TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 is only a week away. Our beefed-up Startup Battlefield 200 is a significant spotlight. 200 firms have been hand-selected by the TechCrunch editorial workers to grace the expo corridor, 20 of which is able to launch their firm for the primary time dwell on our stage.
Nail-biting pitches dwell on the Disrupt Stage, make or break {hardware} and software program demos. It’s the place legends are made. All through all of it, we’re extremely grateful for the experience of a number of the prime VCs on this planet to tease out the cream of the crop. After an preliminary, thorough analysis, 5 firms are chosen to pitch as soon as once more within the Startup Battlefield Last on October 30. For this, we enlist the sharpest, most skilled enterprise capitalists we will discover, all of which run an enormous fund.
Study extra about these buyers under and don’t miss the possibility to be taught from their knowledgeable insights and uncover the essential traits that result in startup success, solely at Disrupt 2024, going down at Moscone West in San Francisco from October 28-30.
Navin Chaddha, Managing Companion, Mayfield Fund
Navin Chaddha, Managing Companion, leads the agency and drives its Cognition-As-A-Service (CaaS) and GenAI cognitive plumbing focus. This method emphasizes investing within the infrastructure layers behind AI-driven firms and applied sciences and attracts from his deep expertise in earlier paradigm shifts as founding father of VXTreme /Microsoft Home windows Media within the Internet period and investor in infrastructure chief Hashicorp within the cloud period.
Underneath his management, Mayfield has raised eight U.S. funds and guided over 80 firms to constructive outcomes. Throughout his enterprise capital profession, Navin has invested in over 60 firms, of which 18 have gone public (together with Lyft, Poshmark and SolarCity) and 27 have been acquired.
Navin has been named a Younger International Chief by the World Financial Discussion board and has ranked on the Forbes Midas Listing of Prime 100 Tech Buyers fifteen instances, together with being named within the Prime 5 in 2020, 2022, and 2023. Navin’s investments have created over $120 billion in fairness worth and over 40,000 jobs.
An alumnus of Stanford and IIT Delhi, Navin is a philanthropist supporting numerous causes and a serial entrepreneur with notable startups like VXtreme and iBeam Broadcasting.
Chris Farmer, CEO, Companion, and Co-founder, SignalFire
Chris Farmer is the CEO, Companion, and co-founder of enterprise fund SignalFire, a $2.1 billion AI-native early-stage enterprise agency.
A decade in the past, Farmer pioneered using information and AI would let VCs supply higher investments whereas scalably serving to portfolio firms. So Farmer constructed Beacon, SignalFire’s in-house AI platform, with the assistance of Google veterans, Stanford AI PhDs, and suggestions from 500 founders on what they actually wanted. Now Beacon crunches a half trillion information factors to rank over 650 million folks within the tech ecosystem on expertise and hireability to help portfolio firms with recruiting and go-to-market.
At SignalFire, Farmer has led investments in firms like Grammarly, Body.io, ClassDojo, and Stampli. The agency writes lead checks from seed to Sequence B with a deal with sectors together with well being and life sciences tech, developer instruments, cybersecurity, and vertical AI SAAS.
Beforehand, Farmer was a profitable entrepreneur, spearheading the turnaround of wireless-enabled SaaS firm Skybitz, making ready it for its acquisition by Telular Company. Farmer constructed one of many first applied sciences for startup funding sourcing whereas at Bessemer Enterprise Companions in 2007 to trace the brand new Apple App Retailer. He then joined Normal Catalyst, the place he led seed investing in iconic firms like Alation, Coinbase, Discord, Fivetran, Getaround, Phase, Stripe, and Zapier.
Most lately, Farmer launched SignalFire’s AI Lab to handpick high-potential founders and accomplice them with prime companies of their sector as design companions, pilot clients, and coaching information suppliers.
Dayna Grayson, Co-founder & Normal Companion, Assemble Capital
Dayna Grayson is Co-founder and Normal Companion of Assemble Capital, an early-stage enterprise agency that invests in extraordinary founders constructing expertise to remodel essentially the most foundational industries of our economic system from manufacturing to mobility. Dayna was one of many first enterprise capitalists to show her consideration to remodeling these sectors of our economic system via software-based fashions. She backed firms creating new advances in manufacturing, automation, and vertically built-in client manufacturers. Throughout her time as a accomplice at NEA (2012-2020), she was the lead investor from the earliest levels and was on the board of firms together with Desktop Steel (2015 – in the present day), Tulip (2017 – 2020), Onshape (acqd by PTC) (2013-2019), and Framebridge (acqd by Graham Holdings) (2014-2020) amongst others. She additionally led investments in Guideline, Formlabs, Evenly and Neuralmagic.
At Assemble, alongside together with her co-founder Rachel Holt, Dayna is completely targeted on early stage investments and investing behind the accelerating adjustments in foundational industries that collectively make up half our economic system’s GDP are failing to fulfill buyer expectations. A few of their investments embody Copia, Veho, Hadrian, The Rounds, and Verve Movement.
Dayna began her profession in product improvement and led design efforts at Blackbaud [BLKB], the main world supplier of software program to nonprofit organizations, as the corporate grew to over $130 million in income and accomplished a profitable public providing and was an investor at North Bridge Enterprise Companions from 2007-2012.
She is a graduate of the College of Virginia (Methods Engineering) and Harvard Enterprise Faculty, the place she serves as a enterprise accomplice in the present day.
Ann Miura-Ko, Co-founding Companion, Floodgate
Identified for her inception stage investments that vary from marketplaces to extremely technical firms, Ms. Miura-Ko’s investments have earned her repeat appearances on the Forbes Midas Listing and The New York Occasions record of prime twenty enterprise capitalists worldwide. At Stanford College—the place she acquired her Ph.D. for her work on mathematical modeling of cybersecurity—she is a lecturer in engineering, educating on subjects from blockchain to clever progress for startups. As well as, she is a co-director of the Stanford Mayfield Fellows Program, which helps prepare undergraduates to grow to be expertise leaders.
Ms. Miura-Ko is a co-founding member of AllRaise, a corporation devoted to growing the success and prevalence of feminine funders and founders. Ms. Miura-Ko acquired a B.S. in electrical engineering from Yale. As an alumna, she has served on the Faculty of Engineering & Utilized Science Management Council and as a non-trustee member of the Company Committee on Investments. She was elected an alumni fellow in 2019.
Hans Tung, Managing Companion, Notable Capital
Hans Tung is a Managing Companion at Notable Capital and has invested in early-stage investments throughout the worldwide digital economic system. He has partnered with prime founders from all over the place in e-commerce and fintech the place the US is a key end-user market. Hans’ client web portfolio has included notable firms like Airbnb, Coinbase, Ibotta, Peloton, Poshmark, Quince, StockX, and TikTok.
Don’t miss the battle at Disrupt 2024!
The Startup Battlefield winner, who will stroll away with a $100,000 equity-free prize, shall be introduced at Disrupt 2024 — the startup epicenter. Be a part of 10,000 attendees to witness this groundbreaking second and see the following wave of tech innovation.
Register right here and safe your seat to witness this epic startup battle. Deliver a +1 and get the limited-time Expo+ 2 for 1 Go for half the speed of 1.
