TechCrunch Early Stage 2024

The complete TC Early Stage 2024 agenda is here!

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TechCrunch Early Stage 2024

We’re excited to reveal the complete agenda, packed with keynote stage speakers and interactive roundtable sessions. From fundraising insights to growth strategies, join us as we navigate the startup landscape together at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024 on April 25 in Boston.

Don’t miss out — secure your spot now for an unforgettable experience of learning, connection, and inspiration. Prices go up at the door!

The Agenda

Women in Tech Sunrise Breakfast: How AI Is Impacting Founders

  • Lily Lyman, Partner, Underscore VC
  • Rudina Seseri, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Glasswing Ventures
  • Milo Werner, General Partner, Engine Ventures

Selecting the Right Accelerator or Incubator

  • Emily Knight, President, The Engine Accelerator

The Ins and Outs of Seed Funding — Roundtable

Sponsored by: Latham & Watkins LLP

  • Spencer Ricks, Partner, Latham & Watkins LLP
  • Naomi Smith, Associate, Latham & Watkins LLP
  • Dan Hoffman, Partner, Latham & Watkins LLP
  • Stephen Ranere, Partner, Latham & Watkins LLP

Adapt & Thrive: Mastering the Chameleon Mindset — Roundtable

Sponsored by: Prepare 4 VC

  • Christopher Dube, Chief Innovation Officer, Prepare 4 VC
  • Jason Kraus, CEO, Prepare 4 VC

Preparing to Raise: Cap Table Best Practices to Help You Close Fast

Sponsored by Fidelity Private Shares

  • Kristen Craft, Vice President and Business Partner Manager, Fidelity Private Shares
  • Laura Stoffel, Partner, Gunderson Dettmer
  • Melissa Withers, Founder and Managing Partner, RevUp Capital

Exiting via M&A: What Acquirers Are Looking for and How You Can Prepare for a Successful Acquisition — Roundtable

  • Dana Louie, Senior Manager, Corporate Development, HubSpot

Grabbing Investors’ Attention in a Competitive Market: Tips for Early-Stage Startups — Roundtable

  • Sergey Gribov, Partner, Flint Capital

From Inception to Cash: How I Wandered into an Idea and Jump-Started a Company

Sponsored by HomeHQ.ai

  • Oliver Palnau, Co-founder & CEO, HomeHQ.ai
  • Vinny Romano, Co-founder and COO, HomeHQ.ai

Archetypes for Product-Market Fit

  • Jess Lee, Partner, Sequoia

PR 101 for Founders: Branding Strategies to Win Over Investors, Customers and Partners — Roundtable

  • Edith Yeung, General Partner, Race Capital

Never Raise VC Money (and How to Keep More of Your company if You Do) — Roundtable

  • Jake Cohen, Partner, Vinyl Capital

How to Build an MVP and Navigate the Startup-Industrial Complex

  • James Currier, General Partner, NFX

Building the Investor Relationships You Need — Before You Need Them and in the Right Way

  • Lily Lyman, Partner, Underscore VC

Product Myth Buster: The (Actual) Right Time to Hire a Product Leader as an Early-Stage Company — Roundtable

  • Rachel Weston Rowell, SVP, Onsite Product & Tech Center of Excellence, Insight Partners

Scaling Through Chaos: The Art & Science of GTM

  • Paris Heymann, Partner, Index Ventures

How to Raise Money and Come Out Alive

  • Tom Blomfield, Group Partner, Y Combinator

Getting to Series A: Common Pitfalls to Avoid as a Founder

  • Alex Kayyal, Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners

Hard Tech for Early-Stage Founders: HAX Invests in Startups Solving the Hardest Problems in Climate, Industrial Independence, and Healthcare

Sponsored by HAX

  • Susan Schofer, SOSV Partner and HAX Chief Science Officer, HAX
  • Sabriya Stukes, SOSV Partner and IndieBio Chief Science Officer, SOSV
  • Duncan Turner, SOSV General Partner and Managing Director of HAX

How to Intelligently Calculate Your TAM and Wow Investors

  • Tobi Coker, Deal Partner, Felicis
  • Julia Neagu, Co-founder and CEO, Quotient AI
  • Nabiha Saklayen, Co-founder and CEO, Cellino

How to Evolve Your Tech and Staff Strategies for Future Rounds

Sponsored by Sand Technologies

  • Brad Stanton, Managing Director, Sand Technologies

Early-Stage Fundraising: Convertible Notes, SAFE and Series Seed Financing

  • Rebecca Lee Whiting, Founder and Fractional General Counsel, Epigram Legal P.C.

The VC Pitch Blueprint: Strategies for Success

  • Sara Choi, Partner, Wing Venture Capital

Racing the Clock to $1M In ARR: Best Practices for Learning Fast from Launch Partners

  • Rudina Seseri, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Glasswing Ventures

Finance Fundamentals Before Your First Finance Hire: A Founder’s Guide to Navigating Early Financial Decisions

  • Dan Kang, VP of Finance, Mercury

So You Think You Can Pitch?

  • Paris Heymann, Partner, Index Ventures
  • Rachel Weston Rowell, SVP, Onsite Product and Tech Center of Excellence, Insight Partners
  • Edith Yeung, General Partner, Race Capital

More TechCrunch

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UK’s Zapp EV plans to expand globally with an early start in India

Zapp is launching its urban electric two-wheeler in India in 2025 as it plans to expand globally.

UK’s Zapp EV plans to expand globally with an early start in India

The first time I saw Google’s latest commercial, I wondered, “Is it just me, or is this kind of bad?” By the fourth or fifth time I saw it, I’d…

Dear Google, who wants an AI-written fan letter?

