TechCrunch Early Stage 2024
25 April
Selecting the Right Accelerator or Incubator
Incubators and accelerators often provide support structures for early-stage startups. For founders transitioning from academia, specific programs are often tailored to their unique needs, as these founders often seek assistance in defining the potential commercial viability of their research. Academia-sourced founders face unique challenges departing from institutions of higher education and national labs. Selecting the right startup program can help ensure that young companies seamlessly navigate known hurdles post-formation. Here’s what you need to know today.
Preparing to Raise: Cap Table Best Practices to Help You Close Fast
So, you’re preparing to raise money to fuel your startup. How confident are you that your cap table and data room are squeaky clean? This question should be top of mind for most founders because a messy data room may drag out your raise and could cost you tens of thousands in legal expenses. This session will cover the best practices to help you close easily and efficiently. We’ll equip you with tips from the legal perspective, the investor perspective, and the founder perspective. Founders will leave this session, armed with tangible, actionable guidance.
From Inception to Cash. How I Wandered into an Idea and Jumpstarted a Company
You’ll see exactly how we rapidly went from absolute zero to paying customers. How to ignite interest from customers and investors. How to get your first deals. How to build an MVP that captivates. How to raise initial capital from investors. How to pick a cofounder and build a team. How to build momentum. How to know when to double down and go all in. How to leverage every opportunity for success and generate momentum for your new company. This zero-fluff session is meant to show you how it can actually happen for you if you just start now.
Archetypes for Product-Market Fit
Finding product-market fit is the central quest of every early-stage startup, and there are many ways of thinking about and approaching this quest. In this session, Jess Lee, Partner and Chief Product Officer at Sequoia, will walk through a framework from Sequoia that outlines three distinct archetypes of PMF which help founders understand their product’s place in the market and determine how their company operates.
How to build an MVP and navigate the startup-industrial complex
The perfect minimum viable product (MVP) is a dance between building just enough to convince potential customers and users that you have created something that they want and need to use, and no more. The siren-song of adding more features, more polish, and spending more time is ever-present. NFX’s James Currier will provide his insight on the MVP question, and what he describes as the “startup-industrial complex.” For founders still hard at work on their startup’s first product launch, this is a must-attend session.
Building the Investor Relationships You Need—Before You Need Them and In The Right Way
Are you looking to raise funding for your startup? Building strong relationships with the right pre-qualified investors is crucial for your success. This session will provide you with a crash course on how to strategically manage inbound interest, effectively nurture these relationships, and share just enough to showcase your momentum while leaving investors hungry to hear more.
Scaling Through Chaos: The Art & Science of GTM
You start a company because you’re obsessed with solving a problem. But from the very beginning, you’ll discover that 50% of your time is taken up by people-related activities – hiring, retaining, organizing and inspiring your team. Based on the most extensive research ever performed into the growth of VC-backed businesses, including 200,000 career profiles of 200 companies such as Airbnb, Datadog, Figma, Stripe, and Wiz, Paris Heymann, Partner at Index Ventures, shares his top tips for today’s early stage founders building out their SaaS GTM function.
How to Raise Money and Come Out Alive
There’s an art to raising your first round — especially if you want to do it right and not look back years later and regret terms, conditions or side-letters. In this session, Tom Blomfield, Y Combinator group partner and Monzo co-founder, will lay out how investors think, the common gotchas that might come back to haunt you later, and how you can put your company in the strongest possible position to raise. After all, who wants to enter the 2024 fundraising hunger games with outdated information?
Getting to Series A: Common Pitfalls to Avoid as a Founder
The journey of an early-stage founder is one of the hardest. Plenty of companies with enormous potential fall short before the founder’s vision even has a chance to gain momentum in the market. Alex Kayyal is a former entrepreneur and VC veteran and has seen what it takes for early stage companies to scale to category winners. This session will go in-depth on the most common pitfalls that early-stage founders fall for – and how to ensure your company makes it to Series A and beyond.
Hard Tech for Early-Stage Founders: HAX Invests in Startups Solving the Hardest Problems in Climate, Industrial Independence, and Healthcare
There’s no tougher, early stage startup category than hard tech, and no one knows that better than SOSV’s HAX team, which has backed more than 300 startups with capital and intensive design, scientific advancement and commercial engineering over the past 12 years. In this session, Duncan Turner, SOSV GP and HAX Managing Director, and Dr. Susan Schofer, HAX Chief Science Officer, discuss the hard tech / physical sciences ecosystem today, how HAX’s full-stack technical team turns unique IP from research into commercial reality, and what hard tech investing categories excite the HAX team. Duncan and Susan will also provide an update on HAX’s new, 35,000 sq foot office in Newark, NJ, where 30 startups are currently at work.
How to Intelligently Calculate your TAM and Wow Investors
How big is your market? Every founder pitching investors and early employees has faced the question. How to properly answer it is anything but simple. There are different ways to measure total addressable market (TAM), and varied ways to approach it from different industries. Without a big market, no startup has a shot at becoming big. And a TAM number that is too big to be believed can make a founder appear ungrounded. Coming up with the largest, reasonable figure is the challenge. If you are a founder building out a pitch deck, or just working on a napkin to sort out whether or not an idea is worth your time, this is the session for you. Tobi Coker from Felicis, Freddie Vargus from Quotient AI, and Nabiha Saklayen from Cellino, will be on hand to describe how they approach TAM from both the investor and founder perspective, and answer your questions.
How to Evolve Your Tech and Staff Strategies for Future Rounds
Discover how to be an operational unicorn, not just a commercial one, even when your team and tech feel strapped. This session will explore practical but meaningful strategies early-stage companies can use to meet technical and staffing needs that will stay in flux across their growth journey. Attendees will come away with actionable insights to overcome their skills gaps, maximize the productivity of small teams, and ensure the agility to adapt quickly to meet market and investor demands.
Early Stage Fundraising: Convertible Notes, SAFE and Series Seed Financing
Learn from an early stage fractional General Counsel about different funding mechanisms for early stage companies, including convertible notes, Simple Agreements for Future Equity (SAFE) and Series Seed financing rounds. This session will cover pros and cons of these alternatives, demystify standard terms, note potential pitfalls to avoid and suggest some key points to consider when negotiating.
The VC Pitch Blueprint: Strategies for Success
Uncover the secrets of successful VC pitching with Sara Choi, partner and biotech investor at Wing Venture Capital. Drawing from her background as a founder turned investor, Sara will reveal the most common misconceptions when pitching a VC, key elements investors want to see in your pitch deck, preparation strategies, ideal presenters and more. This session will arm you with the tools needed to captivate investors, refine your pitch approach and ultimately secure funding.
Racing the Clock to $1M In ARR: Best Practices for Learning Fast from Launch Partners
After securing your seed round, the race is on to prove product-market fit and scale ARR. With the clock ticking, limited seed dollars and a challenging macroeconomic environment raising the bar to secure your next round, founder margin for error is slim and execution is critical. This session delves into best practices for rapidly iterating on the lessons learned from your launch partners (e.g., your early customers). Learn how to ask the right questions, get actionable answers, respond efficiently and avoid spinning your wheels at this critical juncture in your company’s growth.
So You Think You Can Pitch?
Please join us for “So You Think You Can Pitch” where three promising early stage startups will have 4 minutes to wow a panel of judges, who will then provide feedback. Participating startups include Ti¢ker, GovGPT, and ChargeBay.
