Fenja Vespermann

Founder / 3D Designer + Creative Director @hooraystudio / passionate about interactive fashion design, new technologies and web3

Every founder I know built the thing they were missing.
For me, that was a faster, less frustrating way to prototype 3D ideas without killing creative momentum.

I come from the trenches of digital production - building for clients, pitching at midnight, re-rendering scenes till they looked just right.
Now, I'm building Mimikry.ai with focus on integrating responsible AI into brand-specific pipelines that let brands move faster, explore more, and still own their vision.

I’m not here to automate away the craft.
I’m here to make space for it.

If you want to see more what I am currently building, check here: www.mimikry.ai

Founder, Digital Designer

hooray is a global new media creative studio with a pioneering innovator in the creative field. The studio brings together abstract, elemental, and contemporary artists with a futuristic approach, creating excellence in areas such as animation, house mapping, and AR/VR applications. Together they create a place where art and technology finally find a home. 


I got rejected by my own life 5 times.
Then I glazed ceramics for a living to pay my rent. 

Now, the biggest companies in the world pay us to build their AI.

Here's the real story:
At 19 I started my first company. At 22 I was leading a tech team in Berlin.
I had a huge run but in the end it failed. 
Then I tried again. 
Failed. 
Again. 
Failed. 
Again. 
Failed.
5 startups. 5 times, everything I built turned to nothing. 
Can you imagine what my mother went through?

2 years ago I glazed ceramics as a mini job to get some money. Not for fun. Not for "the experience." Because I had zero left. 

I remember thinking: "Am I brave or am I just too dumb to quit?"
I didn't have an answer. But I started over anyway.

This time, something was different.

I stopped building what excited ME. 
I started solving what frustrated THEM.

A brand told me: "We spend 6 weeks and €500K on product images nobody outside this building ever sees."
So we built a system that does it in 15 days. and 60% cheaper.

5 failures taught me 3 things:
• Fall in love with the problem. Never the idea.
• If you can't sell it before you build it, don't build it.
• Being busy and making progress are two completely different things.

The gap between a minijob and a Fortune 500 boardroom isn't talent.

It's getting up one more time than you fell.
If you're on failure number 2 or 3 right now, keep going.

Your story isn't over. 
You're just in the ugly middle chapter.

Connecting data, technology, and creative systems | Building vertical AI

Last month I went to a female founder dinner. A woman who used to build in tech looked at me and said:

"I quit. I'm done fighting this system." It hurts me so much to hear that people quit dreams because of that. 

Cause it's not one meeting where they look past you to the man next to you. 
It's 100 meetings.
It's not one person assuming your male co-founder does the real work. 
It's most of them. 
It's not one guy deciding "I'll do the talking part because understand their tech needs better." 

It's years of assuming you're the support act in your own company. lol

I don't want to see the same founding stories recycled by guys who started with warm intros and golf buddies. 

I'm done working 5x harder to get the same chances men get handed.

The fight doesn't have a finish line. 
Ah and yes it IS a fight. And no, not against men. 
But against a system that still doesn't understand that we are here. 

Some days you're exhausted before the morning starts. 
Some days you think maybe she was right. Maybe quitting is the safe choice.
But the more I talk about this publicly, the more I realize, i want to help changing it. 

For every person that quit.

For every fucking little girl wanting to build the next Google. 

The system doesn't change because we leave(even if its ok to do so if you want to). 
It changes because we stay and refuse to shut up about it.

To every woman reading this who's tired of the fight: 
You're not crazy. 
The game is rigged. 
Play anyway.



Where are the tech divers and female founders? I want to see you, hear you and connect with you. What are you currently building? I believe in you!

I still don't know what I'm doing half the time.

Even if: 

I've built a team. 
Six figure monthly revenue after 8 months. 
Fortune 500 clients.

But last week I sat in a hotel bed at 2am thinking this was all a mistake.
Because there are weeks where everything breaks at once.
Pitches that go nowhere.
Smiling on calls when your bank account says you shouldn't.

Before mimikry there was a 3D studio that didn't work out. Ideas that never left my laptop. Starting over at 24 with no plan B.

The hardest part wasn't any of that.

The hardest part was thinking I was the only one going through it.

Which is so stupid, I know.

The doubt doesn't go away when the money comes in. You just get better at building with it. And when I stopped pretending I had it figured out, better conversations happened. 

Better decisions too.

The founders I respect most say "I don't know" out loud.

If you're building something right now and it feels like a mess: that's not a sign you're doing it wrong. That's just what it is sometimes.

What are you going through right now that nobody sees? DM or comments.

I would rather see 1000 women who don't like me win than 10 more men take another seat.
 
They gave us one seat at the table. 
So we compete instead of collaborating. 
We doubt each other before we doubt the system.
 
And it worked.
 
I've been in rooms where I was the only woman more times than I can count. And the hardest moments weren't the men who underestimated me, it was the women I hoped would have my back and didn't.
 
That used to break me. 
It doesn't anymore. 
Cause it was never personal. 
It was the system working exactly as designed.
 
The women who didn't believe in me never stopped me from believing in them.
 
Not because I'm endlessly forgiving. 
Because I refuse to let a broken system turn me into someone who tears other women down if I like them. 

Why the fuck should I? 
 
So yes: I'm rooting for the woman who ghosted me. 
For the woman who doubted me. 
For the woman who never gave me a chance.
 
You're fighting in a system that was never built for either of us.
 