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MatPat, the first big YouTuber to successfully exit his company, is lobbying for creators on Capitol Hill

Though MatPat retired from YouTube, he’s still pretty busy. In fact, he’s been spending a lot of time on Capitol Hill.

MatPat, the first big YouTuber to successfully exit his company, is lobbying for creators on Capitol Hill

Featured Article

A tale of two foldables

Samsung is still foldables’ 500-pound gorilla, but the company successes have made the category significantly less lonely in recent years.

A tale of two foldables

The California Department of Motor Vehicles this week granted Nuro approval to test its third-generation R3 autonomous delivery vehicle in four Bay Area cities, giving the AV startup a positive…

Autonomous delivery startup Nuro is gearing up for a comeback

With Ghostery turning 15 years old this month, TechCrunch caught up with CEO Jean-Paul Schmetz to discuss the company’s strategy and the state of ad tracking.

Ghostery’s CEO says regulation won’t save us from ad trackers

Two years ago, workers at an Apple Store in Towson, Maryland were the first to establish a formally recognized union at an Apple retail store in the United States. Now…

Apple reaches its first contract agreement with a US retail union

OpenAI is testing SearchGPT, a new AI search experience to compete directly with Google. The feature aims to elevate search queries with “timely answers” from across the internet and allows…

OpenAI comes for Google with SearchGPT

Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX announced on Saturday a controversial plan to “socialize” the $230 million loss from its recent security breach among all its customers, a move that has sent…

WazirX to ‘socialize’ $230 million security breach loss among customers

Featured Article

Stay up-to-date on the amount of venture dollars going to underrepresented founders

Stay up-to-date on the latest funding news for Black and women founders.

Stay up-to-date on the amount of venture dollars going to underrepresented founders

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the U.S. Commerce Department agency that develops and tests tech for the U.S. government, companies and the broader public, has re-released a…

NIST releases a tool for testing AI model risk

Featured Article

Max Space reinvents expandable habitats with a 17th-century twist, launching in 2026

Max Space’s expandable habitats promise to be larger, stronger, and more versatile than anything like them ever launched, not to mention cheaper and lighter by far than a solid, machined structure.

Max Space reinvents expandable habitats with a 17th-century twist, launching in 2026

Payments giant Stripe has acquired a four-year-old competitor, Lemon Squeezy, the latter company announced Friday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. As a merchant of record, Lemon Squeezy calculates…

Stripe acquires payment processing startup Lemon Squeezy

iCloud Private Relay has not been working for some Apple users across major markets, including the U.S., Europe, India and Japan.

Apple reports iCloud Private Relay global outages for some users

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. To get Startups Weekly in your inbox every Friday, sign up here. This…

Legal tech, VC brawls and saying no to big offers

Apple joins 15 other tech companies — including Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI — that committed to the White House’s rules for developing generative AI.

Apple signs the White House’s commitment to AI safety

The language is ambiguous, so it’s not clear whether X is helping itself to all user data for training Grok or whether this processing refers only to user interactions with…

Privacy watchdog says it’s ‘surprised’ by Elon Musk opting user data into Grok AI training

Sound Search on TikTok is somewhat similar to YouTube Music’s song detection tool that lets you find the name of a song by singing, humming or playing it. 

TikTok rolls out a new feature that lets you find songs by singing or humming them

Skip, a wearable tech startup that began as a secretive project inside Alphabet, exited stealth this week to announce a partnership with outdoor clothing specialist Arc’teryx. The deal is the…

Alphabet X spinoff partners with Arc’teryx to bring ‘everyday’ exoskeleton to market

Ledger, a French startup mostly known for its secure crypto hardware wallets, has launched a new mid-range device, the Ledger Flex. Available now, priced at $249, the dinky hardware wallet…

Ledger launches Ledger Flex, a mid-range hardware crypto wallet

The good news is that you can switch off the new data-sharing setting and also delete your conversation history with the AI. 

Here’s how to disable X (Twitter) from using your data to train its Grok AI

Regulators gave SpaceX the all-clear to return to launch two weeks after the Falcon 9 rocket experienced an anomaly on orbit.

SpaceX cleared to resume Falcon 9 launches while FAA investigation remains open

Madison Long and Simone May founded Clutch in 2020 to help connect people to businesses looking for marketing and content creation.

Digital marketing startup Plaiced has acquired Precursor Ventures-backed Clutch

With the CrowdStrike update continuing to cause havoc across the planet, a startup has raised $13.5 million to at least improve some level of security for the kinds of devices…

ZeroTier raises $13.5M to help avert CrowdStrike-like network problems

Apple has reduced prices of its iPhone models in India by 3-4% following a cut in import duties in the South Asian market.

Apple cuts iPhone price in India amid China slowdown

MNT-Halan, a fintech unicorn out of Egypt, is on a consolidation march. The microfinance and payments startup has raised $157.5 million in funding and is using the money in part…

Egypt’s MNT-Halan banks $157.5M, gobbles up a fintech in Turkey to expand

The energy transition is a marathon, not a sprint. But opportunities for acceleration are growing. Swedish startup Greenely* has just spotted one. It’s closing an €8 million Series A funding…

Energy tech startup Greenely grabs €8M to reach more households and support Europe’s energy transition

The Floorr offers tools for conducting sales, hosting tailored styling sessions, creating mood boards, and engaging in text or voice chats with clients, all in one place. 

Luxury fashion startup The Floorr empowers personal stylists with tools to grow their businesses

A decade-old drama involving VC David Sacks and Rippling founder Parker Conrad has blown up on X with many among the Silicon Valley elite taking sides.

Here’s why David Sacks, Paul Graham and other big Silicon Valley names had a brawl on X over VC behavior

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code…

ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot