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TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
October 13 – 15, 2026 — San Francisco
TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Speakers
Featured Speakers
Nikhil Chandhok
Chief Product & Technology OfficerCircle
Arvind Jain
Founder & CEOGlean
Jeff Lawson
Co-founderTwilio
Ryan Meadows
Chief Revenue OfficerLovable
Robby Stein
Vice President of Product, Google SearchGoogle
Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji
Co-founder and SVP of Field EngineeringDatabricks
Nikhil Chandhok is Chief Product & Technology Officer at Circle, one of the world’s leading internet financial platform companies. Nikhil is responsible for accelerating product, technology and AI agendas, developing accessible and easy-to-use products for new and existing customers. He has experience developing tech-forward products and software that advanced mobile devices, streaming video, AI, and Augmented Reality at companies, including Meta, Google, YouTube, and Microsoft.
Nikhil's Sessions
The Future of Money Movement: Stablecoins, Instant Payments & What's Next
Stablecoins and instant payments are changing how money moves around the world. This session looks at how these new payment systems compare to traditional banking infrastructure, where FedNow and private networks fit in, and what regulatory and market changes could shape the future of payments. Hear where these new systems are gaining traction, and where challenges remain.
Arvind Jain is the Founder and CEO of Glean, the Work AI platform connected to all your data that allows you to find, create, and automate anything. He oversees the overall direction and strategy of the company, aiming to transform the way knowledge workers interact with AI to enhance their productivity and creativity. Prior to Glean, Arvind co-founded and led R&D at Rubrik, one of the fastest-growing companies in cloud data management. Arvind also spent over a decade at Google as a distinguished engineer, where he led teams in Google’s Search, Maps, and YouTube products. Earlier in his career, Arvind held leadership positions at Akamai and Microsoft. He earned his BTech in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and his Masters in Computer Science from the University of Washington.
Arvind's Sessions
Rewriting SaaS: Why AI Breaks the Old Business Model
Is the SaaS playook dead, or is it just evolving? This session brings together founders and platform leaders who are grappling with that question in real time – and coming away with real answers. Walk away with a sharper understanding of how to price AI products sustainably, how to build defensible moats when models are commoditizing, and how to make SaaS work in the AI era.
Jeff Lawson builds and scales companies that redefine what is possible. He’s the Co-Founder and CEO of Inertia, the commercial fusion energy company. There, he is taking the only proven physics for fusion energy ignition and bringing it to the grid. A serial founder and inventor, Jeff scaled Twilio as its co-founder and CEO into a public company with over $4B in revenue and 300,000 worldwide customers. He defined the business model of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) as the first product leader at Amazon Web Services from 2004 to 2006, and was the founding CTO of StubHub. He also owns The Onion.
Jeff's Sessions
How Twilio’s Founder is Tackling the Power Problem
Inertia Enterprises CEO Jeff Lawson joins us for a candid fireside chat about his journey from founding Twilio to leading one of the world’s best funded fusion power startups. Hear what it will take to get fusion power out of the lab and onto the grid, and how his experience scaling Twilio is informing the Inertia’s approach to talent, timelines, and the hard engineering questions ahead.
Ryan Meadows is Chief Revenue Officer at Lovable, where he leads global go-to-market strategy and is building an AI-native revenue engine to support the company’s rapid growth. A seasoned operator and founder, he has spent his career scaling high-performing revenue organizations at HubSpot and Klaviyo, taking them from early traction to efficient, repeatable GTM machines. At Lovable, Ryan is focused on translating strong product demand into durable growth while expanding the company’s enterprise presence, bringing deep expertise in operational rigor, systems-building, and team design.
Ryan's Sessions
The 90-Day GTM: Why $0–$10M ARR Is the New Baseline (And How to Actually Get There)
The definition of traction has changed. What once took years is now expected in months, and $0–$10M ARR is increasingly becoming the new early stage baseline. This session breaks down how AI enabled execution, faster distribution, and shifting investor expectations are compressing GTM timelines, and the tactical levers founders need in the first 90 days to accelerate revenue and stand out fast.
Robby Stein is Vice President of Product, Google Search, working on the development of generative AI products and experiences that help people search and access information effortlessly. Robby started his career at Google in 2007 where he worked on new product launches for Gmail and ads. Today, Robby has over 17 years of experience as a product leader and entrepreneur, and several products Robby and his teams have built are now among the most widely used in the world. Before rejoining Google in 2024, he was the Head of Product at Artifact, an AI-powered newsfeed. Robby also led consumer products at Instagram for 5 years – where he built and scaled the products and teams around Stories, Feed, Direct Messaging and Reels. Prior to these, Robby was the co-founder and CEO of Stamped, a social recommendations startup acquired by Yahoo in 2011.
Robby's Sessions
From MVP to Billions of Users: How Product Decisions Must Change at Scale
The instincts that win when building your first minimum viable product can break you at a billion-user scale. In this fireside, Robby Stein, VP of Product at Google, shares how product decision making changes when every update impacts billions of users. Hear how teams balance speed with trust, and innovation with reliability, at one of the world’s largest product organizations.
Prior to joining Databricks, Arsalan was an Associate Principal at McKinsey and Company, where he advised enterprises, vendors, and the public sector on a broad spectrum of strategic topics, including next-generation IT, cloud computing, and big initiatives as well as general IT and corporate strategy. Arsalan received a PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley in the area of Networking and Distributed Systems and a B.Eng from the University of Virginia.
