Startups

Founders — Pitch to VCs at TC Early Stage

Comment

On April 20th, TechCrunch will host TechCrunch Early Stage in Boston — an event designed to equip entrepreneurs with all the tools needed to build their unicorn startups. No founder event would be complete without pitches! TechCrunch editorial is looking for six-seven founders to take part in a Pitch Deck Teardown. Onstage. In Boston. Live. Founders can apply here.

Mastering the pitch deck

Pitches are critical in the quest for funding and first customers. It’s rare, however, for innovators to get truly candid insight on their pitches before stepping in front of VCs. At TC Early Stage, founders will get to pitch in front of an expert panel of judges and secure essential insight before you step up to bat. The investors will offer live feedback on your pitch structure, content, solution and presentation. Three founders will be selected to give a two-minute elevator pitch while three founders will be selected to give a four-minute pitch with a deck. Founders who apply for the TC Early Stage Pitch Deck Teardown will automatically be considered for the Startup Battlefield competition at TechCrunch Disrupt, this September, in San Francisco.

Without further ado, here are your judges for the TC Early Stage Pitch Deck Teardown.

Ginny Miller, 1Sharpe Ventures

Ginny oversees venture investing and platform strategies for 1Sharpe Ventures (1SV). Prior to 1SV, Ginny led Ventures at Jamestown, a $12 billion real estate private equity firm. She has also worked on real estate technology initiatives at Apple, Fifth Wall Ventures and Harvard University after starting her career in product design. Ginny received her MBA from Harvard Business School and studied Engineering at Dartmouth.

 

Heather Widman, Building Ventures

As a partner at Building Ventures, Heather Widman spearheads the firm’s investment activities within the real estate and real estate tech community. She utilizes 15+ years of operating experience to advise portfolio companies in go-to-market and product strategy. She is active throughout the ecosystem at organizations, including CREtech, MITdesignX and AllRaise, and she serves on the advisory committee of Women In PropTech.

Neesha A. Tambe, TechCrunch

Akin to an in-house VC, Neesha A. Tambe recruits, sources, vets and trains startup founders from across the globe as Editor of Startup Battlefield — TechCrunch’s global startup competition. She is passionate about scaling products and programs to new markets domestically and internationally, having run TC startup programs in Berlin, San Francisco, Latin America, Middle East North Africa and Sub Saharan Africa. Neesha studied international security and sustainability from Georgetown University and De Anza College. Neesha is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper.

Don’t miss your chance to accelerate your startup dream. Make Boston the hub of your startup’s universe on April 20 and buy your founder pass today and join us at TechCrunch Early Stage in Boston.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TechCrunch Early Stage? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

More TechCrunch

Try to imagine the number of parts that go into making a rocket engine. Now imagine requesting and comparing quotes for each of those parts, getting approvals to purchase the…

Engineer brothers found Forge to modernize hardware procurement

The Raspberry Pi 5, the small-but-mighty computer that has become quite popular with tech hobbyists and industrial companies, is now also an AI computer. The company just released the AI…

Raspberry Pi partners with Hailo for its AI extension kit

When Stacklet’s founders, Travis Stanfield and Kapil Thangavelu, came out of Capital One in 2020 to launch their startup, most companies weren’t all that concerned with constraining cloud costs. But…

Stacklet sees demand grow as companies take cloud cost control more seriously

Fivetran’s Managed Data Lake Service aims to remove the repetitive work of managing data lakes.

Fivetran launches a managed data lake service

Lance Riedel and Nigel Daley both spent decades in search discovery, but it was while working at Pinterest that they began trying to understand how to use search engines to…

How a couple of former Pinterest search experts caught Biz Stone’s attention

GetWhy helps businesses carry out market studies and extract insights from video-based interviews using AI.

GetWhy, a market research AI platform that extracts insights from video interviews, raises $34.5M

AI-powered virtual physical therapy platform Sword Health has seen its valuation soar 50% to $3 billion.

Sword Health raises $130 million and its valuation soars to $3 billion

Jeffrey Katzenberg and Sujay Jaswa, along with three general partners, manage $1.5 billion in assets today through their Build, Venture and Seed strategies.

WndrCo officially gets into venture capital with fresh $460M across two funds

The startup targets the middle ground between platforms that offer rigid templates, and those that facilitate a full-control approach.