Let's fucking change it.

Tag a woman you're rooting for. She probably has no idea. 
I tag rei ‎ even though she didnt ghosted me haha

𝟲 𝘁𝗶𝗽𝘀 𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿:

1. Stop comparing your Chapter 1 to someone else's Chapter 20.
   
2. The "overnight success" you're jealous of took seven years.
   
3. Say no more than you say yes. Especially in Year 1.
   
4. Every "no" is just information. Collect enough of it and you'll find the "yes."
   
5. The hardest conversation you need to have is usually the most important one.
   
6. You'll say "this is the hardest thing I've ever done" at least ten times. And you'll mean it every time.


What's your tip?

Most AI startups in media and content are solving problems that nobody has. 

I know because I almost built one of them.

Early mimikry days, we had a choice. Build something that demos well but nobody can actually plug into how they work. 

Or build what nobody wants to build : the backend, the pipes, the boring parts that actually get stuff out the door.

We picked the second one.

The real problems in media, off-the-shelf can't touch them. 

It breaks when your brand has 47 rules for how a logo can sit, when a color needs to be exact at 4am, when legal says nothing goes live without a paper trail. 
And when it breaks, you're the one on the call. Not the tool.

So we stopped adding features and started fixing bottlenecks. 

One setup per client, built on their material, running on their machines. Because when someone needs 500 shots by Friday that actually hold up, fragile doesn't work.

Three things I learned the hard way: 

Your first big client will break everything you built, and that's how you learn what delivery actually means. 

If your pitch starts with "we generate content," you sound like everyone else.  
We don't want that!

And something that works in a demo but dies on a Tuesday night when the campaign drops is not a product. It's a screenshot.

Content doesn't need more tools. 
It needs people who build things that don't fall apart when it matters and establish a save environment for it. 

What's the most fragile thing in your setup right now?

Google Technical Specialist | Prompt Engineer | Vogue Photographer | Metaverse Tour Guide – AI Art, VR/AR, Fashion, Architecture

Ex-Google Engineer and founder of the technology agency Cobalt. My team helps companies save time and make money by integrating AI into their existing workflows. Previous clients include Alexander McQueen, Zaha Hadid Architects and the United Nations.

A sought-after speaker, I deliver international keynotes on cutting-edge topics like Generative AI and Digital Transformation. I also provide executive briefings, facilitate workshops, and moderate panels and am a frequent podcast guest.

As an early-stage startup advisor, I help companies refine their value proposition and user onboarding – successful exits include the 'virtual try-on' app Meepl's acquisition by Zalando.

With over 16,000 LinkedIn followers, I'm a trusted voice in AI and have been interviewed by publications such as Vogue, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

---

And if you got this far, ask me about my David Hasselhoff story!

Rupert Breheny

AI slop done right.

AiCandy knocked it out of the park with this perfectly timed bit of satire. For all the people who (rightly) critique the generic action movie trailers that are ground out with exhausting regularity – this is AI video at its best.

Short-form content like this would have required thousands of dollars and days of shooting, hampered by a catering, makeup, and location budget. Realistically, it wouldn't have been made at all, at least not with these production values.

AI lets creatives stay nimble and respond with lightning speed to the conversation of the moment.

If you are an old-school film creative, complaining about derivative content built on stolen training data, the best response is to make something splendid. The tools are waiting for you and have never been better or cheaper.

Show us what you've got …

Credit:
Hans Buyse, Jan De Loore

Cobalt AI Founder | Google 16 yrs | Keynote Speaker | Writer | Consultant AI

Acting has always been an uncanny profession.

A human being offers their face to light. They stand still while a machine records time passing over them. Later, strangers sit in darkness and feel something that did not happen.

When Andrei Tarkovsky described film as “sculpting in time,” he meant that the camera preserves not just the reading of lines, but their duration, breath, hesitation, the tremor before a word. The actor’s body is the vessel through which time becomes visible.

But what happens when time no longer needs a body?


WHAT JUST HAPPENED

The fight for Hollywood’s soul is not happening on the picket line. It’s happening in contract clauses over biometric ownership.

Matthew McConaughey just addressed the looming AI “threat,” and he didn’t moralize – he strategized.

His position is simple: AI performances will soon be indistinguishable from principal photography. The question is not whether they will exist, but who will own them.

His move? He trademarked his likeness. Controls his digital twin. And will license it on his terms.

That’s not a betrayal of the craft. That’s vertical integration of the self.

A-list actors have long licensed their faces to foreign advertising markets most domestic fans never see. The shift now is in scale and friction reduction. We’re moving from a required physical presence in Tokyo to a digital presence everywhere.


AFFECTED INDUSTRIES

• Film & Television Production
• Global Advertising
• Talent Agencies (now IP asset managers)
• Intellectual Property Law
• Video Games & Voice Synthesis

The competitive layer is already forming: voice platforms (ElevenLabs), avatar ecosystems, digital doubles, and estate licensing firms.


THE BIGGER PICTURE

Actors have always been professional simulators.

Harrison Ford was never president. Timothée Chalamet has never ridden a sandworm.

But if AI removes the biological bottleneck – ethical issues abound.

Will we see dead actors posthumously endorse political candidates, or sell products they never used themselves?


THE QUESTION

If an AI-generated performance moves you to tears, does it matter if the actor was never on set?

And who owns the ghost in the machine?

#GenerativeAI #Hollywood #IntellectualProperty #DigitalTwins

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