Arsalan's Sessions
The Enterprise Isn't Broken. Your Assumptions About It Are.
AI is running inside the most sensitive enterprise systems in the world, making autonomous decisions at a speed and scale that traditional security frameworks were never designed to handle. This session delivers the infrastructure-level view of what enterprise AI security actually requires in 2026, from observability and governance to the architectural principles that separate deployments enterprises can trust from ones they cannot afford to touch.
New speakers are added regularly. Check back in for updates.
Kevin Bai
Founding Forward Deployed EngineerRippling
Ankita Mehta
James Joaquin
Co-founder & Managing Director
Harrison Rolfes
Senior Research Analyst, Late-Stage Company ResearchPitchBook
Rajeev Singh
CEOSmartsheet
Radha Basu
Founder and CEOiMerit
Jack Hidary
CEOSandboxAQ
Eléonore Crespo
Co-founder and CEOPigment
Srishti Chaudhary
Aditi Maliwal
General PartnerUpfront Ventures
Ethan Batraski
PartnerVenrock
Adarsh Hiremath
Co-CEO and Co-founderMercor
Sachin Malhotra
Member of Technical StaffAnthropic
Nomi Khedawala
Senior Technical Program ManagerReddit
Rudina Seseri
Founder and Managing PartnerGlasswing Ventures
Arvind Jain
Founder & CEOGlean
Mo Jomaa
PartnerCapitalG
David Kirtley
CEO
Jeff Lawson
Co-founderTwilio
Grant Lee
CEO & Co-founderGamma
Dean Leitersdorf
CEO and Co-founderDecart
Lindsey Mignano
FounderMignano Law Group
Barr Moses
CEO & Co-founderMonte Carlo
Josh Reeves
CEO and Co-founderGusto
Shailendra Singh
Managing DirectorPeak XV
Lotti Siniscalco
General PartnerEmergence Capital
Leah Solivan
Founder and General PartnerPrecedent.vc
Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji
Co-founder and SVP of Field EngineeringDatabricks
Atli Thorkelsson
VP, Talent NetworkRedpoint Ventures
Rob Toews
PartnerRadical Ventures
Michel Tricot
CEO & Co-founderAirbyte
Tomasz Tunguz
General Partner and FounderTheory Ventures
Elia Wallen
Founder and CEOEngine
Winston Weinberg
Co-founder & CEOHarvey
Zach Yadegari
FounderCal AI
Radha Basu is the founder and CEO of iMerit, a global data annotation company delivering high-quality data that powers machine learning and artificial intelligence applications for Fortune 500 companies. Under Radha’s leadership, iMerit employs an inclusive workforce of more than 5,500 people worldwide, with 80% from underserved communities and 54% are women. Radha led iMerit through two funding rounds, raising $23.5 million to date from investors and led the company to reach new revenue heights. Previously, Radha was the SupportSoft Chairwoman and CEO. She spent 20 years at Hewlett Packard, where she grew HP’s electronic software division into a $1.2 billion business and launched HP in India. Radha has received accolades including the Global Thinkers Forum Award, UN Women-ITU Gender-Equality Mainstreaming Technology Award, Silicon Valley Business Journal Women of Influence Award, Top 25 Women of the Web and CEO of the Year. She serves on the boards of NetHope, Jhumki Basu Foundation and the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship. Radha founded the SCU’s Frugal Innovation Hub and co-founded the Anudip Foundation.
Jack is the CEO of SandboxAQ which focuses on enterprise SaaS solutions at the convergence of AI and quantum tech. www.sandboxaq.com. SandboxAQ is backed by Eric Schmidt (who serves as Chairman of the company), T. Rowe Price, Marc Benioff, Jim Breyer, Guggenheim Partners, Amadeus Capital, and other leading investors. Jack worked previously at Alphabet leading AI and quantum teams. Jack is the author of Quantum Computing: An Applied Approach, published by Springer. This work, now in its second edition, is one of the leading textbooks in the field and is used both in undergraduate and PhD programs, as well as corporate training sessions. Jack is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of several tech companies, including EarthWeb/Dice (NYSE: DHX), which he led from its founding through IPO. He also co-founded Vista Research, a fintech company. which he and his team sold to S&P/McGraw-Hill. Jack is a trustee of the X Prize Foundation and has been a board member of Trickle Up, which helps thousands of entrepreneurs start small businesses each year. His foundation, The Hidary Foundation, is dedicated to medical oncology research and has supported work at Sloan Kettering and UCSF. Jack has been recognized for his leadership by organizations such as the World Economic Forum and is a member of YPO. Jack studied neuroscience at Columbia and subsequently received the Stanley Fellowship in Clinical Neuroscience at NIH where he worked on functional brain imaging and neural networks.
Aditi Maliwal is a General Partner at Upfront Ventures, investing in early-stage companies in AI, developer tools and fintech. She partners closely with founders from inception through company building, working with companies like AlphaXiv, Arcade, Clair, General Translation, and Village. Before Upfront, Aditi spent time at Google across Corporate Development and the Next Billion Users team. She previously invested at Crosslink Capital, where her portfolio included Chime and BetterUp, and began her career in tech investment banking at Deutsche Bank. She holds a B.A. from Stanford and has lived across Mumbai, New Delhi, Hong Kong, Singapore, and San Francisco.
