TechCrunch’s annual Disrupt San Francisco took place September 18-20, 2017.
As you would expect, it had all the hallmarks that TechCrunch and Disrupt are known for: killer programming, an all-star Battlefield competition, programs specifically designed for investors and founders, and, perhaps most importantly, unbelievable startups from all over the world.
You can check out complete SF coverage here, but some of our favorite highlights are below:
- – A record 5,000 attendees over 3 days
- – 74% are director-level or above
- – 63% work for a startup or small business
- – 6M total video views; 1M live views
- – Disrupt-First: 6M unique visitors to TechCrunch.com, outperforming 2016 by 50%
- – 63 speakers—Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum), Bozoma Saint John (Uber), Kevin Durant (The Durant Company and Golden State Warriors), Sebastian Thrun (Udacity), Kirsten Green (Forerunner Ventures), and many more
- – 215 press attendees—CNN, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Fortune, ESPN, and others—and published 350+ stories
- – TechCrunch’s Include commitment to diversity on stage produced great results: 35% of speakers were women (up from 23% last year) and 58% of judges were women (up from 47%)
- – Disrupt-First: The 5-person panel of hackathon judges were all women, and 4 of the 6 judges for the Battlefield finals were women
- – Attendees who downloaded the MixHalo app could listen to any of the parallel show segments in real time no matter where they were on the floor
- – 1,229 investor-startup meetings curated by CrunchMatch—3x higher than Disrupt NY
- – 549 Startup Alley exhibitors—a record high
- – Disrupt-First: Ten Featured Pavilions in Startup Alley highlighted 30 startups who presented short product demos and interviews on the Showcase Stage
- – Disrupt-First: Debuted Off the Record—Seven informal, extended sessions on big topics like AI and cryptocurrency, drew crowds of 1,800+
- – Pi, which built a device that can charge multiple devices within about a foot in any direction, won Startup Battlefield
- – Disrupt-First: Sebastian Thrun wore his puppy onstage during his interview about AI’s impact on humanity
- – The all-important after party at a former funeral home gave us trivia and great vibes
Disrupt also hosted 98 key sponsorship partners, including AWS, CBRE, Crackle by Sony, Esri, Intuit, Perkins Coie, PwC, Shiseido (featured below), Startups with Google, United Airlines, WeChat, and many more. Activations ranged from dynamic floor spaces, to private networking receptions (i.e. Women In Tech Breakfast, Investor Breakfast), and workshops.
It’s hard to believe a 60-person team can do all this—run a demanding editorial enterprise, and keep rolling it forward with events in Nairobi, Sydney, Shanghai, and Berlin. But that’s what TechCrunch does.
For more details, check out the complete Disrupt SF coverage or download the event recap.
And don’t forget—Disrupt Berlin kicks off December 4th!