TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026
November 4, 2026 — Boston
TechCrunch Founder Summit Speakers
The best in scaling are taking the spotlight on the Foundation and Scale Stages—presenting, tackling Q&As, and sharing the strategies that drive real growth.
More speakers are being added, so check back often for the latest updates!
Alexandra Ames
Founder & Chief Event Strategist Blueprint Lab
Dave Balter
Venture Partner & CEO of Edisyl True Ventures
Kent Bennett
Partner Bessemer Venture Partners
Lynne Chou O'Keefe
Founder & Managing Partner Define Ventures
Lior Div
CEO & Co-founder 7AI
Vineet Edupuganti
Co-founder and CEO Cogent Security
Chase Garbarino
CEO & Co-founder HqO
Merve Kitapci
Managing Partner / CGO ADIN.AI
Gregory Kurtzer
CEO and Founder CIQ
Simran Suri
Principal Maveron
Andy Tang
Partner
Shishir Tewari
Head of Enterprise Data Engineering Procore Technologies
Tina Tosukhowong
Investment Director TDK Ventures
I’ve spent over 20 years in events, and here’s what I’ve learned: the best events aren’t just well-executed, they’re purposefully designed to tell a story that resonates and drives real business impact. My career has taken me from corporate sponsorship activations to a decade as Head of Marketing at TechCrunch. I’ve built operational infrastructure to facilitate cohesion with sales and marketing, created engaging spaces and activations that brought brands to life, captured and analyzed data insights to uncover expansion opportunities, and learned how to move fast in the innovation ecosystem. I’ve worked with early-stage founders and growth-stage companies, produced events across industries, partnered with leading brands and developed a deep understanding of what actually makes people lean in and pay attention. What drives me is the intersection of strategic thinking, authentic storytelling, and measuring real business impact. I’m endlessly curious about human behavior – how people connect, what motivates them, and how brands can create meaningful touchpoints that go beyond transactions. I believe events are your most impactful marketing channel when you approach them with the same rigor as a digital campaign, but with the creativity and authenticity that only in-person experiences can deliver. That’s why I founded Blueprint Lab. I’ve seen too many companies treating events as a checkbox instead of a strategic revenue driver, and too many organizations stuck in “the way we’ve always done it” when their audiences were craving something more genuine. My job is to bring clarity to event programs fast, to help you understand when to go big, when small and focused makes more sense, and how to measure what actually matters.
Alexandra's Sessions
How to Build Events Strategy Before You Can Afford a Full-Time Events Team
Early-stage founders approach events one of two ways: say yes to every opportunity, or avoid them entirely because the ROI feels impossible to justify. Neither is smart. Events can build your audience and credibility before product-market fit but only if you’re strategic about which ones deserve your time and budget. We’ll discuss how to think strategically when resources are tight, including how to maximize ROI from founder events like this one. You’ll leave with frameworks for prioritizing stage-appropriate event investments, tactics for proving value without complex tools, and clarity on when events make sense and when they don’t.
Dave is a venture partner at True and a serial founder and CEO, currently leading Edisyl, an AI knowledge platform. His experience spans media, marketing, analytics, and crypto. Dave is one of a number of repeat True Founders with whom the firm has partnered again and again. He built True portfolio companies Flipside, Mylestone, and Smarterer, the last of which was acquired in 2014 by Pluralsight. Post-acquisition, he led the mergers and acquisitions wing for Pluralsight. He also built and led BzzAgent, which was acquired in 2010 by Tesco PLC. After the Tesco acquisition, Dave worked for the company’s retail analytics firm dunnhumby, where he led M&A and developed the company’s fund, dunnhumby Ventures. Dave has served on multiple executive teams for global organizations and previously invested in startups as a venture partner for Boston Seed. He’s an angel investor in companies spanning data science, edtech, software, and more. In 2023 2024 and 2025, he was named one of the Top 50 Tech Power Players by The Boston Globe. Dave is the author of three books, the most recent of which is The Humility Imperative.
Dave's Sessions
Your Pitch Has to Earn the Next Conversation
A great pitch isn’t about cramming your company into three minutes. It’s about making investors want the next conversation. Dave Balter, Venture Partner at True Ventures and longtime entrepreneur, will break down what makes a startup pitch land, where founders lose the room, and how to communicate what matters without overexplaining. Walk away knowing how to sharpen your story, command attention, and make every minute of your pitch count.
Kent Bennett is a partner in Bessemer’s Boston office focusing on B2B application software and consumer “earthquakes.” Before his career in venture capital, Kent was a creative executive for an entertainment production company, where he developed and sold original material including a network television pilot and a feature film. He began his career with Bain & Co., where he worked on projects in industries spanning IT, retail, consumer products, healthcare, and biotech. Kent earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar, and graduated summa cum laude in systems engineering from the University of Virginia, where he was a Jefferson Scholar.
