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Oren
Michels
Co-Founder & CEO
Barndoor.ai
Oren is an entrepreneur, investor, board member, and advisor to technology startups in the US and Europe. He’s co-founder and CEO of Barndoor AI, the control plane for agentic AI in the enterprise. He co-founded Mashery in 2006 and served as CEO until Intel acquired the company in 2013. Oren is also a Tony-nominated Broadway and Off-Broadway producer whose credits include Romeo+Juliet and Good Night and Good Luck, starring George Cloney. His angel investments include Uber, Pebble Post, and eero. Oren has advised numerous enterprise software companies on developing and implementing strategies for growth and in closing M&A transactions. He also served on the US Government Health Information Technology Policy Enrollment Workgroup at the invitation of the White House CTO. Oren has spoken at numerous conferences around the world, including SXSW, Le Web, f.ounders, the Dublin Web Summit, Web 2.0, and Podim Slovenia and has guest lectured at MIT, Columbia, Cal and UCLA. Prior to founding Mashery, Oren was VP at Feedster, a search engine and ad network for RSS feeds, where he led the company’s business development efforts in the US and China, closing partnerships with AOL, Real Networks and Mitsui. He was president of ColtHR (a SaaS employee benefits management platform) and of winebid.com (the Internet’s largest wine auction house). He also spent a year as ED and CEO of The Groundlings, a Los Angeles based comedy improv theatre company.
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05 June 2025 12:20 - 12:50
The hidden bottleneck in enterprise AI: Solving the access dilemma
Despite billions in investment and endless excitement, most enterprises still struggle to move beyond AI pilots. Why? Because they’re stuck between two bad choices: limit access and get no value, or grant too much and invite risk. In this conversation, Oren Michels, Co-founder and CEO of Barndoor AI, sits down with Alexander Puutio, Professor & Author, to unpack the access dilemma slowing AI adoption. They’ll explore why traditional access models break down with agents, what enterprises need to deploy AI safely and effectively, and how new context-based controls and governance can unlock the next phase of AI adoption.