The six meta themes building How to Web Conference’s 2026 agenda

Speed alone no longer guarantees a win in modern tech. From navigating AI-driven “product slop” to building high-leverage micro-teams, these six core pillars define the real-world dilemmas driving the How to Web Conference 2026 agenda.

The initial dust has settled around the AI gold rush, leaving the tech industry at a fascinating crossroads. We are well past the phase of simply chasing shiny model drops, prompt tricks or basic copilots.

What remains is a much grounded, day-to-day reality: speed alone no longer guarantees a win.

We see this tension playing out across every corner of the market. On engineering teams, AI completion tools have made writing syntax nearly effortless, yet overall project delivery often stalls at the same pace. Companies out there may describe their agent systems as fully scaled in public settings, while the operational maturity behind that claim is, in many cases, still taking shape. Meanwhile, founders and investors are finding that classic SaaS defensibility playbooks no longer hold up when a competitor can replicate a core feature set overnight.

These six meta themes have grown out of months of conversations with our partners, speakers and operators – the exact same questions surfacing repeatedly in founder meetings, product reviews and investment calls long before we put together a conference agenda.

That pattern told us everything we needed to know and pointed at what teams are actually grappling with on the ground.

As we get closer to How to Web Conference 2026 (6–8 October in Bucharest), we’re bringing those exact operational dilemmas front and center – tackling the core questions on stage so we can focus on building the things that genuinely last. 

Productivity: moving beyond the “typing speed” fallacy

For the last three years, AI productivity was measured by line-by-line syntax completion – making engineers 40% faster at typing code. But when 90% of executives report that those efficiency gains haven’t translated into bottom-line business value, the flaw in that metric becomes obvious.

The industry is pivoting. Research platforms like DX are partnering with major engineering orgs to measure how AI tools impact holistic business outcomes rather than raw commit volume.

At How to Web Conference, we’re unpacking this exact evolution – how CTOs are tackling stack fatigue, moving from simple code generation to value-driven engineering and protecting human energy as the ultimate constraint in hyper-speed environments.

Fun fact: when writing software becomes effortless, the teams that win are those who understand user problems deeply and craft experiences people genuinely love.

Future of work or the rise of the high-leverage micro-teams

When execution costs plunge, org charts flatten fast. We are witnessing the rise of compact engineering teams managing an operational footprint that once required 30 people.

With that change, roles are blurring: engineers act as product designers and product managers build prototypes directly. But this compression introduces a real operational puzzle: if automated systems handle routine junior tasks, how do we train the next generation of domain experts?

Future of product and strategy – can we, in fact, escape the “product slop” trap?

Feature inflation has become a genuine trap. Anyone can build more features now, but that doesn’t mean you’re solving a real problem. That’s what the industry now calls “product slop” – features shipped simply because they were easy to generate, bloating the market in the process.

Today, real differentiation moves upstream to sharp problem framing and downstream to user empathy, brand and distribution. This October, we’ll debate how hybrid product leaders validate ideas fast, cut unnecessary feature clutter and craft experiences users actually care about.

Tech (Agentic): moving from assistants to autonomous systems – but what’s next?

We’ve officially graduated from simple autocomplete plugins to multi-agent architectures that plan, execute, test and deploy. But autonomous execution brings real engineering risks: agent-to-agent coordination failures, unexpected token costs and system reliability glitches, to name a few.

Our technical tracks will dive deep into the plumbing: agent architectures, system reliability and how senior engineering leads manage risk when autonomous workflows fail in production.

Startup and market dynamics

What does it actually take to build a venture when everyone can build faster?

Products can hit the market with micro-teams and minimal initial capital, new categories emerge overnight and incumbents can effortlessly absorb features that used to support entire startup categories. As software supply explodes, attention, customer access and defensibility become much harder to earn.

We’re putting these economics under the microscope: what deserves venture-scale capital today? Where does true defensibility lie when technology itself is accessible to everyone? And what separates a fast-growing feature from an enduring, irreplaceable business?

Building Europe – time to scale to the global category kings from our ecosystem

Amid these operational challenges, Europe stands at a unique juncture: can our ecosystem produce and support dominant AI-native Category Kings or will we remain a consumer market for Silicon Valley software?

We’re bringing together European scaleup founders, top venture partners and policymakers to debate capital efficiency, regulatory frameworks (like the AI Act), European AI sovereignty and the practical playbook for scaling global leaders directly out of CEE and the broader European tech landscape.

Which one are you heading for when you land in Bucharest?

Whether you’re crafting product vision, scaling a venture or backing founders, these six pillars map out what actually matters right now.

Join 3,000+ founders, builders and investors in Bucharest this October to test your assumptions, learn from global keynoters and meet the teams building the future of tech.

If you haven’t yet, grab your ticket now.