Cheap venture funding has evaporated, leaving founders facing demanding structural terms. According to PitchBook deal terms data, over 25% of late-stage financings have priced flat or down, while Cooley's Venture Financing Report recorded liquidation preference multiples above 1.0x climbing to 22% in growth rounds. Investors holding dry powder are enforcing aggressive participating preferences, redemption schedules, and board vetoes that strip founder control. For leadership teams navigating single-digit runway, survival requires understanding which covenants preserve long-term agency and which turn founders into salaried operators on their own cap tables.

Hard Decisions behind Companies that Last.

Capital. Customers. Control. Growth. Exit.The rules have changed. What must a company get right to keep building in 2027?

The founder playbook is being rewired. Capital comes with harder terms. Enterprise buyers can build, wait or buy. AI can make a product look brilliant - and make it easier to copy. Growth no longer guarantees a path to liquidity.

Rewiring the Founder Playbook brings founders, investors, enterprise leaders and policymakers together for the conversations that usually happen behind closed doors: how to protect equity when financing gets hard; what evidence earns a term sheet; whether a customer will share risk; what makes a moat real; and when an acqui-hire or asset sale is the smartest decision a founder can make.

Across the three days, the Founders Stage will be anchored by flagship Founders Peak talks - the personal stories behind the pivotal decisions - alongside candid, future-facing practitioner conversations on the capital, customer, policy and exit choices that will determine who is still standing in 2027.

These are not retrospective success stories or generic startup panels. Each session asks one question: what must be true in 2027 for this company to earn the right to keep building?

Rapid advances in foundation models and automated engineering have flattened traditional competitive moats. McKinsey's 2026 State of AI report found nearly a third of enterprises now choose to build functionality in-house with AI agents rather than buy it, the clearest signal that a product-level moat alone no longer holds. Defensibility is consolidating around regulatory licenses, proprietary data integrations, and entrenched distribution. This session challenges investors to evaluate the structural integrity of modern technology moats: which advantages endure, and which are eroding under platform pressure. Source: McKinsey & Company, The State of AI 2026.