Agenda
April 1st
Creating and Protecting IP Value in Connection with VC Financings
How do venture capital investors value formal Intellectual Property (IP) rights in connection with a decision to fund a technology or life sciences start-up? How do they conduct IP due diligence? How do investors and founders, post-funding, ensure their start-ups are pursuing an IP strategy that optimizes exit valuation for all? Perkins Coie partners Michael Glenn (Patent Prosecution) and Matt Oshinsky (Emerging Companies Venture Capital) will be joined alongside a seasoned venture capitalist to discuss these and other questions regarding safeguarding IP rights and maximizing the value of all technology development activities.
Finance for Founders
As a founder, you not only have to master your company’s finances, you also have to tackle your own personal finances. Managing your money as a founder comes with a unique set of questions (see: QSBS). Leveraging her expertise from LearnVest and as a Certified Financial Planner™, Alexa will share financial planning best practices so founders can remove this layer of stress from the pressure of building a business.
Finding Your Product Market Fit
Olive founder and CEO Sean Lane is no stranger to the pivot. Hear how he practiced patience in the search for product market fit, how he knew it when he finally found it, and tactics he used to build on it.
Scientist Entrepreneurs – Scaling Breakout Engineering Biology Companies
Biology as technology will re-invent trillion dollar industries and enhance human and planetary evolution. In this session, two early-stage investors and company builders, Arvind Gupta and Ursheet Parikh, will be in conversation with a leading author and seed investor Po Bronson, Managing Director of IndieBio. They will share their playbook on scaling start-ups touching upon three seminal areas which influence trajectory – fundraising, hiring, and product design. Their insights will draw on their experience with companies including ingredients-as-service leader Geltor which raised a $91 million Series B in 2020, CRISPR platform Mammoth Biosciences whose dream team includes co-founder Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna, and Endpoint Health, started by the founding team of GeneWEAVE (acquired by Roche) and former YC Bio Partner Diego Rey, which is designing a new class of therapeutic products that focus on hospital conditions that kill as many people as cancer.
How to Get an Investor's Attention
Marlon Nichols is an expert in early-stage investments, having invested in countless successful ventures such as Gimlet Media, MongoDB, Thrive Market, PlayVS, Fair, Wonderschool and Finesse. Right now, there is more seed stage fundraising than ever before, and Marlon will speak on how to get noticed by investors, how to grow your business and how to survive in the crowded, competitive space of tech startups. He will provide insights on how to network, craft a great pitch and target the best investors for your success.
Using Fast Feedback to Make Higher-Confidence Decisions and Accelerate the Dev Process
We’ll discuss how to use fast feedback methodologies to make high-confidence product decisions based on objective customer data in real time, without slowing the dev process. Quickly diagnose problems, settle disputes, reduce the risk of rework, and iterate faster. This session will include real-world case studies.
How to Nail Your Virtual Pitch Meeting
The rules of the pitch meeting have changed. Instead of traveling across the country, wasting time in planes, trains and automobiles, founders can take upwards of 30 meetings in a day from the comfort of their home. Entrepreneur and VC Melissa Bradley will outline how to make the most of that half hour on Zoom and lock in the next one.
Building and Leading a Sales Team
Contrary to popular opinion, even the very best products don’t sell themselves. Salespeople do. Hear from Zoom’s Chief Revenue Officer, at the helm of the company’s sales team during the biggest period of growth of any software company ever, lay out how to build a stellar sales team.
The All-22 View
Improving line of sight and dynamic field of play aperture is rarely discussed but hugely important. Great founders, operators and investors have an understanding of playbooks on both sides of the ball. We’ll talk through learnings and some ideas on how to build muscle memory and skillsets so that founders never lose perspective when it’s time to make a big decision.
How to Kick the 10 Worst Startup Habits
With voices across the internet giving their two-cents on how to run a great business, Fuel Capital’s Leah Solivan, who was CEO at TaskRabbit for 8 years, will share a list of things that a founder should NOT do. Avoid the pitfalls that could break your momentum, or worst case, your company and ask Solivan your own questions.
An M&A Playbook for Startup Founders: Lessons from Google and Microsoft
One of the most important decisions a founding team can make is when to consider selling the company to a strategic buyer. In this session, learn the tactics for approaching acquirors, avoiding common pitfalls and maximizing the likelihood of achieving an eye-popping valuation. Hear from Sean Dempsey, founding partner of Merus Capital who spent 10 years leading acquisitions for Google and Microsoft, and Dave Sobota, VP of Corporate Development at Instacart and former M&A leader at Google.
