Track host
About the track
Steering the technology in an early-stage startup is a thrilling, challenging, and often chaotic endeavor. This track brings together battle-tested CTOs and Founding Engineers to share hard-won lessons on building software effectively under uncertainty. Learn strategies for making rapid, flexible technical decisions, implementing "just enough" solutions that are robust and extensible for growth, tackling scaling challenges, prioritizing work when resources are scarce, and balancing speed with a healthy work/life environment. If you're an engineer, technical lead, or aspiring founder navigating the unique landscape of a nascent business, this track offers invaluable, real-world advice and perspectives to help you build for both today and tomorrow.
Sessions in this track
Monday 17 November. 6 sessions per track, chosen and introduced by the Track Host.
10:35 Pacific DEKJ Session Mobile App From Founding Engineer to CTO to CEO – At the Same Startup Trisha Ballakur Co-Founder and CEO @Pointz, Forbes 30 Under 30 2025, Previously @Techstars and @Adobe As a college sophomore, I founded Pointz, initially building its core routing engine from scratch. I architected the platform’s safety rating algorithm, integrating geospatial data structures, crowdsourced inputs, and multi-criteria decision-making to deliver context-aware routing. 11:45 Pacific DEKJ Session Startups From Staff Platform Engineer to a 16z Founder: What I Wish I'd Known Gonzalo (Glo) Maldonado CTO & Cofounder of @Mocksi.ai, Staff Platform Engineer Turned Startup Founder, Turns Developer Platforms into Products, Temporal & MCP Fanatic The Technical Leadership Challenge: Every successful engineering team faces the same inflection point: transforming beloved internal tools into a legitimate platform business. 13:35 Ballroom A Session Startups Maximizing Success with Limited Time, Resources, and Energy: Lessons from Startup Engineering David Gudeman Co-Founder and CTO @Velocity AI 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. 14:45 Ballroom BC Session AI The Future of Engineering: Mindsets That Matter When Code Isn’t Enough Ben Greene 4X Founding CTO, Co-Founder and CTO @Tessi, Co-Creator of FreeFormula.Exchange, CTO-in-Residence at Techstars Boston Since the first compiler, software has been a stack of human-friendly abstractions translated into machine instructions. The engineers who understood at least some of what was going on under the hood were essential—indispensable even. But now? 15:55 Seacliff D Unconference Unconference: Early Stage Startups 17:05 Pacific DEKJ Session Beyond the Build: Early-Stage Mindset for the Everything Engineer Aiyesha Ma Founding CTO @Nureon, Previously Founding CEO @FluidCloth, Technical Lead @Cisco Tetration, Data Science @OpsClarity & ModCloth In an early-stage startup, the lines between roles blur, and engineering can become less about building and more about what makes the company attractive.QCon San Francisco 2025 is a three day conference for senior software engineers, architects and team leads. An international program committee of working engineers selects every session. Patterns and practices, not products and pitches.