Sculpt Your Identity
with Özlem Önen & Gergena Peneva
Sculpt Your Identity is a hands-on workshop at commonroom that helps founders and startup teams build deeper, more human customer personas. Instead of relying only on slides and research templates, participants move through three modes: a structured “Character Map” framework, AI-generated storytelling to bring their customer to life, and a guided clay session where they sculpt an object from their customer’s world.
The founders who build things that last don’t just know the problem. They know the person. A real persona shapes your messaging, your product decisions, and how you pitch.
What you’ll do
- Map the character — build your customer as a person, not a demographic, using a five-question framework
- Write the story — use AI to generate a vivid scene from their life, with the moment your product appears in it naturally
- Make the object — sculpt something from their world in clay. Working with your hands surfaces what slides can’t.
The session closes with a sharing circle where each person reveals what their object told them that their written notes didn’t.
What you take home
- Your Customer Portrait — a completed character map you can share with your team
- Your clay object — a physical, embodied insight you made yourself
- A prompt toolkit to repeat the process any time
This is for you if…
- You’re a founder, product lead, or startup team member
- You can pitch your product but have some doubts who your customer is and how to talk to them so that they listen
- You want something more useful than another workshop template
Max 15 people. Intimate by design. Part of ViennaUP 2026.
