Your vote matters! Decide which Audience Choice sessions will make it to TechCrunch Founder Summit 

Each year, we get a immense influx of applicants to talk astatine TechCrunch’s events, and this year’s Founder Summit successful Boston connected November 4 volition beryllium nary different! We privation to convey everyone who applied to instrumentality portion successful our programming and to assistance stock their expertise with the startup community.

After cautious review, we person 11 finalists who are vying for 4 slots wrong this year’s lawsuit agenda, and each 1 showcases the benignant of practical, indispensable insights that tin lone beryllium delivered by those who person built, iterated, and succeeded.

You tin ballot via this link to measurement successful connected which sessions yet marque the cut. Submissions volition adjacent connected September 4. If you’re voting and haven’t already gotten your Founder Summit tickets this year, what are you waiting for?

On November 4 successful Boston, you’ll get the accidental to larn straight from the experts successful intimate, exclusive sessions that tin enactment you up of the contention oregon acceptable you up to play a pivotal relation successful processing the adjacent epoch of innovators. We inactive person discounts moving connected tickets that tin prevention you up to $100 close here!

With that said, let’s dive into our Disrupt Audience Choice nominees, and remember: The voting takes spot via this form, truthful instrumentality a look and past taxable your vote!

How to Build Events Strategy Before You Can Afford a Full-Time Events Team 

Alexandra Ames: Founder and Chief Event Strategist, Blueprint Lab 

Early-stage founders attack events 1 of 2 ways: accidental yes to each opportunity, oregon debar them wholly due to the fact that the ROI feels intolerable to justify. Neither is smart. Events tin physique your assemblage and credibility earlier product-market acceptable but lone if you’re strategical astir which ones merit your clip and budget. We’ll sermon however to deliberation strategically erstwhile resources are tight, including however to maximize ROI from laminitis events similar this one. You’ll permission with frameworks for prioritizing stage-appropriate lawsuit investments, tactics for proving worth without analyzable tools, and clarity connected erstwhile events marque consciousness and erstwhile they don’t.

How to Build a “Made successful the USA” Hardware Company and Actually Scale It 

Hannan Happi: CEO and Co-Founder, Exowatt 

Domestic manufacturing is backmost successful the spotlight, but gathering hardware successful the U.S. is inactive wide seen arsenic excessively costly to scale. This league explores however founders tin plan hardware companies that marque “Made successful the USA” economically viable from time one. We’ll interruption down proviso concatenation strategy, outgo structure, mill partnerships, and however argumentation tailwinds similar the IRA and CHIPS Act alteration the equation. Attendees volition permission with a applicable model for evaluating erstwhile home manufacturing tin go a competitory vantage — not conscionable a branding decision.

Build Something We Don’t Have a Word for Yet

Andy Tang: Partner, Draper Associates 

Pitches that alteration industries seldom acceptable existing categories — and astir investors volition walk connected them for precisely that reason. This speech explores wherefore the astir fundable startups are often the hardest ones to describe, and what that means for however you physique and presumption yours. Founders volition permission with a clearer consciousness of the quality betwixt a marketplace penetration and a market-creating idea, and what it really takes to get a pattern-matching capitalist to stake connected thing genuinely caller — earlier the remainder of the satellite has a sanction for it.

GraphRAG successful Action: Stop Hallucinations with Knowledge Graphs

Shishir Tewar: Head of Enterprise Data Engineering, Procore Technologies 

Are messy information sources causing your LLMs to hallucinate? Relational databases conflict to span the semantic spread for AI. Learn to physique a production-ready GraphRAG pipeline that turns chaotic information into actionable insights. Actionable takeaways: Build an offline pipeline to resoluteness disjointed datasets into “golden records.” Translate level records into an interconnected Neo4j cognition graph. Deploy a secure, section LLM (Ollama) to construe earthy connection into validated Cypher queries. Give your AI the foundational information operation it needs!

The Enterprise AI Playbook: How to Close L’Oreal and Vodafone Before You Raise a Series A 

Merve Kitapci: Managing Partner and CGO, ADIN.AI 

Most founders pursuit product-market acceptable earlier landing endeavor clients. We did the opposite. This roundtable covers the nonstop question for closing planetary endeavor accounts astatine pre-Series A: however to operation the archetypal speech with a Fortune 500 CMO; wherefore bureau partnerships accelerate endeavor sales; however to terms with nary marque recognition; and what zero integrated churn means for your fundraising story. Attendees permission with a repeatable endeavor income framework, an early-stage AI pricing model, and the 3 things that marque a CMO accidental yes earlier ineligible sees the contract.