Rudina Seseri is Founder and Managing Partner of Glasswing Ventures, leading the firm’s investments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled enterprise software as a service (SaaS), cloud, Information Technology (IT) software, and vertical markets. Rudina has led investments and/or served on the Board of Directors of Reprise, Verusen, ChaosSearch, Basetwo, Inrupt, FeatureByte, Plannuh (acquired by Planful), Zylotech (acquired by Terminus), Celtra (acquired by STG), CrowdTwist (acquired by Oracle), and Navigant Consulting (acquired by Veritas), among others. Rudina has 19 years of investing and operational experience in high-growth AI and Frontier Technology companies. Before venture capital, She was a Senior Manager in the Corporate Development Group at Microsoft Corporation, where she led several successful transactions and investments. Rudina was appointed as an Executive Fellow within the faculty and staff at Harvard Business School (HBS) following four consecutive years of being chosen by the Dean of HBS to serve as the Entrepreneur-In-Residence for the Business School. Rudina was honored as a member of the inaugural group of Rock Venture Capital Partners at HBS and appointed to the Board of Directors of the New England Venture Capital Association. Rudina serves on the boards of M&T Bank and MSC Industrial Supply and is a member of the Governor of Massachusetts’ Artificial Intelligence Strategic Task Force. Recognized by Business Insider as a 2024 Top Woman Early-Stage Investor and one of the most important VCs in Boston, she has also been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top 100 Women Entrepreneurs and Venture Capital Journal’s Women of Influence. Rudina graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a BA in Economics and International Relations and holds an MBA from HBS.
Arvind Jain is the Founder and CEO of Glean, the Work AI platform connected to all your data that allows you to find, create, and automate anything. He oversees the overall direction and strategy of the company, aiming to transform the way knowledge workers interact with AI to enhance their productivity and creativity. Prior to Glean, Arvind co-founded and led R&D at Rubrik, one of the fastest-growing companies in cloud data management. Arvind also spent over a decade at Google as a distinguished engineer, where he led teams in Google’s Search, Maps, and YouTube products. Earlier in his career, Arvind held leadership positions at Akamai and Microsoft. He earned his BTech in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and his Masters in Computer Science from the University of Washington.
Arvind's Sessions
Rewriting SaaS: Why AI Breaks the Old Business Model
Is the SaaS playook dead, or is it just evolving? This session brings together founders and platform leaders who are grappling with that question in real time – and coming away with real answers. Walk away with a sharper understanding of how to price AI products sustainably, how to build defensible moats when models are commoditizing, and how to make SaaS work in the AI era.
Mo Jomaa is a partner at Alphabet’s independent growth fund, CapitalG, where he helps lead enterprise software investing with a focus on IT management software, data infrastructure & analytics, and AI infrastructure. He played a leadership role in the firm’s investments in Databricks, CrowdStrike, Grafana, NinjaOne, Verkada, Cribl, Armis, LangChain, Lovable, and Collibra, among others. Prior to joining CapitalG in 2018, Mo helped lead enterprise software IPO and M&A transactions at Morgan Stanley. Mo graduated from UC Berkeley and holds a degree in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business. Having grown up in Southern California, Mo is a loyal Los Angeles Lakers fan and religiously watches almost every single game. In his free time, Mo loves to play basketball, cook, golf, and cycle.
Mo's Sessions
The real Tokenmaxxing: How the Best AI Companies Navigate a Multi-Model World
The frontier is moving faster than any single model can keep up with, and the teams building the most successful AI products are increasingly orchestrating across many models rather than betting on just one. This panel brings together founders and operators at the center of that shift to discuss how they evaluate new models, manage cost and reliability at scale, and architect products that can evolve as quickly as the underlying technology.
Dr. David Kirtley is the founder and CEO at Helion, a privately funded fusion company focused on magneto-inertial fusion generators. He is passionate about inventing and developing disruptive technologies that will improve access to energy, reduce carbon emissions, and provide a better future for following generations. Dr. Kirtley is an NSF and NASA Advanced Concepts Fellow with expertise in high-Beta plasmas for energy and space propulsion applications.
David's Sessions
Bringing Fusion to the Grid
For decades, fusion has been the energy technology of the future. Now, advances in science, engineering, and private investment are bringing commercial fusion closer to reality. In this session, leaders from Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Helion discuss the breakthroughs driving the industry forward, the challenges that remain, and what it will take to bring fusion power to the grid at scale.
Jeff Lawson builds and scales companies that redefine what is possible. He’s the Co-Founder and CEO of Inertia, the commercial fusion energy company. There, he is taking the only proven physics for fusion energy ignition and bringing it to the grid. A serial founder and inventor, Jeff scaled Twilio as its co-founder and CEO into a public company with over $4B in revenue and 300,000 worldwide customers. He defined the business model of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) as the first product leader at Amazon Web Services from 2004 to 2006, and was the founding CTO of StubHub. He also owns The Onion.
Jeff's Sessions
How Twilio’s Founder is Tackling the Power Problem
Inertia Enterprises CEO Jeff Lawson joins us for a candid fireside chat about his journey from founding Twilio to leading one of the world’s best funded fusion power startups. Hear what it will take to get fusion power out of the lab and onto the grid, and how his experience scaling Twilio is informing the Inertia’s approach to talent, timelines, and the hard engineering questions ahead.
