Confused About the Market? These Four Investors Will Set You Straight At Disrupt

Raising money these days is a confusing morass, what with all the unicorns and hedge funds and secondaries and pre-seed, post-seed, and Series B crunches to process. But good news: At our Disrupt SF Investor panel, in the opening hours of Disrupt next Monday, we’ll be sitting down with not one or two but four top venture capitalists who can talk to each stage of the investing process, hopefully revealing some secrets of their industry in the process.

Our seed-stage expert? Aileen Lee, the co-founder of Cowboy Ventures. Lee, who first rose through the ranks at Kleiner Perkins, has attracted widespread attention for coining the term “unicorn” right here at TechCrunch almost two years ago. But entrepreneurs know her best for a growing number of smart bets that include Dollar Shave Club; the smart lock company August; and the coffee-shop chain Philz Coffee.

Representing Series A: Dana Settle, who cofounded Greycroft Partners with veteran VC Alan Patricof. Settle, who started her VC career with Mayfield, has become a serious power player over the years, managing Greycroft’s investments in Maker Studios (sold to Disney); Viddy (sold to FullScreen); AwesomenessTV (sold to Dreamworks); Pulse (sold to LinkedIn); Sometrics (sold to American Express); and the Trunk Club (sold to Nordstrom). She serves as a director on the board of IMAX Corp., too.

Representing Series B, we have Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners. Liew is one of the nicest people in the industry; he’s also quickly becoming one of the most highly regarded. He wrote the first, $500,000 check to Snapchat (which looks like a home run, if ever there was one). Liew has also led early investments in Bonobos, The Honest Company, and Affirm (among many others).

Last, representing later stage deals, we’re very pleased to announce that Bill McGlashan, the head of TPG Growth, will be joining us. TPG is known for big-time bets like famed guitar maker Fender, in which TPG Growth took a majority stake in early 2013 and whose core business it’s been improving since, including by embarking on a digital strategy, thinking of e-learning and collaboration, and focusing on direct-to-consumer engagement. But don’t underestimate the outfit’s involvement in more traditional “tech” companies, either. Among its bets: Airbnb, Uber, Domo and (as of this morning) Ipsy. We’re guessing McGlashan will have plenty to say about the public-private confluence we’re seeing — and whether or not it makes sense.

To get your tickets for Disrupt, kicking off one week from today, you can click on over here. We hope to see you there.