The First 100 Days of Code: What to Build, What to Buy, and What to Borrow

From Founding Engineer to CTO to CEO – At the Same Startup

Monday Nov 17 / 10:35AM PST

As a college sophomore, Trisha Ballakur founded Pointz, coding day and night to evolve from a dorm-room developer to CTO, securing VC funding while prioritizing the startup over classes.

Trisha Ballakur

Co-Founder and CEO @Pointz, Forbes 30 Under 30 2025, Previously @Techstars and @Adobe

From Staff Platform Engineer to a 16z Founder: What I Wish I'd Known

Monday Nov 17 / 11:45AM PST

The Technical Leadership Challenge: Every successful engineering team faces the same inflection point: transforming beloved internal tools into a legitimate platform business.

Gonzalo (Glo) Maldonado

CTO & Cofounder of @Mocksi.ai, Staff Platform Engineer Turned Startup Founder, Turns Developer Platforms into Products, Temporal & MCP Fanatic

Maximizing Success with Limited Time, Resources, and Energy: Lessons from Startup Engineering

Monday Nov 17 / 02:45PM PST

Startups are the harshest environments for engineers. Limited time, resources, and energy force teams to make decisions under pressure — and those decisions can determine whether a company survives or stalls.

David Gudeman

Co-Founder and CTO @Velocity AI

How to Build an Engineering Culture Before You Have an Engineering Team

Monday Nov 17 / 03:55PM PST

Details coming soon.

Unconference: Early Stage Startups

Monday Nov 17 / 01:35PM PST