Grant Lee is the CEO and Co-Founder of Gamma, the AI-powered presentation and website design tool that has scaled beyond 70 million customers and $100M in ARR with only 50 employees. A Stanford-trained engineer with a background in finance and operations, Grant spent much of his early career creating countless slide decks, a pain point that inspired him to found Gamma and reimagine how people share ideas. Before Gamma, he served as COO of ClearBrain (acquired by Amplitude) and CFO of Optimizely.
Grant's Sessions
The Zero-to-1K Playbook: How to Get Your First 1,000 Customers Without a Marketing Budget
Early customer acquisition is not about marketing spend, it’s about founder led distribution and relentless execution. Most startups at zero to one do not have budget, brand, or scale, only urgency and creativity. This session breaks down how founders are landing their first customers through community building, product led growth, founder led sales, strategic outbound, and word of mouth momentum.
Dean Leitersdorf is the 27-year-old Co-Founder and CEO of Decart, an efficiency-first AI video research lab developing the world’s fastest generative video and world-modeling technology. He earned his PhD from the Technion at 23- then the youngest in the university’s history, until his brother Orian later broke the record. Decart has raised $153 million from leading investors, including Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, and Zeev Ventures.
Dean's Sessions
The Video Intelligence Race: Real-Time, Reasoning, and What Comes Next
Visual AI isn’t just about attention-getting videos anymore. The race has moved to real-time inference, physical reasoning, and AI models that genuinely understand the world they’re rendering. This session brings together the founders building at the frontier to talk about what happens when the technology crosses from generation into intelligence.
Lindsey S. Mignano represents emerging technology companies and industry-adjacent firms and SMEs as their outside general counsel. Her team’s practice includes: SAFE note or priced round raises for early stage (Seed through Series B) startups, including bridge/extension rounds. Buy-side or sell-side acquisitions, including asset sales plus acquihires or entity acquisitions, including due diligence and any novations of existing customer contracts; Flips from abroad entity structures to a DE C Corp structure for the purposes of procuring American venture capital, and the related priced round; Corporate restructuring in order to achieve tax optimization for raises, sales, or cofounder exits/business divorces; Corporate due diligence and clean up in preparation for a raise or sale, including due diligence and clean up related to stock grants, IP assignments, commercial contracts, etc.; IP spinouts, particularly transferring IP out of consulting businesses into a C Corp structure for QSBS or venture capital fundraising purposes; and Outside general counsel services. Most of her clients are venture-capital funded at the Seed ($1-5M+ range), Series A ($10M+ range), and Series B ($20M+ range). In terms of verticals, her most popular vertical includes enterprise SaaS/PaaS companies, many of whom are AI technology companies. Her other clients include venture capital firms deploying capital to startups and other adjacent businesses who sell to or otherwise do business with technology companies.
Lindsey's Sessions
M&A Is Now an Early-Stage Strategy
The smartest founders today aren’t just building for IPOs, they’re also building for possible acquisitions in mind from day one. As exits shift and capital tightens, understanding M&A early has become a competitive advantage. This session breaks down how founders can create the possibility of such an option through product strategy and partnerships. It delves into how big-dollar startup outcomes actually happen, even for small companies.
Barr Moses is CEO & Co-founder of Monte Carlo, the leading data + AI observability platform. Under Barr’s leadership, Monte Carlo has pioneered the data + AI observability category, partnering with the world’s most data-driven and agentic organizations to reduce data + AI downtime and improve reliability at scale. The company is backed by leading Silicon Valley investors, including Accel, GGV Capital, ICONIQ Growth, and Redpoint Ventures. She has been named a Top 25 Data Management & Analytics Executive of 2025, a 2024 top Woman in AI by VentureBeat, and a 2023 Datanami Person to Watch.
Barr's Sessions
Rewriting SaaS: Why AI Breaks the Old Business Model
Is the SaaS playook dead, or is it just evolving? This session brings together founders and platform leaders who are grappling with that question in real time – and coming away with real answers. Walk away with a sharper understanding of how to price AI products sustainably, how to build defensible moats when models are commoditizing, and how to make SaaS work in the AI era.
Josh Reeves is the CEO and co-founder of Gusto, helping 500,000 companies nationwide with payroll, health insurance, compliance, employee onboarding, HR, retirement savings, and more. By combining the power of AI with more than a decade of experience supporting small businesses, Gusto exists to power builders – giving them the capabilities, confidence, and technology to start, hire, pay, and grow. Josh leads the company on its mission to grow the small business economy with technology and heart, so that anyone can turn ambition into action, build a meaningful business on their own terms, and be successful doing it.
Josh's Sessions
Hiring When AI Is a Co-Founder
Early-stage companies are no longer just building with AI, they’re hiring it. As AI agents take on engineering, support, and operations, the definition of an early team is being rewritten. This session explores how founders decide what humans should own versus what gets delegated to AI, and how high-growth startups are building hybrid teams without losing speed, accountability, or culture.
