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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

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“When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine.”

Scarlett Johansson says that OpenAI approached her to use her voice

A new self-driving truck — manufactured by Volvo and loaded with autonomous vehicle tech developed by Aurora Innovation — could be on public highways as early as this summer.  The…

Aurora and Volvo unveil self-driving truck designed for a driverless future

The European venture capital firm raised its fourth fund as fund as climate tech “comes of age.”

ETF Partners raises €284M for climate startups that will be effective quickly — not 20 years down the road

Copilot, Microsoft’s brand of generative AI, will soon be far more deeply integrated into the Windows 11 experience.

Microsoft wants to make Windows an AI operating system, launches Copilot+ PCs

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The top vehicle safety regulator in the U.S. has launched a formal probe into an April crash involving the all-electric VinFast VF8 SUV that claimed the lives of a family…

VinFast crash that killed family of four now under federal investigation

When putting a video portal in a public park in the middle of New York City, some inappropriate behavior will likely occur. The Portal, the vision of Lithuanian artist and…

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Longtime New York-based seed investor, Contour Venture Partners, is making progress on its latest flagship fund after lowering its target. The firm closed on $42 million, raised from 64 backers,…

Contour Venture Partners, an early investor in Datadog and Movable Ink, lowers the target for its fifth fund

Meta’s Oversight Board has now extended its scope to include the company’s newest platform, Instagram Threads, and has begun hearing cases from Threads.

Meta’s Oversight Board takes its first Threads case

The company says it’s refocusing and prioritizing fewer initiatives that will have the biggest impact on customers and add value to the business.

SeekOut, a recruiting startup last valued at $1.2 billion, lays off 30% of its workforce

The U.K.’s self-proclaimed “world-leading” regulations for self-driving cars are now official, after the Automated Vehicles (AV) Act received royal assent — the final rubber stamp any legislation must go through…

UK’s autonomous vehicle legislation becomes law, paving the way for first driverless cars by 2026

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved…

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

SoLo Funds CEO Travis Holoway: “Regulators seem driven by press releases when they should be motivated by true consumer protection and empowering equitable solutions.”

Fintech lender SoLo Funds is being sued again by the government over its lending practices

Hard tech startups generate a lot of buzz, but there’s a growing cohort of companies building digital tools squarely focused on making hard tech development faster, more efficient and —…

Rollup wants to be the hardware engineer’s workhorse

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Google says the new SDK would help Google expand on its core mission of connecting the right audience to the right content at the right time.

Google is launching a new Android feature to drive users back into their installed apps

Jolla has taken the official wraps off the first version of its personal server-based AI assistant in the making. The reborn startup is building a privacy-focused AI device — aka…

Jolla debuts privacy-focused AI hardware

The ChatGPT mobile app’s net revenue first jumped 22% on the day of the GPT-4o launch and continued to grow in the following days.

ChatGPT’s mobile app revenue saw its biggest spike yet following GPT-4o launch

Dating app maker Bumble has acquired Geneva, an online platform built around forming real-world groups and clubs. The company said that the deal is designed to help it expand its…

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CyberArk — one of the army of larger security companies founded out of Israel — is acquiring Venafi, a specialist in machine identity, for $1.54 billion. 

CyberArk snaps up Venafi for $1.54B to ramp up in machine-to-machine security

Founder-market fit is one of the most crucial factors in a startup’s success, and operators (someone involved in the day-to-day operations of a startup) turned founders have an almost unfair advantage…

OpenseedVC, which backs operators in Africa and Europe starting their companies, reaches first close of $10M fund

A Singapore High Court has effectively approved Pine Labs’ request to shift its operations to India.

Pine Labs gets Singapore court approval to shift base to India

The AI Safety Institute, a U.K. body that aims to assess and address risks in AI platforms, has said it will open a second location in San Francisco. 

UK opens office in San Francisco to tackle AI risk

Companies are always looking for an edge, and searching for ways to encourage their employees to innovate. One way to do that is by running an internal hackathon around a…

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Blue Origin has successfully completed its NS-25 mission, resuming crewed flights for the first time in nearly two years. The mission brought six tourist crew members to the edge of…

Blue Origin successfully launches its first crewed mission since 2022

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Expedia says Rathi Murthy and Sreenivas Rachamadugu, respectively its CTO and senior vice president of core services product & engineering, are no longer employed at the travel booking company. In…

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