How To Build Your Early Team for Future Growth
More than your investors, or even you as a founder, your early employees will have a tremendous influence on the trajectory of your company. You hire them, and often times, they hire everyone else. Hear Bain Capital Ventures partner Sarah Smith talk through how to recruit a top-notch early team that sets up your startup for future growth.
Bootstrapping and the Power of Product-Led Growth
Building a bootstrapped company forces you to be creative. For Calendly, it pointed the company toward a product-led growth model built on virality. Hear from Calendly’s Tope Awotona, and OpenView’s Blake Bartlett, as they cover pro tips on bootstrapping, PLG, and when a profitable company should consider raising capital.
Leadership Culture and Good Governance
David Easton is a growth-stage partner at Generation Investment Management with portfolio companies that include Asana, Andela, Gusto, and Docusign, among others. Easton will talk through how to choose your board and foster a leadership culture that keeps sustainable, good governance top of mind.
How To Get Into An Accelerator
Accelerators provide an incredible launch pad for early stage startups, offering a built-in network, accessible advisors, and of course, capital. But first, you’ve got to be accepted. Hear Techstars Neal Sales-Griffin outline how to get into an accelerator and make the most of the experience.
What Startups Need to Know About Bug Bounties
Should all startups launch a bug bounty program to improve their security? Learn about the good, the bad, and the ugly that startups will encounter when managing vulnerability disclosures and considering bug bounty programs.
How to Scale a Remote-First Startup
You can’t compete in a global market without a global team — but where do you start? Job van der Voort, CEO of Remote and former VP of Product at GitLab, understands better than anyone the challenges of scaling an international workforce. In this talk, Job will teach you how to onboard your first international team member; how to scale a distributed team while retaining your culture; and how to leverage your global footprint into funding, revenue, and beyond.
4 Things to Think About Before Raising a Series A
Founders looking to raise Series A capital know that it’s an entirely different ball game than seed stage funding. Hear Kleiner Perkins partner Bucky Moore outline the most important ways to mentally prepare for heading into Series A fundraising.
Fundraising Terms that Affect Your Business
With each funding round, there is an exciting opportunity for growth, but it’s important to fully understand the implications of those terms. Fenwick partner, Dawn Belt, will discuss the key legal terms to focus on in your Seed and Series A rounds and how they affect the control and operational freedom of your company.
Why Founders should adopt OKRs now?
Execution is key to a start-up’s survival and growth especially when it comes to fast-moving software and technology products. Being in the tricky intersection of investors, customers and employees, a founder needs to balance priorities, align teams and create a visionary product that works. Moreover, in this age of hyper feedback loops and changing business models, the founder has to be agile enough to absorb and quickly react to changes in the product roadmap and consumer needs. OKRs – a toolkit used majorly by engineering and product teams is more than relevant now for founders of all kinds to embrace. Join the session to learn the history of OKRs, what they are about, and witness case studies of successful real-life adoption.
Naming & Protecting Your Company’s Intellectual Property with Brainbase
You have an idea for a game-changing product or service – what do you call it? Once you’ve picked a name, how do you make sure nobody else is using it? Is the domain and Twitter handle available? Brainbase makes it easy for anyone to file a trademark without a lawyer, and instantly own your brand across all channels. In this session, Brainbase co-founder and CEO Nate Cavanaugh will explain the importance of owning your company’s trademark, both for brand protection and for fundraising due diligence.
Nailing the little things: How startups can achieve operational excellence from "Day one"
The early days of launching a company can be a whirlwind for founding teams as unexpected challenges and opportunities require flexibility, agility and speed. But implementing a few key operating best practices and processes early can be a crucial part of a startup’s success or failure when it prepares for rapid growth. Join partners from B Capital Group, a multi-stage global investor, to learn about the most important things you can do to set your startup up for success early in your journey, and what will be most important to investors as you raise your Seed, A and B funding rounds. Speakers include Howard Morgan, Chairman of B Capital Group and co-founder of First Round Capital, and Partners Karen Page (formerly of Box) and Gabe Greenbaum (formerly of Pritzker Group).
April 2nd
TC Early Stage Pitch-Off – Session 1
Watch 10 global early-stage companies pitch to our panel of top VCs for a chance to get featured on TechCrunch.com, an annual Extra Crunch subscription and admission to TC Disrupt this September.
TC Early Stage Pitch-Off – Session 2
TC Early Stage Pitch-Off – Final Round
TC Early Stage Pitch-Off – Winner Announcement
THIS WEEK ONLY: Founder & Investor Bundle Deals
- Founder Bundles (4–9 passes) save 15% — Only available this week.
- Investor Bundles (4–9 passes) save 20% (up from 15%).
- Act fast — group deals end Oct 3.
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