28 May 2026etn. Live at Panathenea
David Shim: Read AI's Hypergrowth and Digital Twins
Read AI co-founder and CEO David Shim explains the meeting note-taker's 5 million MAUs, 40-50k daily signups and near-zero marketing spend, powered by a 'narration layer' that captures how people react in meetings rather than just transcripts. He traces his analytics career — youngest US stockbroker at 17, Placed sold to Snapchat for ~$200M, Foursquare CEO — and the founding moment of spotting ESPN reflected in a Zoom participant's glasses. He details the sub-100-person org, the move from system of record to system of action via Cloud/OpenAI connectors, MCP and digital twins, and lessons like not planning for exits and under-spending his Series B at Placed.
Aikido Security & Singular: New AI Attack Vectors and the Mythos Hype
Closing out the Aikido Security & Singular segment, Madeline Lawrence recounts Aikido's viral RSA Conference booth — a recreated Matrix set with 'Neo' lookalikes hired off the internet, a spray-painted fake booth, and her hiding in the screen eating a sandwich — as lessons in standing out. The guests explain that AI and agents have exploded the number of attack vectors: agent-written code, infected packages and skills, and non-developers vibe-coding straight into production, which is why security now requires an AI-native consolidated platform. They also break down the Mythos model release as master-class marketing ('too dangerous to release, named after a god') that loosened security budgets and created urgency regardless of which model ships next.
21 Jan 2026Europes Newest Unicorn Joins, Eleven Labs Eyes $11B, Sequoia Looks To Anthropic, $1M X Article Payou
Aikido CEO Madeline: Unicorn Raise & No-BS Security Brand
Madeline, CEO of Aikido and a former VC partner, joins from San Francisco and recounts closing the round before New Year's to become 2026's first unicorn — kept from most of the 190-person Belgian team until about three hours before the announcement, after which old contacts suddenly reappeared in her DMs. She explains Aikido's 'no-BS' brand as personality plus a promise — getting developers back to building — drawn from co-founders Willem and Roland and her own blunt VC persona ('making rich men richer'). She advises founders that any company already has a story, that customers are people rather than budgets, and that winning brands lean into subcultures and humor, citing Ramp's Kevin-from-The-Office campaign. She describes her chief growth officer job as 'build pipeline and be known' and tells how, a year after passing on Aikido's pitch as an investor, she quit venture and moved to Belgium with 300 cybersecurity flashcards and her cats.