MIT UAI Summit - Scaling AI Start‑ups: From Seed to Series A

AI as the “fourth co-founder”: how lean teams ship faster, win early revenue, and time VC raises—powered by focus and domain depth.

Founders: Elena Barla, Angelina Bintoudi, Vasilis Danias
Moderator: Dionysis Panagiotopoulos

Three first-time and repeat founders unpacked how generative-AI, research-lab spin-offs, and a maturing European ecosystem let them bootstrap deep-tech companies, reach revenue quickly, and then pick the right moment to raise VC capital. All agreed that AI is the “fourth co-founder”, a tireless assistant that slashes legal, DevOps, and coding overhead, yet real scale still hinges on mindset, focus, and access to domain expertise.