28 May 2026etn. Live at Panathenea
Madeline Lawrence & Henri: Aikido Security and Singular
Singular partner Henri outlines the firm's lead-every-round, deliberately tiny-team strategy and recounts leading Aikido Security's Series A when it was 14 people in Ghent, drawn in by unusual inbound SMB demand for security tooling. Aikido co-founder Madeline Lawrence shares growth since her last ETN appearance — 150 to 260 people, a new Chicago HQ, and over $1 million in net new ARR per week — and explains how the no-BS brand emerged naturally from her relationship with co-founder Willem. The segment ends mid-story on the Neo conference stunt that earned ETN's inaugural Startup Stunt of the Month award and the trade-show commitments behind their Series B launch.
Evgenia Plotnikova (Dawn Capital): The Case for Humans in the AI Era
Dawn Capital general partner Evgenia Plotnikova introduces the firm — early-stage B2B software, coming in at the scaling tipping point with a large checkbook — and her stage talk with a portfolio founder on AI for complexity. She argues EQ is back in fashion, mapping where humans stay essential with a two-by-two of context and trust: low-context, low-trust sectors are 'AI or die' (e.g., BPOs), while high-trust, high-context work like mission-critical checks, regulation and tribal knowledge keeps humans as the product. She makes a case for human managers of armies of agents, runs through AI inflection points (Deep Blue, AlphaGo, Waymo, Figure's robot livestream), rebrands the 'SASSocalypse' as a 'SASSifer' that only some companies won't survive, and praises Panathenaia as proof you can build great businesses from anywhere with a 'global day one.'