TechCrunch Disrupt 2022

Get your Disrupt day three highlights right here

Comment

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Two live and in-person days down and one more great day to go! Welcome to day three of TechCrunch Disrupt, where the opportunities to learn, connect and grow your business just don’t stop.

What can you experience today over at the Moscone Center? We’ll break out just a few of the speakers, topics and happenings to help you wake up and seize the day. Remember, you’ll find all the day’s programs, stage location and times listed in the Disrupt agenda and in the event app.

You’re definitely late to the party, but you can still benefit from what Disrupt has to offer. Buy your pass right here.

Ready for day three? Let’s go!

Expo Hall & Demo Booths

Head to the expo hall each day to check out early-stage Startup Battlefield 200 exhibitors and sponsor booths.

Live on Stage: TechCrunch’s Found

TC Plus Stage | 9:05 am

Join Jordan Crook and Darrell Etherington for a live podcast recording of Found, a show about founders and company-building, featuring people actually doing the work. They’ll interview Parker Conrad, the co-founder of Rippling and Silicon Valley’s comeback kid, about how he took the plunge to begin with, and how he navigates everything from building product roadmaps to raising funding from some of the world’s top investors — and how he manages failure, too. Come for the news and analysis, stay for the jokes — and breakfast!

Founder Fireside: Clubhouse

TC Plus Stage | 9:40 am

Few startups had as much hype — and early consumer buy-in — as Clubhouse. Since its mega-hit introduction, however, it has seen its service copied by a host of competitors while working to expand and fine-tune its model. TechCrunch will sit down with Clubhouse co-founder and CEO Paul Davison to talk about the company’s past, present, and future.

Negotiating Your First Term Sheet

TC Plus Stage | 10:50 am

It’s always a good time to sit down and chat about the mechanics of term sheets and the give and take between investors and founders. It’s an especially good time now as the balance of power between founders and investors has shifted from a period in which founders never had great ability to demand friendly terms to an era in which it feels like investors have more power than in recent history. So we’ll get the latest from All Raise CEO, Mandela SH Dixon, Techstars Head of Portfolio Capital and Investments, Kevin Liu and Black Operator Ventures General Partner, James Norman on term sheets, negotiations and terms to help founders navigate the current climate.

Founder Fireside: Metafy and Seven Seven Six 

TC Plus Stage | 1:30 am

Metafy is bringing video game coaching to the masses, and it’s not only for gamers who may want to go pro. As digital gaming has become one of the most important international pastimes, consumers are more willing than perhaps ever to spend on their hobby. TechCrunch will sit down with Metafy founder and CEO Josh Fabian and his venture capital backer, Katelin Holloway of Seven Seven Six, to dig more deeply into the company, its market, and how it is working to grow even faster.

State of VC in 2022

Disrupt Stage | 10:00 am

VCs have never had so much capital socked away — with $100 billion more in so-called dry powder than at the end of last year, according to Preqin — but with a tightening exit market, many are “slowing their roll” and asserting more control over deals after years of feverish dealmaking. What new terms are they introducing into deals? Where are they forging ahead — and pulling back — and why? What do founders need to know for their startups to survive and thrive in 2023 and beyond? For a clearer understanding of what’s happening on the ground right now, this will be a must-see conversation. Niko Bonatsos, managing director, General Catalyst, and Caryn Marooney, GP, Coatue Management.

Lessons from the Product Building Trenches

Disrupt Stage | 10:30 am

Figma lived the startup dream — launched in a dorm room and sold for $20 billion to Adobe. But before he achieved those lofty heights, CEO and co-founder Dylan Field was a young guy with an idea and no business experience. Hear the lessons he learned along the way and what he would do differently if he could start over today.

Surveillance in Startup Land

Disrupt Stage | 1:00 pm

Google’s Maddie Stone and ACLU’s Jennifer Granick join us for a crash course in the surveillance state — from spyware makers to location data brokers. Find out what the changing cybersecurity threat and legal landscape means for today’s data-hungry startups.

TechCrunch Startup Battlefield FINAL

Disrupt Stage | 1:00 pm

TechCrunch’s iconic startup competition is back, as entrepreneurs from around the world pitch expert judges and vie for the Startup Battlefield Cup and $100,000.

