Yurii Filipchuk 🇺🇦 -- e/acc

Founder @ Stealth AI |TechStars AI Startup Weekend SF

I build Principle, a simulation engine that stress-tests business decisions before you commit capital.

I also run partnerships and sponsorships at Techstars Startup Weekend SF and Catalyst Bay. We're a community of 10,000 founders doing IRL events in San Francisco.

Chaotic Good is my operating system. Move fast, challenge conventional thinking, put powerful tools in more hands. I believe that's how you actually make the world better. Big believer in pay-it-forward culture. If you have an idea on how we can help you or you want to help us, reach out.

The LLMs you choose say something about you. I'm team Claude for work. NotebookLM and Gemini for research. ChatGPT and Groq for personal life questions.

Previously CEO of Party.Space. Spotify was my first client, then Google, Zapier, Grammarly, UC Berkeley. Raised $2M from top European VCs.

I advise early-stage founders on fundraising and GTM. Been on both sides of the table. Invested through CYFRD: 15 deals, 2 exits.

San Francisco. Born in Kyiv.

Community Lead: Vibes & Sponsorships | Pitching Mentor

At Techstars Startup Weekend SF AI, we're hosting a fast-paced, 3-day event where tech enthusiasts come together to bring AI startup ideas to life. My role is to create an energetic and welcoming atmosphere, build connections with important sponsors, and guide participants in making their pitches clear and impactful.

Let's play a game.

18,000 followers. No idea who 17,900 of you are.

LinkedIn told me to post "thank you for being part of my journey" but that felt weird.

So instead -- introduce yourself.

Drop a comment: → What you're building → What you're stuck on → Who you're looking for (investors, clients, co-founders, hires)

I believe in surface luck. The more random connections you make visible, the more "coincidences" happen.

Worst case: you meet someone interesting in the comments. 

Best case: someone here has exactly what you need.

I'll start:

Building OpenBabylon -- strategic simulation and foresight engine for enterprise decision-makers. Running pilots on M&A strategies and what happens when the AI bubble bursts. 

Looking for feedback from people in charge of strategy and strategy consultants.

Your turn.

Founder @ Principle | Strategic Foresight Engine | Chaotic Good

two types of people worked this weekend.

type 1: got trapped by a friday 5 pm “quick sync” they were too polite to dodge.

type 2: founders who don’t remember what weekends are.

if you’re type 1 — next time accept then reschedule. watch the meeting evaporate.

if you’re type 2 – no advice. just respect. the hustle doesn’t need fixing.

graphical user interface, text, application, email

Enterprises are treating AI like Ozempic – suppress the symptom and call it solved.

Headcount too high? AI agents.
Decisions too slow? AI summaries.
Strategy too fuzzy? AI dashboards.

None of this addresses why your org got bloated or slow in the first place.

One pilot we ran: exec team thought they had an “execution problem.” Simulation showed the real issue was misaligned incentives between two business units.

AI would’ve made them fail faster.

Are you solving symptoms or sytems? 🤠

graphical user interface, text, application, chat or text message

This month Catalyst Bay is hosting something special.

Immad Akhund (Mercury) and Rajat Suri (Tribe, Lima, Lyft) are recording their Founders in Arms podcast live -- with Max Mullen (Instacart co-founder) as a special guest.

Three founders who've collectively built companies worth billions. In one room. With 50 people max.

The format is what makes this different: 

1/ Networking to actually meet Raj and Immad before we start 
2/ 45 min conversation -- no fluff, real talk 
3/ 15 min live Q&A where YOU can ask the hard questions 
4/ More networking and food after

This is gated for a reason. Founders with revenue traction or at least pre-seed raised. Application required. We're keeping it tight so the conversation stays high-signal.

Huge thanks to the Founders in Arms team for trusting us with this. And to Juliana Chyzhova for leading this one, with Nazar Gulyk backing her up. Special shoutout to Bryan Wish for the intro that started it all.

Proud to be part of the journey and watch this community grow into something that attracts this caliber of guests.

And please -- don't @ me asking for a spot. Not this time. My DMs can't help you here. 😅

For those who applied but haven't heard back yet: if you have a killer question for the panel, drop it in the comments

PDF quotes won't survive 2026.

One founder built his entire company on killing them.

Salesbricks 🧱: $18.3M raised. Hypothesis Studio, Gaingels, Greenpoint. "Shopify for B2B SaaS." YC alumni network.

