GenAI Wednesday: Max Koennings "Building an AI-First Company"

Video Description

AI isn’t a feature. It’s the new operating system for companies. In this talk, Max Koennings (CPO & Co-Founder of Mindfuel) breaks down what “AI-first” truly means—beyond hype, beyond benchmarks, deep into mindset, execution, and transformation. If you lead AI, build AI, or shape products, this talk shows the shift already underway: • why enterprises fail to extract value • how agents reshape product, engineering, and operations • what user behavior changes already mean for your business • and why AI will define the next decade of winners and laggards This is not a model demo. It’s a blueprint for building the future. 00:00 Opening & Expectations 01:56 Who is Max? Founding story. 03:07 Effectuation & entrepreneurship principles. 05:31 Early failures & the hard pivot. 07:03 Three problems in enterprise AI. 08:56 The Thermomix insight story. 10:55 Towards an AI & data impact platform. 11:53 Agenda for today. Why AI-First Matters 12:46 Why AI-first matters & will win. 14:11 AI-first vs. AI-native companies. 17:04 “Change or be changed.” Mindset: Learning from Mobile-First 19:10 Mobile-first as the lesson for AI-first. 20:14 How Thermomix moved into a digital era. 23:12 Learning from the past to shape the future. 23:26 Google’s agentic checkout. 24:38 ChatGPT/Atlas flight-booking story. AI-First Company Operations 26:31 Inside Mindfuel: insights automation. 27:59 AI in product development. 29:58 Coding with agents: reality check. 31:30 When model updates break prompts. 32:22 Automated release notes. AI-First Product (Delight) 33:03 The Value Agent. 34:14 Enterprise AI compliance challenges. 34:58 The Discovery Agent. 35:53 The future CDO experience. Closing 36:38 Where we really are on the curve. 37:24 Summary & call to action. 39:12 Ending. Thanks to CompuSafe Data Systems and jambit for supporting this event.