Kent's Sessions
Finding Product Market Fit Before You Scale
Every founder wants product-market fit, but knowing when you’ve actually found it is far more complicated. Kent Bennett, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, will unpack how founders can validate demand, build an MVP that answers the right questions, and avoid scaling before the fundamentals are in place. This session explores the signals that matter, the metrics that mislead, and the decisions that separate enduring companies from expensive experiments.
Lynne Chou O’Keefe is the Founder and Managing Partner of Define Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm focused on investing in digital health companies redefining healthcare. Define Ventures focuses on incubation, seed, Series A, and Series B stage digital health startups (www.definevc.com). Lynne has partnered with entrepreneurs to help them build category defining digital health companies, such as Livongo (NASDAQ:LVGO), HIMS (NASDAQ:HIMS), Unite Us etc. Previous to Define Ventures, Lynne’s experience includes both healthcare operating, investing, and finance roles. Previously, she was a Senior Partner at Kleiner Perkins focused on digital health and connected devices early stage investing. Before joining Kleiner Perkins, Lynne worked at Abbott Vascular and Guidant in multiple roles launching over ten product families in the US and internationally. Lynne was responsible for building the global commercial strategy and therapy development as well as playing a key role in the clinical, reimbursement, and operational strategy for these therapies. Earlier in her career, Lynne worked at Apax Partners with a focus on software venture capital investing. In addition, Lynne worked at Goldman Sachs in the Mergers and Acquisitions group and worked on multiple multi-billion dollar acquisitions and sell side transactions in various industries. Lynne has been named WSJ’s Women in Venture Capital to Watch and Rock Health Icon award. Lynne earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Lynne's Sessions
Your First Vertical, and It Happens to Be the Hardest One
Hyro began in 2018 as a conversational AI voice tool and now serves more than 30 million healthcare patients across over 45 leading health systems. Many founders who start by building a horizontal tool find themselves in healthcare later; 55% of new AI unicorns in Q1 2025 were healthcare-focused (CB Insights.)
The reality is, if you’re building an early stage startup in AI, you could be one deal away from navigating healthcare’s governance committees, procurement cycles, and compliance questions without a single industry relationship.
Lynne O’Keefe, founder of Define Ventures and an early backer of Livongo, health tech’s largest exit at $18.5B, and HIMS, which reached a $14B market cap, brings new proprietary survey data on how payers, providers, and health systems are buying AI right now. Founders will leave with a simple framework for assessing healthcare as a market for their technology and where to start.
Serial entrepreneur, CEO, and co-founder of 7AI, Lior Div is recognized as the leading voice in how AI is revolutionizing cybersecurity and building AI-native companies. Prior to 7AI, Div co-founded Cybereason, with the vision of bringing his cybersecurity knowledge into the enterprise world, helping organizations fight hard-to-detect, persistent cyber-attacks. He is a Medal of Honor recipient for outstanding achievements as a commander and leader of an elite cyber-security unit, specializing in forensics, hacking, reverse engineering, and encryption.
Lior's Sessions
Built for AI From Day One
Adding AI features is one thing. Building an AI-native company is something else entirely. Lior Div, co-founder and CEO of 7AI, will explore what changes when AI becomes the foundation of a startup rather than a product enhancement. From team structure and product development to operations and go-to-market strategy, this session examines what founders should rethink when building in the AI era.
Vineet Edupuganti is the CEO and Co-founder of Cogent Security. With a background in machine learning and product management, Vineet brings a product-first mindset to solving complex security challenges for modern enterprises. Prior to founding Cogent, Vineet was a GM at Abnormal Security, where he joined as an early employee and helped build it into a category-leading company.
Vineet's Sessions
Building 10x Teams at Cogent
Cogent’s approach to building high-performing teams starts with a bet most companies hesitate to make: hire people with the ambition to build something of their own, then give them reasons to build here first. In this session, Cogent co-founder and CEO Vineet Edupuganti will share how the company attracts exceptional talent, earns trust early, and turns individual ambition into collective performance. Drawing on Cogent’s culture of transparency, tight feedback loops, and programs like Founder Academy, Vineet will explore what it takes to build a team that doesn’t just move fast, but keeps getting stronger over time.
Chase Garbarino is the CEO of HqO, the world’s leading real estate experience platform.