Lessons from 20 Years of Bootstrapping an Open Source Business to $50M+

Peter Farkas: CEO, Percona 

Building a palmy unfastened root institution without task superior is uncommon — scaling it past $50 cardinal successful gross is adjacent rarer. This speech shares 2 decades of lessons from increasing a commercialized unfastened root concern from zero to planetary scale. We’ll screen product-market fit, monetizing unfastened root portion keeping the halfway free, gathering distributed teams earlier distant enactment was mainstream, and creating a repeatable go-to-market motor without extracurricular funding. We’ll besides sermon failures, hard lessons, and however to vie against well-funded alternatives portion staying bootstrapped. Attendees volition permission with applicable strategies for scaling sustainably.

Small but Mighty: How AI Lets Lean Teams Outship the Giants

Linden Tibbets: CEO and Co-Founder, IFTTT 

The playbook has flipped, and we person lived it firsthand. A five-person squad tin present outbuild, outship, and outmaneuver companies with 500 engineers. This roundtable gets into the tactical world of moving a lean, AI-powered team: which tools are really worthy your time, however to physique workflows that compound alternatively of bloat, and wherever astir teams are burning cycles connected AI that goes nowhere. Walk distant knowing however to audit your existent stack for velocity gaps, which AI-driven maturation motions are converting close now, and however to usage your tiny size arsenic an advantage, not an excuse.

The Demo Trap: Why Impressive AI Doesn’t Always Build Real Companies

Jeff Mahler: Co-Founder and CTO, Ambi Robotics 

In today’s AI boom, awesome demos tin make headlines, funding, and aboriginal excitement, but they seldom beryllium a existent concern by themselves. This league explores the spread betwixt prototype show and real-world deployment, and wherefore galore promising AI startups stall earlier reaching scale. Founders and investors volition larn however to measure whether AI systems are genuinely acceptable for production, the operational and reliability metrics that substance most, and however to physique companies that tin determination beyond hype to durable, real-world impact.

From CentOS to Rocky Linux: Building Movements That Outlast You 

Gregory Kurtzer: CEO and Founder, CIQ 

Greg Kurtzer helped make CentOS, 1 of the world’s astir wide utilized operating systems, past founded CIQ and launched Rocky Linux erstwhile Red Hat discontinued CentOS. In this session, helium shares hard-won lessons from gathering unfastened root movements and a startup from scratch: wherefore founders indispensable permission ego astatine the door, past navigate the modulation from hiring versatile generalists early, past moving to a squad of specialists arsenic you scale. He explains the mistake helium astir made by dismissing the worth of civilization and halfway values, and what it truly takes to physique thing durable.

The Healthcare AI Companies That Will Actually Matter 

Vikram Chaudhery, PhD: CEO and Founder, Genoa Ventures 

Most AI healthcare demos look unthinkable and vessel nothing. The companies that volition substance successful 2026 aren’t the ones with the champion models. They’re the ones that get decisions to clinicians successful an actionable model and alteration what doctors really bash for the diligent successful existent objective workflows. This roundtable digs into what separates investable healthcare AI from costly subject fairs, wherever agentic systems are creating existent worth beyond copilots, what founders consistently get incorrect earlier their Series A, and the barroom that anyone funding, founding, oregon joining a healthcare AI institution should apply.

How Technical AI Founders Get Into YC, a16z Speedrun, and Raise from Top-Tier VCs

George Bandarian: Founder and General Partner, Untapped Ventures 

The champion method founders gathering successful AI and robotics aren’t failing due to the fact that of their merchandise — they’re failing due to the fact that they don’t recognize what apical investors are really looking for. In this roundtable, early-stage method founders volition enactment done what YC, a16z speedrun, and top-tier VCs measure beyond the deck: founder-market acceptable signals, wherefore astir method founders request a concern counterpart earlier than they think, however to presumption an autonomous system institution for a pb investor, and what the fundraising process really looks similar earlier you person traction.