Shailendra Singh is a Managing Director at Peak XV (formerly known as Sequoia Capital India & Southeast Asia). He joined the firm in 2006 and has served as its leader since 2011. Peak XV has partnered with over 500 companies spanning technology, software, financial services and consumer sectors across the world. The portfolio has seen 36 IPOs, multiple successful M&As and currently has 51 companies with over $100M in revenues. Shailendra has led investments in several category leaders including Supabase, PostHog, Pine Labs, CRED, GoTo, Druva and Sirion. He received an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School (HBS) and currently serves on the HBS Board of Dean’s Advisors as well as the Board of the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF). He holds an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from IIT Bombay, and is also a Kauffman Fellow.
Shailendra's Sessions
The Series A in 2027
Series A is getting harder, with VCs growing more demanding. For founders planning to raise in the next 1–2 years, this session breaks down what “fundable” will actually mean in 2027. Hear how top investors are redefining the metrics, teams, and traction that matter now, what outdated fundraising playbooks no longer work, and how companies can separate from the pack in the next funding cycle.
Lotti Siniscalco joined Emergence in 2018, rapidly making her mark and rising to General Partner in 2026. She has led investments in Oyster, Federato, Method, Strala, Casap and Harper. Beyond her investment work, Lotti leads Emergence’s sourcing efforts, mentoring associates as they develop networks, refine research methodologies, and sharpen their diligence skills—a reflection of her collaborative and growth-oriented approach to venture. Lotti’s career is steeped in fintech expertise. Before joining Emergence, she honed her operational and investment acumen at Advent International, where she focused on financial services and technology and served as a board observer for TransUnion. She gained hands-on experience in business operations at fintech leader NerdWallet and developed deep sector knowledge as an early-stage investor at Ribbit Capital, where she led diligence in emerging areas like cyber insurance and retirement technology. Her understanding of the fintech landscape is unparalleled, enabling her to help founders navigate the complexities of scaling in this fast-evolving sector. As an immigrant from Italy, Lotti is deeply passionate about supporting underrepresented founders and professionals. She’s a longtime mentor through Mentors4u, helping young Italian professionals build their careers, and is a fierce advocate for women in venture capital. She regularly brings together early-stage female investors through a dinner series aimed at fostering community and collaboration—a reflection of her belief in amplifying diverse voices in the industry. Lotti began her career at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker and holds a BS from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Stanford Business School. On weekends, she can be found exploring San Francisco’s Presidio with her three young children, Leo, Alex and Franco. With her fintech expertise, leadership at Emergence, and unwavering commitment to fostering inclusivity, Lotti represents the best of venture capital. Her ability to spot and support transformative businesses makes her an indispensable partner to founders and an emerging leader in the industry.
TaskRabbit founder Leah Solivan is a technology entrepreneur, investor, and board leader who has spent more than two decades building and scaling products that improve how people live and work. She is the Founder and Managing Director of Precedent.vc, an early-stage venture capital fund backing category-defining technology companies, and continues to serve as a General Partner at Fuel Capital, where she has invested across consumer technology, marketplaces, retail, education, and hardware. Leah founded TaskRabbit in 2008, pioneering one of the first large-scale on-demand marketplaces and helping shape the modern gig economy. As CEO for eight years, she scaled the company internationally across 44 cities, raised more than $50 million in venture capital, and ultimately led the company through its successful acquisition by IKEA in 2017. Before founding TaskRabbit, Leah spent seven years as a software engineer at IBM working on products including Lotus Notes and Domino. She currently serves on the boards of PetMeds and the San Francisco Ballet, and previously served as Chair of the YPO Pacific US Region. A proud Latina leader, Leah is a passionate advocate for diversity, entrepreneurship, and the future of work.
Leah's Sessions
The Zero-to-1K Playbook: How to Get Your First 1,000 Customers Without a Marketing Budget
Early customer acquisition is not about marketing spend, it’s about founder led distribution and relentless execution. Most startups at zero to one do not have budget, brand, or scale, only urgency and creativity. This session breaks down how founders are landing their first customers through community building, product led growth, founder led sales, strategic outbound, and word of mouth momentum.
Prior to joining Databricks, Arsalan was an Associate Principal at McKinsey and Company, where he advised enterprises, vendors, and the public sector on a broad spectrum of strategic topics, including next-generation IT, cloud computing, and big initiatives as well as general IT and corporate strategy. Arsalan received a PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley in the area of Networking and Distributed Systems and a B.Eng from the University of Virginia.
Arsalan's Sessions
The Enterprise Isn't Broken. Your Assumptions About It Are.
AI is running inside the most sensitive enterprise systems in the world, making autonomous decisions at a speed and scale that traditional security frameworks were never designed to handle. This session delivers the infrastructure-level view of what enterprise AI security actually requires in 2026, from observability and governance to the architectural principles that separate deployments enterprises can trust from ones they cannot afford to touch.
Atli Thorkelsson is the VP of Talent Network at Redpoint Ventures, where he advises founders on building outperforming teams and connects them top executive candidates and advisors. He previously worked at SPMB Executive Search, holds dual degrees from UC Berkeley, and grew up in the Bay Area and Iceland.
Atli's Sessions
Hiring, Compensation and Culture in the Most Competitive Market Ever
No question about it, the growth of AI startups has made hiring and retention for all tech companies more difficult. From competing for AI talent to secondary sales, founders are rethinking the human infrastructure of their startups. As hiring, incentives, and employee expectations rapidly evolve, this session explores how companies are adapting compensation, culture, and team building strategies to attract and retain top talent in a fundamentally changed startup environment.
