Built something great but nobody knows? I feel you
Last month, I hesitated about applying to speak and dragged my feet until the deadline. We build an AI tool or vertical solution, post it on social media, and get crickets. I know that feeling—the product is solid, it just lacks a chance to be seen by the right people.
What is this fair, and who’s already getting results
The AI Engineer World's Fair is happening this summer at Moscone West in San Francisco, reaching over a million AI practitioners monthly, with attendance doubling three years in a row. They just opened their second call for speakers, adding tracks for vertical AI (legal/medical/finance/sales), agent businesses, memory systems, and world models. My friend Xiaochen, who builds an AI legal consulting tool in Hangzhou, met his first paying client in a hallway chat at a SF AI fair last year and signed a $20k annual contract on the spot. He said the most valuable part isn't the talk itself, but those hallway chats. I also got stuck here last year—thinking my project was too small to apply, only to realize later they really welcome practical sharing from vertical industries. Even if we've only served 5 clients, a real bootstrapping story beats a big corp PPT any day.
Replicate cost today
Money: $0 application fee (but if going in person, flights + hotel are roughly 15k-20k RMB); Time: 30 minutes to fill out the form; Technical barrier: Zero, just be able to tell your own story; First step: Open sessionize.com/aiewf2026 in your browser and click the "Submit a Talk" button.
Advice by stage
If we're just starting out with no stable revenue, I'd say it's fine to wait—get the product working first before chasing exposure. If we have 1-2 paying customers, I'd suggest applying for the vertical AI track to share real case studies; it's the lowest-bar way in, and a rejection costs nothing. If we're scaling up, I'm going straight for the application—this is one of the most efficient scenes this year for finding funding or channel partners. Even if we can't attend in person, the online speaking slots are worth fighting for.