us have tried AI on the work we would rather not do. A few good answers, then it quietly goes back to being a better search box.
A good answer solves today. What we need is something that solves the same thing again next month without any thought going into it.
Where AI is strong right now is unglamorous: work that is structured, repetitive, and needs judgement you can describe out loud. Most of the admin on a founder's desk fits that better than people expect.
What we cover:
- How to spot those tasks in your own week
- How to set one up so it still holds on the second run and the tenth
- Where it falls apart, and what is not worth the effort yet
We will show this on two jobs every small business has:
- Getting the monthly bookkeeping done
- Working out which events and people deserve your time
The gap between experimenting with AI and getting value from it is almost never a better prompt. It is giving context and structure.
Have an idea but unsure what to build first, how AI fits into it, or how to turn it into an executable product?
Join Madhiyazhagan R (Madhi) for Mentor Hours focused on helping early-stage founders move from idea → validation → MVP → execution.
Madhi is a Berlin-based AI Delivery Manager, Startup Mentor, Guest Lecturer and Angel Investor with more than 16 years of international technology and delivery experience.
During the session, founders can get practical guidance on:
- validating the problem and customer need
- defining the right MVP and avoiding overbuilding
- identifying meaningful AI and Generative AI use cases
- creating measurable startup milestones and product roadmaps
- Agile product development and execution
- Responsible AI and human oversight
- improving product positioning and pitch clarity
- building founder visibility and personal branding on LinkedIn
Madhi also brings experience as a Startup Mentor with Pioneers Club Germany and Wadhwani Foundation, Guest Lecturer at SRH University Berlin, Mentor at Imagine Foundation e.V., Startup Advisor, Angel Investor and Founder Institute graduate.
With a LinkedIn community of 27,000+ followers, he can also help founders think about how to build professional credibility, thought leadership and visibility around both themselves and their startups.
The session will be hands-on and founder-focused — bring your idea, MVP, product challenge, AI use case or startup roadblock, and we can work through it together.
AI has dramatically lowered the barrier to building software products.
Today, a founder can go from idea to working prototype in days rather than months. Small teams are building products that would have required entire engineering departments only a few years ago.
But while building has become easier, operating has not.
As products gain users and complexity grows, founders often encounter a different set of challenges:
- Systems that nobody fully understands
- Technical debt accumulating faster than expected
- Rising infrastructure costs
- Slower development cycles
- Growing operational complexity
- Growing dependence on code and infrastructure that was never designed to scale
This session explores what actually happens after the MVP works.
Drawing on lessons from more than a decade of designing, building, and scaling software systems across startups, enterprise environments, and highly regulated industries, Valters Meirens shares practical observations from the front lines of modern software development.
As the founder of Solveri, a software architecture and product engineering consultancy, Valters works with startups and growing companies that have successfully built products but are beginning to encounter the realities of scale, complexity, and long-term maintainability.
The discussion will explore why many startups discover that the hardest problems begin after the product is launched, and why judgment, communication, architecture, and thoughtful technical decision-making remain critical in an era increasingly shaped by AI.
Topics include:
-
Why AI accelerates product development but not necessarily sustainability
-
The hidden costs of moving fast
-
How complexity compounds inside growing products
-
The difference between building something and maintaining it
-
Why technical architecture matters long before most founders think it does
-
The role of human judgment in an increasingly AI-assisted world
This session is intended for founders, technical leaders, operators, and anyone interested in the realities of building products beyond the prototype stage.
Alongside my industry role, I am:
- Startup Mentor – Pioneers Club, Germany
- Startup Mentor – Wadhwani Foundation
- Guest Lecturer – SRH University Berlin, including mentoring students on startups and product building
- Mentor – Imagine Foundation e.V.
- Startup Advisor – Orrizonte Technologies
- Angel Investor – KonnectNXT
- Graduate of the Founder Institute
I enjoy working hands-on with early-stage teams,helping them clarify the problem they are solving, validate assumptions, define an MVP, establish measurable milestones and convert ideas into executable product roadmaps.
I am also developing doctoral research around AI for product development.