Rob Toews is a partner at Radical Ventures and leads the firm’s SF office. He writes a regular column in Forbes about the big picture of artificial intelligence. Before becoming a VC, Rob spent many years in the world of autonomous vehicles, including leading Zoox’s strategy team and working on autonomous vehicle policy as a staffer in the Obama White House. He started his career at Bain & Company. Rob holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, a JD from Harvard Law School and a BA from Stanford.
Rob's Sessions
What Happens When OpenAI Ships Your Roadmap
Nearly all AI founders have the same worry these days: what if OpenAI or Anthropic launch a product that competes with mine? Even strong products are at risk of becoming features of the larger players. This session explores where defensibility exists, and what founders can do if they do face competition from rapidly evolving AI giants.
As CEO & Co-Founder, Michel has grown Airbyte into the leading open-source data integration platform, known for its extensive connector library and flexible self-hosting. The company has raised $181M from the likes of Accel, Benchmark, and Y Combinator, reaching a $1.5B valuation, and is used by over 7,000 customers (including 18% of the Fortune 500), such as Siemens, Perplexity, Monday.com, Calendly, and Invesco. With over 600 connectors and 250,000+ deployments, it powers data movement across analytics, operations, governance, and AI—supporting both structured and unstructured data in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Prior to founding Airbyte, Michel served as Director of Engineering at rideOS and led data integrations at LiveRamp, where he helped shape foundational innovations in data infrastructure and engineering. He holds a Master of Science (M.S.) in Computer Science from EPITA (École d’Ingénieurs en Informatique).
Michel's Sessions
What Happens When OpenAI Ships Your Roadmap
Nearly all AI founders have the same worry these days: what if OpenAI or Anthropic launch a product that competes with mine? Even strong products are at risk of becoming features of the larger players. This session explores where defensibility exists, and what founders can do if they do face competition from rapidly evolving AI giants.
Tomasz Tunguz is the founder of Theory Ventures, investing in early-stage AI, data, and blockchain companies. Previously, Tomasz was an MD at Redpoint and a product manager at Google, managing a billion dollar business unit on the AdSense team. As an investor, he’s worked with nine unicorns predominantly in data and data infrastructure, including Looker, Monte Carlo, Dremio, Hex, Omni, Mother Duck. He writes a blog at tomtunguz.com that drives millions of page visits per month, featuring his analyses of GTM strategies, earnings, and trends across private and public technology companies.
Tomasz's Sessions
The 90-Day GTM: Why $0–$10M ARR Is the New Baseline (And How to Actually Get There)
The definition of traction has changed. What once took years is now expected in months, and $0–$10M ARR is increasingly becoming the new early stage baseline. This session breaks down how AI enabled execution, faster distribution, and shifting investor expectations are compressing GTM timelines, and the tactical levers founders need in the first 90 days to accelerate revenue and stand out fast.
Elia Wallen is the founder and CEO of Engine, where he leads the company’s mission to power connection through simplified travel. He began his entrepreneurial career in 2008 with Travelers Haven, which he bootstrapped into one of the nation’s largest corporate housing companies. In 2019, Elia raised Engine’s first outside capital, setting the stage for rapid growth. Shortly after, Elia appointed a CEO to lead Travelers Haven so he could dedicate his full focus to Engine. Travelers Haven was acquired by Blueground in 2022. Today, Engine has served 30,000+ businesses and more than one million travelers, is cashflow positive, and valued at over $2 billion. Elia’s track record of building and scaling companies has earned him recognition as EY Entrepreneur of the Year and ColoradoBiz CEO of the Year.
Elia's Sessions
The Zero-to-1K Playbook: How to Get Your First 1,000 Customers Without a Marketing Budget
Early customer acquisition is not about marketing spend, it’s about founder led distribution and relentless execution. Most startups at zero to one do not have budget, brand, or scale, only urgency and creativity. This session breaks down how founders are landing their first customers through community building, product led growth, founder led sales, strategic outbound, and word of mouth momentum.
Winston Weinberg is the CEO and Co-founder of Harvey, the leading professional services platform engineered with AI for law, tax, and finance. Before founding Harvey in August 2022, Winston was an attorney at O’Melveny & Myers LLP, specializing in antitrust and securities litigation. He earned his J.D. from USC Gould School of Law, where he contributed to the Southern California Law Review, and earned his Bachelor’s degree from Kenyon College.
Winston's Sessions
Building the AI Workforce
From law firms to Fortune 500 companies, AI is rapidly changing how knowledge work gets done. Harvey has emerged as one of the breakout enterprise AI companies of the last two years. Join co-founder and CEO Winston Weinberg for a conversation about how AI is reshaping professional services, what enterprises actually want from AI, and what happens when software starts doing work once reserved for highly trained experts.
Zach Yadegari is a 19-year-old entrepreneur and the founder of Cal AI, an AI-powered nutrition tracking app that lets users log their meals by simply taking a photo. His entrepreneurial journey began at age 7, when he taught himself to code. He was building and selling online ventures before he was a teenager. At 17, Zach co-founded Cal AI during his senior year of high school. In under two years, he scaled the company to 15 million users and $30 million in ARR, a trajectory that caught the attention of one of the most recognized names in health and fitness. In December 2025, Cal AI was acquired by MyFitnessPal. Before Cal AI, Zach founded Totally Science, a gaming platform that drew over 5 million users during the COVID-19 pandemic and sold for a six-figure sum at age 16. Zach is one of the youngest founders to lead a successful exit in the consumer health tech space.
