Ilko Kacharov
Speaker
Ilko is Co‑Founder and CTO of Team‑GPT, where he leads the engineering team to build enterprise‑ready AI product that empower cross‑functional teams to create on‑brand content securely and at scale.
Since launching Team‑GPT, he’s gained a lot of practical AI experience: taking prototypes to production, tuning prompts and knowledge bases, running side‑by‑side tests with customers, and scaling the stack so it stays fast and reliable. Those lessons turned into patterns that make AI useful in everyday work, not just in demos.
His playbook: tight feedback loops, CI/CD, clear observability, and sensible guardrails for privacy, security, and compliance – so teams can ship quickly without chaos.
In the past, he was CTO at the scheduling startup 3veta, maintained the open‑source charity platform Podkrepi.bg, and led teams at Proxiad and Mailjet. Earlier, he worked on large‑scale telecom systems at Opencode and built enterprise web platforms at TecTrade.
He builds in public and shares what actually works when turning strategy into shippable software and adding AI to existing workflows without slowing them down.
Topic:
After the Hype: Practical AI Adoption for Teams
Language: English 
What happens when you buy a domain and build an AI company around it, from the first customers and educating them, through building an AI-first team mindset and working with enterprise organizations.
From the outside, it looks glamorous, but the reality is different – customers who don’t understand the technology, slow corporate negotiations, and the need to add value beyond the AI product itself.
Real stories, failures, small wins, and lessons you won’t hear in PR interviews.
Learning Objectives
- To understand the real challenges of starting a global AI business in Bulgaria – from the idea stage to the first customers and achieving sustainable growth.
- To learn how to sell an AI product to customers who do not fully understand the technology – building trust and educating the market.
- To gain practical experience in working with SMBs and enterprise clients – managing long sales cycles and complex integrations.
- To see how to add value beyond the AI product itself – through services, training, and long-term customer relations.