Announcing the Winner of TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 2022

Disrupt Stage | 4:10 pm

Gen-Z: Adapting to the Next Generation of Consumers 

Roundtable | 10:00 am

This roundtable discussion will aim to provide useful insights on Gen-Z consumer trends to have a better understanding on how startups need to position themselves to prioritize the next generation’s needs. As a Gen-Z consumer tech investor, Emir Talu, Co-founder & Partner, Pentas Ventures, will go over how Gen-Z consumers are responding to emerging industries and how they challenge the established ones to reinvent themselves. Attendees will get to share their own experiences/perspectives on Gen-Z consumer trends and participate in the discussion on which companies they think are doing a good job adapting vs. failing to tailor to Gen-Z’s needs.

Exit Pathways for Africa Startups

Roundtable | 10:30 am

As funding continues to grow on the African continent, we need to start understanding the paths to exit. We have seen a string of $50m+ African exits in the last 2 years; DPO to Network International, Paystack to Stripe, Sendwave to World Remit, Capricorn Digital to MFS Africa. We have also seen an IPO – Jumia. What should investors expect going forward? Sub $500m exits or IPOs? Who are these acquirers – global firms or African giants? Should founders be mindful of these trends and what should they do about it? This is a roundtable discussion – come share your thoughts and learn from others. With Opeyemi Awoyemi, Managing Partner, Fast Forward Venture Studio, Ngozi Dozie, CEO and Co-founder, Carbon, and Adewale Yusuf, CEO and Co-Founder, Altschool.

A Serial Software Entrepreneur Shares the Playbook for Building Breakout Companies 

Roundtable | 11:30 am

Rehan Jalil, founder and CEO, Securiti, has built an enviable 20 year career in tech, as founder of three breakout enterprise companies in cybersecurity, 4G and a unified data controls platform. Along the way, he has raised capital from top tier investors including Mayfield, Accel, Redpoint and General Catalyst; built a capital efficient business model; and served customers from the world’s largest enterprises. In this session, he will share lessons learned including: How to raise capital in a downturn; How to sell to large enterprises as a small startup; How bold marketing can make your dollars go far; How to institutionalize a winning culture; How to make new mistakes and avoid old patterns.

Democratizing Retail with AI-powered Marketplaces

Roundtable | 1:30 pm

On the heels of a global pandemic and economic downturn, the fashion and retail industry has demonstrated more than ever a need to be disrupted. Gone are the days of individual brick and mortar stores, with indie designers and small business owners are struggling to adapt to SEO and social media driven growth tactics as consumers live more and more of their shopping online. Queenly’s CTO and cofounder Kathy Zhou will walk the audience through how she’s built a centralized managed marketplace to solve these problems for the growing formal wear industry, including personalized recommendations, domain-specific search engines, as well as creating a tailoring CV and ML data pipeline for a formerly offline industry.

More TechCrunch

You’re running out of time to join the Startup Battlefield 200, our curated showcase of top startups from around the world and across multiple industries. This elite cohort — 200…

Startup Battlefield 200 applications close tomorrow

New York’s state legislature has passed a bill that would prohibit social media companies from showing so-called “addictive feeds” to children under 18, unless they obtain parental consent. The Stop…

New York moves to limit kids’ access to ‘addictive feeds’

Dogs are the most popular pet in the U.S.: 65.1 million households have one, according to the American Pet Products Association. But while cats are not far off, with 46.5…

Cat-sitting startup Meowtel clawed its way to profitability despite trouble raising from dog-focused VCs

Anterior, a company that uses AI to expedite health insurance approval for medical procedures, has raised a $20 million Series A round at a $95 million post-money valuation led by…

Anterior grabs $20M from NEA to expedite health insurance approvals with AI

Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review — TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the week’s biggest news. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. There’s more bad news for…

How India’s most valuable startup ended up being worth nothing

If death and taxes are inevitable, why are companies so prepared for taxes, but not for death? “I lost both of my parents in college, and it didn’t initially spark…

Bereave wants employers to suck a little less at navigating death

Google and Microsoft have made their developer conferences a showcase of their generative AI chops, and now all eyes are on next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which is expected to…

Apple needs to focus on making AI useful, not flashy

AI systems and large language models need to be trained on massive amounts of data to be accurate but they shouldn’t train on data that they don’t have the rights…

Deal Dive: Human Native AI is building the marketplace for AI training licensing deals

Before Wazer came along, “water jet cutting” and “affordable” didn’t belong in the same sentence. That changed in 2016, when the company launched the world’s first desktop water jet cutter,…

Wazer Pro is making desktop water jetting more affordable

Former Autonomy chief executive Mike Lynch issued a statement Thursday following his acquittal of criminal charges, ending a 13-year legal battle with Hewlett-Packard that became one of Silicon Valley’s biggest…

Autonomy’s Mike Lynch acquitted after US fraud trial brought by HP

Featured Article

What Snowflake isn’t saying about its customer data breaches

As another Snowflake customer confirms a data breach, the cloud data company says its position “remains unchanged.”

