Startups

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

Terri Burns, a former partner at GV, is venturing into a new chapter of her career by launching her own venture firm called Type Capital. 

GV’s youngest partner has launched her own firm

The decision to go monochrome was probably a smart one, considering the candy-colored alternatives that seem to want to dazzle and comfort you.

ChatGPT’s new face is a black hole

Apple and Google announced on Monday that iPhone and Android users will start seeing alerts when it’s possible that an unknown Bluetooth device is being used to track them. The…

Apple and Google agree on standard to alert people when unknown Bluetooth devices may be tracking them

The company is describing the event as “a chance to demo some ChatGPT and GPT-4 updates.”

OpenAI’s ChatGPT announcement: Watch here

A human safety operator will be behind the wheel during this phase of testing, according to the company.

GM’s Cruise ramps up robotaxi testing in Phoenix

OpenAI announced a new flagship generative AI model on Monday that they call GPT-4o — the “o” stands for “omni,” referring to the model’s ability to handle text, speech, and…

OpenAI debuts GPT-4o ‘omni’ model now powering ChatGPT

Featured Article

The women in AI making a difference

As a part of a multi-part series, TechCrunch is highlighting women innovators — from academics to policymakers —in the field of AI.

4 hours ago
The women in AI making a difference

The expansion of Polar Semiconductor’s facility would enable the company to double its U.S. production capacity of sensor and power chips within two years.

White House proposes up to $120 million to help fund Polar Semiconductor’s chip facility expansion

In 2021, Google kicked off work on Project Starline, a corporate-focused teleconferencing platform that uses 3D imaging, cameras and a custom-designed screen to let people converse with someone as if…

Google’s 3D video conferencing platform, Project Starline, is coming in 2025 with help from HP

Over the weekend, Instagram announced it is expanding its creator marketplace to 10 new countries — this marketplace connects brands with creators to foster collaboration. The new regions include South…

Instagram expands its creator marketplace to 10 new countries

You can expect plenty of AI, but probably not a lot of hardware.

Google I/O 2024: What to expect

The keynote kicks off at 10 a.m. PT on Tuesday and will offer glimpses into the latest versions of Android, Wear OS and Android TV.

Google I/O 2024: How to watch

Four-year-old Mexican BNPL startup Aplazo facilitates fractionated payments to offline and online merchants even when the buyer doesn’t have a credit card.

Aplazo is using buy now, pay later as a stepping stone to financial ubiquity in Mexico

We received countless submissions to speak at this year’s Disrupt 2024. After carefully sifting through all the applications, we’ve narrowed it down to 19 session finalists. Now we need your…

Vote for your Disrupt 2024 Audience Choice favs

Co-founder and CEO Bowie Cheung, who previously worked at Uber Eats, said the company now has 200 customers.

Healthy growth helps B2B food e-commerce startup Pepper nab $30 million led by ICONIQ Growth

Booking.com has been designated a gatekeeper under the EU’s DMA, meaning the firm will be regulated under the bloc’s market fairness framework.

Booking.com latest to fall under EU market power rules

Featured Article

‘Got that boomer!’: How cybercriminals steal one-time passcodes for SIM swap attacks and raiding bank accounts

Estate is an invite-only website that has helped hundreds of attackers make thousands of phone calls aimed at stealing account passcodes, according to its leaked database.

8 hours ago
‘Got that boomer!’: How cybercriminals steal one-time passcodes for SIM swap attacks and raiding bank accounts

Squarespace is being taken private in an all-cash deal that values the company on an equity basis at $6.6 billion.

Permira is taking Squarespace private in a $6.9 billion deal

AI-powered tools like OpenAI’s Whisper have enabled many apps to make transcription an integral part of their feature set for personal note-taking, and the space has quickly flourished as a…

Buy Me a Coffee’s founder has built an AI-powered voice note app

Airtel, India’s second-largest telco, is partnering with Google Cloud to develop and deliver cloud and GenAI solutions to Indian businesses.

Google partners with Airtel to offer cloud and GenAI products to Indian businesses

To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch has been publishing a series of interviews focused on remarkable women who’ve contributed to…

Women in AI: Rep. Dar’shun Kendrick wants to pass more AI legislation

We took the pulse of emerging fund managers about what it’s been like for them during these post-ZERP, venture-capital-winter years.

A reckoning is coming for emerging venture funds, and that, VCs say, is a good thing

It’s been a busy weekend for union organizing efforts at U.S. Apple stores, with the union at one store voting to authorize a strike, while workers at another store voted…

Workers at a Maryland Apple store authorize strike

Alora Baby is not just aiming to manufacture baby cribs in an environmentally friendly way but is attempting to overhaul the whole lifecycle of a product

Alora Baby aims to push baby gear away from the ‘landfill economy’

Bumble founder and executive chair Whitney Wolfe Herd raised eyebrows this week with her comments about how AI might change the dating experience. During an onstage interview, Bloomberg’s Emily Chang…

Go on, let bots date other bots

Welcome to Week in Review: TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the week’s biggest news. This week Apple unveiled new iPad models at its Let Loose event, including a new 13-inch display for…

Why Apple’s ‘Crush’ ad is so misguided

The U.K. AI Safety Institute, the U.K.’s recently established AI safety body, has released a toolset designed to “strengthen AI safety” by making it easier for industry, research organizations and…

UK agency releases tools to test AI model safety

AI startup Runway’s second annual AI Film Festival showcased movies that incorporated AI tech in some fashion, from backgrounds to animations.

At the AI Film Festival, humanity triumphed over tech

Rachel Coldicutt is the founder of Careful Industries, which researches the social impact technology has on society.

Women in AI: Rachel Coldicutt researches how technology impacts society

SAP Chief Sustainability Officer Sophia Mendelsohn wants to incentivize companies to be green because it’s profitable, not just because it’s right.

SAP’s chief sustainability officer isn’t interested in getting your company to do the right thing