Zach's Sessions
How To Create Viral Growth and Capitalize On It
Startups can go from zero to viral overnight, but sustaining that momentum is a completely different challenge. In this fireside, Zach Yadegari shares how Cal AI navigated rapid growth, product pressure, and the realities of building in a distribution driven market. Hear the lessons behind turning breakout attention into durable retention and long term company building.
Vote for the sessions you want to see at Disrupt
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Past speakers
Expect the same high-caliber tech voices that have defined Disrupt’s stages year after year.
Hear from leaders who’ve shaped the industry, navigated its shifts, and come out ahead.
Mary Barra
Chair and CEOGeneral Motors
Roelof Botha
Managing Partner and StewardSequoia Capital
Denise Dresser
Chief Executive OfficerSlack from Salesforce
Colin Kaepernick
Founder and CEOLumi and Super Bowl QB
Vinod Khosla
FounderKhosla Ventures
Aaron Levie
Co-Founder & CEOBox
Tekedra Mawakana
Co-CEOWaymo
Matt Mullenweg
Co-Founder / Founder and CEOWordPress / Automattic
Shaquille O'Neal
NBA Superstar and PhilanthropistEntrepreneur
Brynn Putnam
Founder, MIRROR, and CEOBoard
Assaf Rappaport
Co-Founder and CEOWiz
Serena Williams
Founding & Managing PartnerSerena Ventures
Mary Barra is chair and chief executive officer of General Motors. She was elected chair of the GM Board of Directors in 2016 and has served as CEO of GM since 2014. Under Barra’s leadership, GM envisions a world with zero crashes, to save lives; zero emissions, so future generations can inherit a healthier planet; and zero congestion, so customers get back a precious commodity — time. She is focused on creating the best customer experience and strengthening GM’s core vehicle and services business, while also working to deliver transformative technologies such as electrification, autonomous driving, and software. Prior to becoming CEO, Barra served as GM executive vice president, Global Product Development, Purchasing and Supply Chain, and as senior vice president, Global Product Development. In these roles, Barra and her teams were responsible for the design, engineering, and quality of GM vehicle launches worldwide. Previously, she served as vice president, Global Human Resources; vice president, Global Manufacturing Engineering; plant manager, Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly; and in several other executive engineering and staff positions. Barra began her career with GM in 1980 as a General Motors Institute (Kettering University) co-op student at the Pontiac Motor Division. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1985, followed by a Master of Business Administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1990. Barra serves on the Board of Directors of the Walt Disney Company, the Duke University Board of Trustees, and the Detroit Economic Club.
Roelof is Managing Partner and Steward of Sequoia Capital. He has spent over 25 years building companies in Silicon Valley. He began within the walls of nascent PayPal, where he joined in March 2000 while completing his MBA at Stanford. He became CFO in 2001 and led the company through both its IPO in early 2002 and the subsequent acquisition by eBay. Roelof joined Sequoia in 2003 to help founders build enduring businesses. In 2017, he assumed leadership of Sequoia Capital’s US/Europe business and became a Steward of the Sequoia Partnership. Roelof is a Director of Block, Blues, Ethos, Flow, MongoDB, Natera, Pendulum Therapeutics, and Unity Technologies, among others. Previously, he was a Director of companies that include YouTube, Tumblr, Xoom, Eventbrite, and Evernote. He also led Sequoia’s investment in Instagram.
Denise Dresser is the CEO of Slack. For over 20 years, Denise has spearheaded business transformations within many of the world’s largest and most innovative companies. At Slack and as a part of Salesforce, Denise leads the team of Slack technologists, product innovators, marketers, communicators, and customer success professionals who are grounded in Slack’s mission to make people’s working lives simpler, more pleasant, and more productive. Denise previously served as President of Accelerated Industries Sales at Salesforce, leading the distribution and go-to-market strategy for some of Salesforce’s most strategic accounts and for the company’s industry-leading cloud solutions. Prior to Salesforce, she was a sales leader at Oracle. Denise graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a member of the Ad Council Board of Directors, a passionate mentor to future women leaders and top talent, and the executive sponsor for ALSForce, a Salesforce equality group focused on raising awareness about ALS. Denise is based in San Francisco and is the mom to two amazing teenage boys.
Colin Kaepernick is the founder and CEO of Lumi, a groundbreaking platform that empowers creators by providing them with the tools needed to independently create, publish, and merchandise their stories both digitally and physically. In 2016, he took a knee during “The Star Spangled Banner” to bring attention to systemic oppressions against Black and Brown people, and quickly became known as one of America’s foremost civil rights activists. As an NFL player, Colin led the San Francisco 49ers to Super Bowl XLVII and is the holder of the all-time NFL record for most rushing yards in a game by a quarterback. He has been awarded a number of prestigious honors, including Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope honor, GQ magazine’s “Citizen of the Year,” the NFL’s Len Eshmont Award, the Sports Illustrated Muhammad Ali Legacy Award, the ACLU’s Eason Monroe Courageous Advocate Award, and the Puffin/Nation Institute’s Prize for Creative Citizenship. Since 2016, he has founded and helped to fund three organizations — Know Your Rights Camp, Kaepernick Media, and Kaepernick Publishing — that together advance the liberation of Black and Brown people through storytelling, systems change, and political education. In 2019, Kaepernick helped Nike win an Emmy for its “Dream Crazy” commercial. In 2021, Colin released Colin in Black & White, a six-episode limited series on Netflix exploring his high school years, which won two NAACP Image Awards. In 2022, he became a New York Times bestselling author for his acclaimed children’s picture book, “I Color Myself Different.” He will release his next children’s book, “We Are Free, You and Me” in October 2024, co-authored with his wife Nessa and published in partnership with Scholastic.
