Idea Creation Training
Join us for Idea Creation Training, where you'll learn techniques to generate innovative ideas and bring them to life!
Scaling, Unplugged - A Conversation with Dawid Naude
Some of the best conversations you've had about building a company happened with a drink in your hand.
So that's the format. Thirty founders who are already running something, a bar, and Dawid Naude in the middle of it, talking about how he took Pathfindr from nothing to a $15 million acquisition in two years, and what AI is actually doing inside companies that have teams and revenue.
The room is founders with people on the payroll, or $1m plus raised. Every registration is reviewed.
Dawid started Pathfindr in early 2024, teaching organisations how to actually use AI. Inside two years he had the Victorian Government and Honey Insurance as clients, an AFR BOSS Most Innovative Companies listing in his founding year, and an offer from Affinda Group. He rolled 100% of his equity into the buyer, still runs Pathfindr, and is now Chief AI Officer across the group.
He's also Saxton's preferred AI keynote speaker, which usually means a conference ticket and a room of four hundred. Here you can interrupt him.
Half the night on the growth story. Half on AI. All of it with a drink and the person next to you.
Key event details
Date: Thursday 17th September
Time: 5:30pm - 8:30pm
Location: Melbourne CBD, shared on approval
Drinks and food provided
Capped at 30 founders
Who's in the room
Founders with people on the payroll, or $1m plus raised. Thirty people means you get to ask the thing you actually came to ask, and everyone in the room has already been through the hard parts. We review every registration and hold the mix.
Our guest
Dawid Naude, Pathfindr. Founded Pathfindr in 2023 and sold it to Affinda Group in 2025 in a deal valued at $15 million, rolling all of his equity into the buyer rather than taking cash. Before that he led Accenture's AI Technology practice in Australia, and went through an acquisition from the inside at Cloud Sherpas. He now sits across hundreds of companies trying to work out what AI is worth to the
Join us for Idea Creation Training, where you'll learn techniques to generate innovative ideas and bring them to life!
Welcome back to Data Science Melbourne! After our last meetup exploring the AI revolution from a range of perspectives, we're continuing the conversation by looking at how AI is changing not just what we build, but how we solve problems, design data systems, and think about the role of data science itself. This evening, we'll hear from three experienced practitioners who will explore the transformation from complementary perspectives: from how AI has changed the day-to-day practice of data science, to what the rise of AI agents means for the data and ML infrastructure underneath our products, to the bigger questions this shift raises about what data science is — and where it's heading. Whether you're interested in becoming more effective with AI, building data and ML systems for an AI-first world, or simply trying to separate genuine transformation from the hype, tonight promises plenty of practical insights and some bigger questions to take away. Talk 1 Kasturi Deshpande is a Data Scientist at Sportsbet, with a background spanning financial services, retail, and analytics consulting. She has worked across pricing, forecasting, and regulatory analytics, with a particular focus on making data science practical and scalable. She also shares her experience through guest lectures at the University of Melbourne and talks at local meetups. Kasturi will take us through a look back at how AI has changed data science problem-solving — from the cautious early days of adoption to a world where AI is increasingly embedded in scalable, team-wide workflows. Drawing on her experience across financial services, retail, and product, she'll reflect on what has genuinely changed, what hasn't, and how data scientists can adapt and stay relevant as the field continues to evolve. Talk 2 Vaishnavi Rajagopal is a data leader based in Melbourne who works at the intersection of data platforms and ML products. She has led the design and implementation of lakehouse and ML pipelines behi
AI is everywhere in the headlines. This session is about what's actually working on the ground in healthcare. MLAI kicks off a new series exploring what AI genuinely makes possible, one industry at a time. First up: healthcare. A panel of practitioners and technologists will unpack real deployments (clinical workflows, admin automation, patient-facing tools) and separate what's delivering value from what's still hype. Whether you work in healthcare, build for it, or just want to see AI applied outside the usual tech-demo context, this session is for you. Expect a moderated panel, live Q&A, and a chance to tell us what use case you'd want AI to solve in your world. Format: 90-minute panel discussion + Q&A + networking