Storyblok raises $80M to add more AI to its ‘headless’ CMS aimed at non-technical people

The startup has been pursuing a ground-up redesign of a well-understood technology.

‘Star Wars’ lasers and waterfalls of molten salt: How Xcimer plans to make fusion power happen

Sékr, a startup that offers a mobile app for outdoor enthusiasts and campers, is launching a new AI tool for planning road trips. The new tool, called Copilot, is available…

Travel app Sékr can plan your next road trip with its new AI tool

OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT has been down for several users across the globe for the last few hours.

OpenAI fixes the issue that caused ChatGPT outage for several hours

Microsoft’s education-focused flavor of its cloud productivity suite, Microsoft 365 Education, is facing investigation in the European Union. Privacy rights non-profit noyb has just lodged two complaints with Austria’s data…

Microsoft hit with EU privacy complaints over schools’ use of 365 Education suite

Since the shock of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, solar energy has been having a moment in Europe. Electricity prices have been going up while the investment required to get…

Samara is accelerating the energy transition in Spain one solar panel at a time

Featured Article

DEI backlash: Stay up-to-date on the latest legal and corporate challenges

It’s clear that this year will be a turning point for DEI.

15 hours ago
DEI backlash: Stay up-to-date on the latest legal and corporate challenges

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

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Unfortunately, Boeing’s Starliner launch was delayed yet again, this time due to issues with one of the three redundant computers used by United…

TechCrunch Space: China’s victory

The court ruling said that Fearless Fund’s Strivers Grant likely violates the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which bans the use of race in contracts.

An appeals court rules that VC Fearless Fund cannot issue grants to Black women, but the fight continues

Instagram Threads is rolling out the ability for users to signal which sort of posts they wanted to see more or less of by swiping.

You can now customize your For You feed on Threads using swipes

The Japanese billionaire who commissioned SpaceX for a private mission around the moon on a Starship rocket has abruptly canceled the project, citing ongoing uncertainties around when the launch vehicle…

Japanese billionaire pulls plug on private ‘dearMoon’ lunar Starship mission

Malicious actors are abusing generative AI music tools to create homophobic, racist, and propagandic songs — and publishing guides instructing others how to do so. According to ActiveFence, a service…

People are using AI music generators to create hateful songs

As WWDC 2024 nears, all sorts of rumors and leaks have emerged about what iOS 18 and its AI-powered apps and features have in store.

What to expect from Apple’s AI-powered iOS 18 at WWDC

Dallas is the second city that Cruise is easing its way back into after pulling its entire U.S. fleet late last year.

GM’s Cruise is testing robotaxis in Dallas again

Featured Article

After raising $100M, AI fintech LoanSnap is being sued, fined, evicted

The company has been sued by at least seven creditors, including Wells Fargo.

20 hours ago
After raising $100M, AI fintech LoanSnap is being sued, fined, evicted

Featured Article

Sonos Ace review: A high-priced contender

The Ace are a contender in a crowded market, but they’re still in search of that magic bullet to truly let them stand out from the pack.

20 hours ago
Sonos Ace review: A high-priced contender

The change would see Instagram becoming more like the free version of YouTube, which requires users to view ads before and in the middle of watching videos.

Instagram confirms test of ‘unskippable’ ads

Commerce platform Shopify has acquired Checkout Blocks, allowing Shopify Plus merchants to make no-code customizations in their checkout to enhance customer experience and potentially boost sales.  Checkout Blocks, which debuted…

Shopify acquires Checkout Blocks, a checkout customization app

After the Digital Markets Act (DMA) forced Apple to allow third-party app stores for iOS in Europe, several developers have launched alternative stores, like the AltStore and MacPaw’s Setapp (currently…

Aptoide launches its alternative iOS game store in the EU

Time is relentless and, right now, it’s no friend to procrastination-prone early-stage startup founders. The application window for Startup Battlefield 200 (SB 200) at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 slams shut in…

One week left: Apply to TC Disrupt Startup Battlefield 200

Cloudera, the once high-flying Hadoop startup, raised $1 billion and went public in 2018 before being acquired by private equity for $5.3 billion in 2021. Today, the company announced that…

Cloudera acquires Verta to bring some AI chops to its data platform