Founders & AI: What to Buy, What to Build, What to Ignore

The first session of Founders & AI, a new series for early-stage founders building with AI without burning runway. The format is a fireside chat between Anurag Jain, founder of Digital Back Office and Dataflow, and Richard Simon, CTO for cloud professional services at T-Systems International, part of Deutsche Telekom. The subject is the build-versus-buy decision: which AI capabilities to assemble from models, APIs and off-the-shelf tools, which to build, and which to leave alone, along with what it costs to run AI in production and when managed services win. Registration, food and drinks from 17:30, the chat at 18:30, open Q&A, then founder networking until 20:00. Free, approval-gated, and seats are capped to keep the room small. Why go: a practical evening on spend and sequencing for founders making their first real AI infrastructure decisions, with a large-enterprise CTO in the room to argue the other side.