23 reports and predictions from VML, HBR, CB Insights, McKinsey, Gartner say the category explodes.

We ran them through our LLM world model at Principle. 

Here's the consensus:

1/ Agents Don't Read PDFs (VML, HBR) Walmart and Maersk already use AI agents to close thousands of negotiations → Agents query APIs, not attachments → PDF = invisible → Machine-readable checkout = answer-ready

2/ Reasoning Token Shock Kills Flat Pricing (CB Insights, InfoTech) AI compute costs up 20x → Salesforce pivots to "Flex Credits" → 64% of innovator IT departments mandate consumption-based → Per-seat pricing breaks
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3/ The Sales Tax Gets Automated (McKinsey, Claude State of AI Agents) 30-50% time savings from workflow automation → 7-12% revenue increase → 48% of orgs cite internal process automation as highest-impact zone → Quote-to-cash is ground zero

4/ B2B Checkout Becomes Protocol (CB Insights, Stripe/OpenAI) Stripe + OpenAI launch "Agentic Commerce Protocol" → Infrastructure for machine-to-machine purchasing gets standardized → Structured data wins

5/ $720B SaaS → $4.6T Service-as-Software (InfoTech) Outcome-based billing replaces seat-based → Hybrid models (seat + consumption + drawdown) become default → Legacy billing tools can't handle complexity

6/ 90% of B2B Purchasing AI-Intermediated by 2028 (Gartner) $15T+ in business spend flows through agents → Procurement teams stop scheduling demos → The "Magic Hour" is 9 PM - 12 AM

Consensus says the "messy middle" of B2B sales -- quoting, contracting, billing -- gets eaten by whoever makes it machine-readable first.

Jonathan Festejo calls it "removing the Sales Tax." His data: 30% of revenue happens while sales reps sleep.

What's your take on this: Gartner says 90% of B2B spend goes through agents by 2028. Are we 18 months out from PDFs being a disqualifier?

No-code AI agents won't survive 2026.

Two MIT roboticists bet their dissertations on the opposite.

StackAI: $19.5M raised. 100+ enterprise customers. Top 5 U.S. Defense Agency. Nubank. MIT Sloan. YC W23.

25 reports and predictions from Nadella, Huang, Karpathy, Gartner, McKinsey say the category collapses.

We ran them through our LLM world model at OpenBabylon. Here's the consensus:

1/ Hyperscalers Bundle Everything (Nadella, Gartner) 

Microsoft Copilot Studio ships native → AWS Bedrock adds agents → Google Vertex AI follows → Standalone gets absorbed

2/ Developer Frameworks Win (Karpathy, LangChain) 

"Real" AI teams write code → No-code dismissed as toys → LangChain becomes standard → Visual builders get left behind

3/ 235 Competitors, One Category (Tracxn, CB Insights) 

Flowise, Relevance AI, Voiceflow, Zapier AI → Everyone pivots to "agents" → 12 YC startups entered in one batch → Margins collapse

4/ Enterprise AI Stuck at 1% (McKinsey, Forrester) 

"Only 1% reached AI maturity" → "80% report no material earnings" → Pilots die in purgatory → Budgets freeze

5/ Compliance Becomes Commodity (Gartner, Deloitte) 

SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR now table stakes → Hyperscalers already certified → Startups spend years catching up → Or die trying

6/ Vertical Eats Horizontal (Huang, a16z) 

Generic "AI agent builder" saturates → Vertical specialists win deals → Horizontal becomes infrastructure → Race to zero

Consensus says no-code gets crushed between hyperscalers above and dev frameworks below.

StackAI built the opposite: Defense contracts requiring HIPAA. 30+ LLM providers for vendor lock-in paranoid enterprises. Federal partnership with Diné Development Corporation. One hedge fund cut deal prep 70%. One healthcare client saved 475K hours.

Bernard Aceituno -- you said "risk is the ultimate differentiator" and fired your SMB customers to go enterprise-only.

Consensus says horizontal no-code dies first. What's the thesis they're missing?

Unearned wisdom to say from the outside -- but Amazon modeled logistics, conversion, delivery. They never modeled how Hermès would react when Prime members could "add Birkin to cart."
 
With that many brilliant people in the room, I can see how it happens. Optimization muscle so strong it crowds out adversarial thinking.

taplio