Chase's Sessions
The Boston Founder Playbook
Silicon Valley gets the headlines, but Chase Garbarino has been quietly building category-defining companies from Boston for over a decade. As co-founder and CEO of HqO, he has raised $200 million from investors and scaled to 30+ countries without ever needing to change geographies. He’ll break down the real advantages and real disadvantages of building where the startup playbook wasn’t written, and what every founder outside a major hub should know.
Merve's Sessions
The Enterprise AI Playbook: How to Close L’Oreal and Vodafone Before You Raise a Series A
Most founders chase product-market fit before landing enterprise clients. We did the opposite. This roundtable covers the exact motion for closing global enterprise accounts at pre-Series A: how to structure the first conversation with a Fortune 500 CMO; why agency partnerships accelerate enterprise sales; how to price with no brand recognition; and what zero organic churn means for your fundraising story. Attendees leave with a repeatable enterprise sales framework, an early-stage AI pricing model, and the three things that make a CMO say yes before legal sees the contract.
Gregory's Sessions
From CentOS to Rocky Linux: Building Movements That Outlast You
Greg Kurtzer helped create CentOS, one of the world’s most widely used operating systems, then founded CIQ and launched Rocky Linux when Red Hat discontinued CentOS. In this session, he shares hard-won lessons from building open source movements and a startup from scratch: why founders must leave ego at the door, then navigate the transition from hiring versatile generalists early, then moving to a team of specialists as you scale. He explains the mistake he almost made by dismissing the value of culture and core values, and what it really takes to build something durable.
Simran is a Principal on the Investment Team at Maveron. Maveron is an early-stage consumer VC firm co-founded by Howard Schultz and Dan Levitan over 2 decades ago with over $1B AUM and past investments including Lovevery, Pacaso, Allbirds, Rebel, Trupanion, Zulily and eBay. At Maveron, Simran focuses on health and wellness, commerce and consumer social. She is based in New York City.
Andy's Sessions
Build Something We Don't Have a Word for Yet
Pitches that change industries rarely fit existing categories – and most investors will pass on them for exactly that reason. This talk explores why the most fundable startups are often the hardest ones to describe, and what that means for how you build and position yours. Founders will leave with a clearer sense of the difference between a market insight and a market-creating idea, and what it actually takes to get a pattern-matching investor to bet on something genuinely new – before the rest of the world has a name for it.
Beyond his corporate leadership, Shishir is the author of The AI-Driven Enterprise: Scaling Data & AI for Business Success, a dedicated advocate for emerging tech talent, he actively serves on the STEM Advisory Councils for UT Austin and SMU. He also frequently contributes to the broader technical community as a reviewer for publishers like Manning and BPB, and as a technical judge and committee member for international AI and data science conferences.
Shishir's Sessions
GraphRAG in Action: Stop Hallucinations with Knowledge Graphs
Are messy data sources causing your LLMs to hallucinate? Relational databases struggle to bridge the semantic gap for AI. Learn to build a production-ready GraphRAG pipeline that turns chaotic data into actionable insights.Actionable Takeaways:Build an offline pipeline to resolve disjointed datasets into “Golden Records.” Translate flat records into an interconnected Neo4j Knowledge Graph. Deploy a secure, local LLM (Ollama) to translate natural language into validated Cypher queries. Give your AI the foundational data structure it needs!
Tina Tosukhowong is an Investment Director at TDK Ventures. She leads the cleantech and the advanced-material investment areas. Her background spans two decades as an operator in biotech and material industries, as well as a deep-tech investor in multiple industries. Prior to joining TDK Ventures, she led the Corporate Ventures practice at GC Ventures America, a corporate ventures arm of PTT Global Chemical, where she invested in cleantech, biotech, and advanced materials. Prior to her venture career, Tina spent a decade in the biotech and material industries and held numerous roles in research & development, scale up & technology transfer, application development, and business development. Tina holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and a Certificate in Management of Technology from Georgia Institute of Technology. She is also a graduate of Harvard Business School’s Private Equity and Venture Capital program. Tina has been recognized by the Global Corporate Venturing as Top 50 Emerging Leaders in 2021 and 2023.
Tina's Sessions
How To Spot the ‘King of the Hill’ Company – Hidden Signals That Define Category Winners
Innovation is needed to solve the world’s biggest challenges, but only certain companies can realistically become category-defining winners at industrial scale. In this session, TDK Ventures Investment Director Tina Tosukhowong unpacks the firm’s “King of the Hill” framework: the disciplined process that the best investors use to evaluate companies based on economics, scalability, and commercial timing. Through real-world examples, including Tina’s exploration of fission and fusion, attendees will learn actionable frameworks for evaluating startup readiness, mapping competitive landscapes, and identifying when timing, talent, and technology align.