TechCrunch Early Stage 2023

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

Waymo has voluntarily issued a software recall to all 672 of its Jaguar I-Pace robotaxis after one of them collided with a telephone pole. This is Waymo’s second recall. The…

Waymo issues second recall after robotaxi hit telephone pole

The hotel guest management technology company’s platform digitizes the hotel guest journey from post-booking through checkout.

Insight Partners backs Canary Technologies’ mission to elevate hotel guest experiences

The TechCrunch team runs down all of the biggest news from the Apple WWDC 2024 keynote in an easy-to-skim digest.

Here’s everything Apple announced at the WWDC 2024 keynote, including Apple Intelligence, Siri makeover

InScope leverages machine learning and large language models to provide financial reporting and auditing processes for mid-market and enterprises.

VC Sheel Mohnot leads $4.3M seed in automated financial reporting fintech InScope

Venture fundraising has been a slog over the last few years, even for firms with a strong track record. That’s Foresite Capital’s experience. Despite having 47 IPOs, 28 M&As and…

Foresite Capital raises $900M sixth fund for investing in healthcare and life sciences companies

A year ago, Databricks acquired MosaicML for $1.3 billion. Now rebranded as Mosaic AI, the platform has become integral to Databricks’ AI solutions. Today, at the company’s Data + AI…

Databricks expands Mosaic AI to help enterprises build with LLMs

RetailReady targets the $40 billion compliance market to help reduce the number of retail compliance losses that shippers incur annually due to incorrectly shipped packages.

YC grad, RetailReady raises $3.3M for an AI warehouse app that hopes to save brands billions

Since its launch in 2013, Databricks has relied on its ecosystem of partners, such as Fivetran, Rudderstack, and dbt, to provide tools for data preparation and loading. But now, at…

Databricks launches LakeFlow to help its customers build their data pipelines

A big shoutout to the early-stage founders who missed the application window for the Startup Battlefield 200 (SB 200) at TechCrunch Disrupt. We have exciting news just for you! You…

Bonus: An extra week to apply to Startup Battlefield 200

When one of the co-creators of the popular open-source stream-processing framework Apache Flink launches a new startup, it’s worth paying attention. Stephan Ewen was among the founding team of the…

Restate raises $7M for its lightweight workflows-as-code platform

With most residential solar panels installed by smaller companies, customer experience can be a mixed bag. To try to address the quality and consistency problem, Civic Renewables is buying small…

Civic Renewables is rolling up residential solar installers to improve quality and grow the market

Small VC firms require deep trust, mutual support, and long-term commitment among the partners —a kinship that, in many ways, resembles a family dynamic. Colin Anderson (Palantir’s ex-CFO and former…

Friends & Family Capital, a fund founded by ex-Palantir CFO and son of IVP’s founder, unveils third $118M fund

Fisker is issuing the first recall for its all-electric Ocean SUV because of problems with the warning lights, according to new information published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.…

Fisker’s troubled Ocean SUV gets its first recall

Gorilla, a Belgian company that serves the energy sector with real-time data and analytics for pricing and forecasting, has raised €23 million ($25 million) in a Series B round led…

Gorilla, a Belgian startup that helps energy providers crunch big data, raises $25M

South Korea’s fabless AI chip industry saw a slew of fundraising events over the last couple of years as demand for hardware to power AI applications skyrocketed, and it seems…

Fabless AI chip makers Rebellions and Sapeon to merge as competition heats up in global AI hardware industry

Here’s a list of third-party apps that were Sherlocked by Apple at this year’s WWDC.

The apps that Apple Sherlocked at WWDC 2024

Black Semiconductor, which is developing a chip-connecting technology based on graphene, has raised $273M in a combination of private and public funding. 

Black Semiconductor nabs $273M in Germany to supercharge how chips work together

Featured Article

Let there be Light! Danish startup exits stealth with $13M seed funding to bring AI to general ledgers

It’s not the sexiest of subject matters, but someone needs to talk about it: The CFO tech stack — software used by the chief financial officers of the world — is ripe for disruption. That’s according to Jonathan Sanders, CEO and co-founder of fledgling Danish startup Light, which exits stealth…

8 hours ago
Let there be Light! Danish startup exits stealth with $13M seed funding to bring AI to general ledgers

Fresh off the success of its first mission, satellite manufacturer Apex has closed $95 million in new capital to scale its operations.  The Los Angeles-based startup successfully launched and commissioned…

Apex’s off-the-shelf satellite bus business attracts $95M in new funding

After educating the D.C. market, YC aims to leverage its influence, particularly in areas like competition policy.

DC’s political class doesn’t know Y Combinator exists — yet

Lina Khan says the FTC wants to be effective in its enforcement strategy, which is why it has been taking on lawsuits that “go up against some of the big…

FTC Chair Lina Khan tells TechCrunch the agency is pursuing the ‘mob bosses’ in Big Tech

With dozens of antitrust cases and close to a hundred on the consumer protection side, the agency is now turning to innovative tactics to help it fight fraud, particularly in…

FTC Chair Lina Khan shares how the agency is looking at AI

The ability to pause your activity rings is a minor feature update for most, but for those of us who obsess about such things to an unhealthy degree, it’s the…

Apple Watch is finally adding a feature I’ve been requesting for years

Featured Article

Why Apple is taking a small-model approach to generative AI

It’s a very Apple approach in the sense that it prioritizes a frictionless user experience above all.

16 hours ago
Why Apple is taking a small-model approach to generative AI

When generative AI tools started making waves in late 2022 after the launch of ChatGPT, the finance industry was one of the first to recognize these tools’ potential for speeding…

Linq raises $6.6M to use AI to make research easier for financial analysts

In addition to the federal funding, the state of New Mexico — where SolAero is based — committed to providing financing and incentives that value $25.5 million.

Biden administration looks to give Rocket Lab $24M to boost space-grade solar cell production

Some of the new Apple Intelligence features that Apple debuted at WWDC 2024 don’t even feel like AI, they just feel like smarter tools. 

Apple’s AI, Apple Intelligence, is boring and practical — that’s why it works

Jordan Meyer and Mathew Dryhurst founded Spawning AI to create tools that help artists exert more control over how their works are used online. Their latest project, called Source.Plus, is…

Spawning wants to build more ethical AI training datasets

After leading the social media landscape, TikTok appears to be interested in challenging Google’s dominance in search. The company confirmed to TechCrunch that it’s testing the ability for users to…

TikTok comes for Google as it quietly rolls out image search capabilities in TikTok Shop

General Motors is investing $850 million into Cruise as the autonomous vehicle subsidiary slowly makes its way back to testing in Phoenix, Dallas and, as of Tuesday, Houston. GM’s CFO…

GM gives Cruise $850M lifeline as it relaunches robotaxis in Houston