TechCrunch Early Stage is coming around the corner fast, April 1 & 2nd. And you still have a chance to pitch your startup on the famous TC stage to an amazing line up of judges. On April 2nd, TechCrunch will feature ten top startups across the globe at the Early Stage Pitch Off. Companies will garner the attention of press and investors worldwide. Founders – apply here by March 9th.
The pitch-off will consist of a 5 minute presentation followed by a Q&A with our expert panel of judges. The top three companies will move to a final round, this time with a more in-depth Q&A. The winner will get a feature article on TechCrunch.com, one-year free subscription to Extra Crunch and a free Founder Pass to TechCrunch Disrupt this fall.
We know you’re excited to know who you’ll be pitching to. So without further ado, here are a few of the judges for the Early Stage Pitch-Off:
Lucy Deland – Inspired Capital
Bucky Moore – Kleiner Perkins
Bucky Moore is a partner at Kleiner Perkins focusing on developer facing software and infrastructure investments. As an early investor, Bucky serves on the boards of some of the most innovative software companies including Netlify, Materialize, CodeSandbox, Opstrace and Stackbit.
Marlon Nichols – MaC Venture Capital
Marlon Nichols is the founding managing partner at MaC Venture Capital (formerly Cross Culture Ventures), which finds entrepreneurs who are building the future for the rest of America. He’s a former Kauffman Fellow and Investment Director at Intel Capital, with an extensive background in technology, private equity, media and entertainment.
Eghosa Omoigui – EchoVC Partners
Neal Sales-Griffin – TechStars
Sarah Smith – Bain Capital
Leah Solivan – Fuel Capital
Stephanie Zahn – Sequoia Capital
Stephanie Zhan is a partner on the early stage investing team at Sequoia Capital. She grew up in Hong Kong and Beijing and studied Computer Science at Stanford. At Sequoia, she loves partnering with founders pushing the boundaries of creating meaningful experiences in consumer, enterprise, and frontier technology. She has led Sequoia’s investmentsin Rec Room (digital third place), Brud (modern-day Marvel through computer-generated characters that become social media celebrities), Ethos (a modern life insurance company), Graphcore (microprocessors for machine intelligence), Linear (issues tracking tool), Evervault (dev tools for data privacy) and Middesk (background checks for businesses) among others.
Early Stage Day 1 will be filled with must-see panels from the judges above and more:
- How to Build Your Early Team for Future Growth (Sarah Smith, Bain Capital Ventures)
- 10 Things NOT to Do When Starting a Company (Leah Solivan, Fuel Capital)
- Four Things to Think About Before Raising a Series A (Bucky Moore, Kleiner Perkins)
- How to Get An Investor’s Attention (Marlon Nichols, MaC Venture Capital)
And that’s not all. If you snag your ticket to TC Early Stage, you get free access to Extra Crunch! An Extra Crunch membership includes: