What does it mean to build a company in the age of AI — and what does it mean for yours

How to Build an AI-First Company is a thought leadership presentation that brings together global research, founder insight, and on-the-ground Southeast Asian perspective to answer one of the most urgent questions facing business owners today: how do you build and run a company when AI is rewriting the rules faster than most organisations can respond?

Drawing from the latest thinking from Y Combinator, OpenAI, Andreessen Horowitz, McKinsey, and BCG, this session cuts through the noise to surface what actually matters beyond the hype. Christopher will talk about the frameworks, decisions, and mindset shifts that separate businesses that compound from those that get left behind.

This session explores what it truly means to become an AI-native organisation, from redesigning how your team works, to identifying where your real competitive moat lies, to making the critical decisions about which people and processes AI will elevate versus replace. Attendees will also hear how companies are already applying these principles.

Key themes include:

• Why the “copilot” mental model undersells AI and what to replace it with
• How to build a self-improving company that gets better while you sleep
• The A/B/C player framework: who AI elevates, and who it replaces
• Why AI itself is not a moat
• What Singapore’s policy environment means for SME owners right now

Ideal for founders, business owners, and SME leaders navigating the shift to AI, this presentation offers a rare combination of global insight and local relevance. practical enough to act on, strategic enough to matter.