We planned for rooftop drinks. A summer evening above Rotterdam, city lights coming alive, the kind of view that makes you want to build something big. But the wind had other ideas.

So, 30 of Europe’s sharpest CTOs and founding engineers found themselves crammed into Builders’ private bar. No skyline. No perfect sunset. Just a handful of tables, a stocked bar, and the kind of people who don’t need a view to have a conversation worth remembering.

And maybe that’s what made it work.

The first sparks

Someone set their glass down and said it out loud:

"I wrote 1% of this MVP manually. The other 99% is generated. The team does 30% by themselves."

There was a pause, a knowing grin. Everyone in the room had a version of that story. Because these weren’t “people managers” or corporate figureheads — these were builders who’d been in the trenches, shipped things that shouldn’t have shipped, and walked away with the scars to prove it.

"We're shipping the same output with 45 people, that we did with 160 last year."

The conversations that stuck

As the night went on, the topics got sharper:

• GraphRAG with episodic data. AI that doesn’t just retrieve, but remembers how time flows.
• Offensive LLM-driven cybersecurity. Tools that don’t just defend, but strike back.
• The 4D accounting model. A real-time layer over every transaction, every Excel, every legacy system — like rebuilding the financial world with APIs.

Someone called it “the post-exit depression support group” when a founder confessed that selling his company left him with millions in the bank but no purpose. Several nodded — the kind of nods you only get from people who’ve been there.

By the end of the night, it was less like an event and more like a campfire — except the campfire was whiskey, and the stories were about AI-first product pipelines, team dynamics in a post-hype world, and what it actually means to stay hands-on when everyone else is delegating.

What made it different

You don’t get this at most tech events.

Most gatherings for CTOs are either founder showcases or recruiter hunting grounds — surface-level panels where the hard questions never get asked.

But last night, there were no panels, no pitches, no LinkedIn energy. Just 30 minds, each with something to prove and nothing to sell. It reminded all of us why the Builders CTO Network exists: to give Europe’s real builders a space where the conversations go deep — and stay honest.

Ten things you’d only hear here

• “If you don’t have skin in the game, I can’t commit — even part-time.”
• “We shut down four companies and sold two — because we knew the world was going AI-first.”
• “Corporates think they’re missing the boat. That makes them open to everything AI right now.”
• “The only reason to do fractional CTO work is if the intellectual challenge is big enough.”
• …and a lot more we couldn’t possibly print here.

Want in on the next one?

We’ll do this again soon. Maybe the sun will show up next time. Maybe we’ll end up back in the bar. Either way, the room will be sharp, small, and high-trust.

If you’re a real builder — CTO, VP engineer, or founding engineer — this is your crowd:

👉 builders.studio/cto-network

30 spots. Zero fluff. Bring your curiosity. Leave the corporate mask at home.