AI in Product Management: Building an AI Native Engineering Company

Overview
Most companies are figuring out how to add AI to what they already do. Blank Metal was built the other way around — AI-native from day one, with no legacy processes to protect and no slides-over-shipping culture to fight.

In this talk, Elli Rader shares what it actually looks like to build a company that way: the organizational decisions, the hard lessons, and the difference between teams that ship AI to production and teams that stay stuck in pilot mode. She'll talk about what clients actually need versus what they ask for, how lean AI engineering teams outperform large consulting engagements, and what "AI-native" means in practice when you're doing real work for real organizations.

This isn't a vision talk. It's a behind-the-scenes look at building something new in a space full of noise.

Agenda

• 2:00pm - 2:30pm: Arrival and networking
• 2:30pm - 2:45pm: Announcements and round-room introductions
• 2:45pm - 3:30pm: Featured panel
• 3:30pm - 4:00pm: Your impromptu discussion topics
• 4:00pm onwards: Continued networking at Monster Brewing

Meet Our Featured Speaker

Elli Rader is the Chief Growth Officer at Blank Metal, an AI-native engineering company based in Minneapolis. She is one of the company’s co-founders, building the revenue and partnerships side of the business from scratch, which in a startup means doing a little bit of everything and figuring out a lot of it in real time.
Her background is in enterprise product strategy and development, with nearly two decades of experience working across healthcare, private equity, and education. She's spent most of that time at the edge between business and technology — helping organizations understand what they actually need, not just what sounds good in a meeting. These days, work is entirely focused on AI: where it's ready, where it isn't, and how companies can move from curiosity to something running in production.

Jessica Berg is an Account Director at Blank Metal. She’s spent 15+ years in business development, client strategy, and account management in organizations of all shapes and sizes - from large, matrixed consulting firms to 5-person startups. She spent five years running the Minnesota Cup, supporting very early-stage companies and the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem before returning to professional services and tech. No matter what she's selling, she loves helping people and solving problems.

Sponsors
This event is sponsored by Lab651 & Recursive Awesome

Organizers
This event is part of the community interest groups series at Applied AI, where community members power sessions for niche interest areas through the Applied AI platform.

This event is organized and hosted by Cameron Gross, John DeBauche, and Beth-Alison Berggren.