Vinod Khosla is an entrepreneur, investor, and technology fan. He is the founder of Khosla Ventures, focused on impactful technology investments in software, AI, robotics, 3D printing, healthcare and more. Mr. Khosla was a co-founder of Daisy systems and founding CEO of Sun Microsystems where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. One of Mr. Khosla’s greatest passions is being a mentor to entrepreneurs, assisting entrepreneurs and helping them build technology-based businesses. Mr. Khosla is driven by the desire to make a positive impact through technology to reinvent societal infrastructure and multiply resources. He is also passionate about Social Entrepreneurship. Vinod holds a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from IIT, New Delhi, a Master’s in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Aaron Levie is Chief Executive Officer, Cofounder at Box, which he launched in 2005 with CFO and cofounder Dylan Smith. He is the visionary behind the Box product and platform strategy, incorporating the best of secure content collaboration with an intuitive user experience suited to the way people work today. Aaron leads the company in its mission to transform the way people and businesses work so they can achieve their greatest ambitions. He has served on the Board of Directors since April 2005. Aaron attended the University of Southern California from 2003 to 2005 before leaving to found Box.
Tekedra N. Mawakana is the co-CEO of Waymo, an autonomous driving technology company. As co-CEO, Tekedra oversees the company’s strategy for the wide adoption of the Waymo Driver. She boasts 20+ years of experience advising consumer technology companies to advance their business interests globally. Tekedra currently serves on the Board of Directors for Intuit and the Advisory Council for Boom Technology. She is a social impact-focused angel investor and an Advisor and LP with the Operator Collective.
Matt Mullenweg is co-founder of the open source publishing platform WordPress, which now powers over 40% of all sites on the web. He is the founder and CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, WPVIP, Day One, Beeper, and Pocket Casts. Additionally, Matt runs Audrey Capital, an investment and research company. He has been recognized for his leadership by Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, Inc. Magazine, TechCrunch, Fortune, Fast Company, Wired, University Philosophical Society, and Vanity Fair. Matt is originally from Houston, Texas, where he attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and studied jazz saxophone. In his spare time, Matt is an avid photographer. He currently splits his time between Houston and San Francisco.
NBA superstar, philanthropist, and renowned successful business entrepreneur Shaquille O’Neal — known around the world as Shaq — is a true cultural icon who brings his inspiring story and unbeatable lessons in leadership and business to life at every smash-hit event. After spending nearly two decades racking up accolades in the NBA (15x NBA All-Star, 4x NBA Champion, and a 3x NBA Finals MVP), Shaq is heralded for his tremendous business savvy — he got his MBA back in 2005 — and his insights and advice on business success and diversification have been featured in Forbes, Inc., Entrepreneur, Money, and more. O’Neal has become a bona fide mogul, investing in companies like Google, Apple, and Ring, and becoming the second-largest individual shareholder of Authentic Brands Group, as well as franchising storefronts like Big Chicken, Papa Johns, and Krispy Kreme, among a myriad of notable entrepreneurial ventures.
Brynn Putnam is the founder and CEO of Board, a first-ever face-to-face game console launching Fall 2025. She is the former CEO of Mirror, a connected fitness start-up that launched in 2018 and was acquired in 2020 for $500 million by lululemon, representing its first acquisition. MIRROR was named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, TIME’s Best Inventions and Forbes’ Next Billion-Dollar Startups. Brynn has been recognized by Inc’s 30 under 30, Crain’s 40 under 40, and EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Brynn was a professional ballerina with The New York City Ballet and founder of the renowned NYC fitness chain Refine Method. Brynn has a B.A. from Harvard College and is a member of New York City Ballet’s Board of Directors. Brynn is a native New Yorker and lives on the UES with her husband, Kevin Thau, and two children, George and Agnes.
Assaf Rappaport is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wiz, the world’s fastest-growing startup securing everything organizations build and run in the cloud. Wiz serves over 40% of the Fortune 100 and has raised over $1.9 billion at a $12 billion valuation in just four years, with investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Cyberstarts, Howard Schultz, and others. Before founding Wiz, Assaf was the founder and CEO of the security company Adallom, which was acquired by Microsoft for $320 million in 2015. He then served as Microsoft’s youngest-ever General Manager, overseeing the company’s Cloud Security Group and Israeli R&D Center.
As a world-class athlete, businesswoman, philanthropist and mother, Serena Williams knows what it takes to win. She has persevered to become one of the top tennis players in history with 23 Grand Slam titles. Serena began actively investing nine years ago when she saw the impact that startups had on everyday lives; in building Serena Ventures, she has been able to multiply that effort with over $110M in investment capital.