2 days ago
What Snowflake isn’t saying about its customer data breaches

Investor demand has been so strong for Rippling’s shares that it is letting former employees particpate in its tender offer. With one exception.

Rippling bans former employees who work at competitors like Deel and Workday from its tender offer stock sale

It turns out the space industry has a lot of ideas on how to improve NASA’s $11 billion, 15-year plan to collect and return samples from Mars. Seven of these…

NASA puts $10M down on Mars sample return proposals from Blue Origin, SpaceX and others

Featured Article

In 2024, many Y Combinator startups only want tiny seed rounds — but there’s a catch

When Bowery Capital general partner Loren Straub started talking to a startup from the latest Y Combinator accelerator batch a few months ago, she thought it was strange that the company didn’t have a lead investor for the round it was raising. Even stranger, the founders didn’t seem to be…

2 days ago
In 2024, many Y Combinator startups only want tiny seed rounds — but there’s a catch

The keynote will be focused on Apple’s software offerings and the developers that power them, including the latest versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS and watchOS.

Watch Apple kick off WWDC 2024 right here

Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje’s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Anna will be covering for him this week. Sign up here to…

Startups Weekly: Ups, downs, and silver linings

HSBC and BlackRock estimate that the Indian edtech giant Byju’s, once valued at $22 billion, is now worth nothing.

BlackRock has slashed the value of stake in Byju’s, once worth $22 billion, to zero

Apple is set to board the runaway locomotive that is generative AI at next week’s World Wide Developer Conference. Reports thus far have pointed to a partnership with OpenAI that…

Apple’s generative AI offering might not work with the standard iPhone 15

LinkedIn has confirmed it will no longer allow advertisers to target users based on data gleaned from their participation in LinkedIn Groups. The move comes more than three months after…

LinkedIn to limit targeted ads in EU after complaint over sensitive data use

Founders: Need plans this weekend? What better way to spend your time than applying to this year’s Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt. With Monday’s deadline looming, this is a…

Startup Battlefield 200 applications due Monday

The company is in the process of building a gigawatt-scale factory in Kentucky to produce its nickel-hydrogen batteries.

Novel battery manufacturer EnerVenue is raising $515M, per filing

Meta is quietly rolling out a new “Communities” feature on Messenger, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The feature is designed to help organizations, schools and other private groups communicate in…

Meta quietly rolls out Communities on Messenger

Featured Article

Siri and Google Assistant look to generative AI for a new lease on life

Voice assistants in general are having an existential moment, and generative AI is poised to be the logical successor.

2 days ago
Siri and Google Assistant look to generative AI for a new lease on life

Education software provider PowerSchool is being taken private by investment firm Bain Capital in a $5.6 billion deal.

Bain to take K-12 education software provider PowerSchool private in $5.6B deal

Shopify has acquired Threads.com, the Sequoia-backed Slack alternative, Threads said on its website. The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal but said that the Threads.com team will join…

Shopify acquires Threads (no, not that one)

Featured Article

Bangladeshi police agents accused of selling citizens’ personal information on Telegram

Two senior police officials in Bangladesh are accused of collecting and selling citizens’ personal information to criminals on Telegram.

3 days ago
Bangladeshi police agents accused of selling citizens’ personal information on Telegram

Carta, a once-high-flying Silicon Valley startup that loudly backed away from one of its businesses earlier this year, is working on a secondary sale that would value the company at…

Carta’s valuation to be cut by $6.5 billion in upcoming secondary sale

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has successfully delivered two astronauts to the International Space Station, a key milestone in the aerospace giant’s quest to certify the capsule for regular crewed missions.  Starliner…

Boeing’s Starliner overcomes leaks and engine trouble to dock with ‘the big city in the sky’

Rivian needs to sell its new revamped vehicles at a profit in order to sustain itself long enough to get to the cheaper mass market R2 SUV on the road.

Rivian’s path to survival is now remarkably clear

Featured Article

What to expect from WWDC 2024: iOS 18, macOS 15 and so much AI

Apple is hoping to make WWDC 2024 memorable as it finally spells out its generative AI plans.

3 days ago
What to expect from WWDC 2024: iOS 18, macOS 15 and so much AI