Vote for TechCrunch Founder Summit Audience Choice Sessions

Vote for the Future of TechCrunch Founder Summit

The TechCrunch Founder Summit, scheduled for November 4 in Boston, is currently accepting audience votes to determine which sessions will shape this year’s agenda. After a rigorous selection process, 11 finalists have been chosen from a massive pool of applicants to compete for four coveted speaking slots. These nominees represent the pinnacle of practical expertise, offering insights forged through the trials of building, iterating, and succeeding in the startup ecosystem.

Voting is open until September 4. Attendees can cast their ballots via the official form. For those who have not yet secured their tickets, early-bird discounts are available that can save up to $100. The summit promises intimate, exclusive learning opportunities designed to give participants a competitive edge in developing the next generation of innovators.

Below is a detailed look at the ten distinct sessions vying for your vote.

Strategic Event Planning for Early-Stage Founders

Alexandra Ames, Founder and Chief Event Strategist at Blueprint Lab, addresses the common dilemma early-stage founders face regarding event participation: either saying yes to every opportunity or avoiding them entirely due to perceived low ROI. Ames argues that neither extreme is effective. Instead, she proposes a strategic approach where events serve as a tool to build audience and credibility even before achieving product-market fit.

In her session, “How to Build Events Strategy Before You Can Afford a Full-Time Events Team,” Ames will share frameworks for prioritizing stage-appropriate investments. She aims to provide attendees with tactics for proving value without relying on complex tools, helping them determine when events make financial sense and when they do not. The goal is to maximize ROI, including from founder-focused gatherings like the TechCrunch Summit itself.

Scaling Domestic Hardware Manufacturing

Hannan Happi, CEO and Co-Founder of Exowatt, tackles the misconception that building hardware in the United States is too expensive to scale. His session, “How to Build a ‘Made in the USA’ Hardware Company and Actually Scale It,” explores how founders can design companies where domestic manufacturing is economically viable from day one.

Happi plans to break down critical components such as supply chain strategy, cost structures, and factory partnerships. He will also analyze how policy tailwinds, specifically the IRA and CHIPS Act, alter the economic landscape for US-based production. Attendees will receive a practical framework for evaluating when domestic manufacturing serves as a genuine competitive advantage rather than merely a branding exercise.

Pitching Unprecedented Market Ideas

Andy Tang, Partner at Draper Associates, focuses on the challenge of pitching innovations that defy existing categories. In “Build Something We Don’t Have a Word for Yet,” Tang explains why the most fundable startups are often the hardest to describe, leading many investors to pass on them.

This talk aims to clarify the distinction between a simple market insight and a market-creating idea. Tang will guide founders on how to position genuinely new concepts to pattern-matching investors before the industry has assigned it a name. The session provides strategies for overcoming investor hesitation when dealing with undefined markets.

Eliminating AI Hallucinations with GraphRAG

Shishir Tewar, Head of Enterprise Data Engineering at Procore Technologies, addresses the issue of LLM hallucinations caused by messy data sources. Traditional relational databases often fail to bridge the semantic gap required for accurate AI outputs. Tewar’s session, “GraphRAG in Action: Stop Hallucinations with Knowledge Graphs,” demonstrates how to build a production-ready GraphRAG pipeline.

Participants will learn to transform chaotic data into actionable insights through specific technical steps. These include building an offline pipeline to resolve disjointed datasets into “golden records,” translating flat records into an interconnected Neo4j knowledge graph, and deploying a secure, local LLM using Ollama. This approach translates natural language into validated Cypher queries, providing AI with the foundational data structure it requires for accuracy.

Enterprise Sales Before Series A Funding

Merve Kitapci, Managing Partner and CGO at ADIN. AI, challenges the conventional wisdom that founders must achieve product-market fit before securing enterprise clients. Her session, “The Enterprise AI Playbook: How to Close L’Oreal and Vodafone Before You Raise a Series A,” details the motion used by her company to close global enterprise accounts at a pre-Series A stage.

Kitapci will cover structuring initial conversations with Fortune 500 CMOs, leveraging agency partnerships to accelerate sales, and pricing strategies for brands with no established recognition. She will also explain how zero organic churn strengthens a fundraising narrative. Attendees will leave with a repeatable enterprise sales framework and an early-stage AI pricing model.

Bootstrapping Open Source to $50 Million

Peter Farkas, CEO of Percona, shares two decades of experience in scaling a commercial open source business without venture capital. In “Lessons from 20 Years of Bootstrapping an Open Source Business to $50M+,” Farkas discusses rare achievements in the startup world, including reaching over $50 million in revenue while remaining bootstrapped.

The session covers product-market fit, monetization strategies that keep the core software free, and building distributed teams before remote work became standard. Farkas also addresses go-to-market engines built without outside funding, alongside failures and hard lessons. The discussion offers practical strategies for sustainable scaling and competing against well-funded alternatives.

Leveraging AI for Lean Teams

Linden Tibbets, CEO and Co-Founder of IFTTT, argues that the traditional playbook for growth has flipped. In “Small but Mighty: How AI Lets Lean Teams Outship the Giants,” he illustrates how a five-person team can outbuild and outmaneuver companies with hundreds of engineers.

Tibbets will discuss the tactical reality of running an AI-powered lean team. Topics include identifying worthwhile tools, building compounding workflows, and avoiding cycles of AI adoption that yield no results. Participants will learn how to audit their current tech stack for speed gaps and utilize small size as a strategic advantage rather than a limitation.

Beyond the Demo: Building Real AI Companies

Jeff Mahler, Co-Founder and CTO of Ambi Robotics, warns against the allure of impressive AI demonstrations that rarely translate into viable businesses. His session, “The Demo Trap: Why Impressive AI Doesn’t Always Build Real Companies,” explores the significant gap between prototype performance and real-world deployment.

Mahler will help founders and investors evaluate whether AI systems are truly ready for production. He emphasizes the importance of operational and reliability metrics that matter most in scaling. The goal is to move beyond hype and build companies capable of delivering durable, real-world impact.

Building Enduring Open Source Movements

Gregory Kurtzer, CEO and Founder of CIQ, draws on his experience creating CentOS and launching Rocky Linux after Red Hat discontinued CentOS. In “From CentOS to Rocky Linux: Building Movements That Outlast You,” Kurtzer shares lessons on building open source movements and startups from scratch.

Kurtzer discusses the necessity of leaving ego at the door and navigating the transition from hiring versatile generalists to specialists as a company scales. He reflects on mistakes regarding culture and core values, explaining what it takes to build something durable that survives its creator.

Defining Impactful Healthcare AI

Vikram Chaudhery, PhD, CEO and Founder of Genoa Ventures, critiques the current state of healthcare AI demos that look promising but deliver little. In “The Healthcare AI Companies That Will Actually Matter,” he argues that the most significant companies in 2026 are those that integrate decisions into clinician workflows effectively.

Chaudhery distinguishes investable healthcare AI from “expensive science fairs.” He examines where agentic systems create real value beyond copilots and identifies common errors founders make before their Series A. The session sets a clear bar for anyone involved in founding, funding, or joining healthcare AI ventures.

Navigating Top-Tier Venture Capital

George Bandarian, Founder and General Partner at Untapped Ventures, addresses why strong technical founders often fail to secure funding despite having excellent products. In “How Technical AI Founders Get Into YC, a16z Speedrun, and Raise from Top-Tier VCs,” Bandarian explains what top investors evaluate beyond the pitch deck.

He focuses on founder-market fit signals and the need for technical founders to bring in business counterparts earlier than anticipated. The session also covers positioning autonomous economy companies for lead investors and demystifying the fundraising process prior to traction.