TechCrunch covers a lot of bases in the tech startup world, but none is more important than supporting founders — especially early-stage founders. That’s what our new event series, TechCrunch Early Stage, is all about.
These single-day events debuting next year will be highly interactive opportunities for founders to tap experts in the core startup disciplines, starting with early-stage investors (lots of investors), legal whizzes, growth gurus, product-market fit wallahs, tech stack experts, recruiting aces and much more, including workshops on pitch breakdowns.
TechCrunch’s goal is to provide founders with insights and new relationships on par with what an accelerator experience provides, only in a single day, and with a much greater variety of experts and investors.
TC Early Stage is an outgrowth of Extra Crunch, TechCrunch’s subscription-based editorial offering that focuses on deep analysis and advice around the big topics facing founders. In October this year at Disrupt SF, we brought Extra Crunch to life on its own stage and featured experts on dozens of topics, including:
- How to Raise My First Dollars (Russ Heddleston, DocSend, Charles Hudson, Precursor Ventures and Annie Kadavy, Redpoint Ventures)
- How to Hire at Breakneck Speed (Scott Cutler, StockX, Harjeet Taggar, TripleByte and Liz Wessel, WayUp)
- How to Evaluate Talent and Make Decisions (Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Capital)
- How to Get into Y Combinator (Michael Siebel, Y Combinator)
- How to Decide Between Bootstrapping and Raising Venture (Ben Chestnut, Mailchimp and Kathryn Petralia, Kabbage)
The sessions were mobbed. The TechCrunch team knows a winner when they see one, and the result is this new event series. The first of three TC Early Stage events next year will be in San Francisco on April 28, with one in Paris on October 28 and another in New York City (date TBA).
TC Early Stage is designed for founders who are in their early innings, anywhere from pre-seed through Series A, when entrepreneurs need all the guidance they can get. With that in mind, the event’s heart is dozens of breakout sessions run by experts and curated by TechCrunch editors. The breakouts will be long on attendee questions and conversation, and the event is structured so that attendees can easily get to six to eight different breakouts over the course of the day. In addition, TechCrunch editors will hold a handful of interviews on a main stage with notable founders and investors in time slots that will not conflict with the breakouts.
Here is a sampling of the types of breakout sessions TechCrunch Early Stage will feature:
- Raising a first seed round
- Landing a Series A
- Raising early-stage investment for a SaaS company (also consumer and other major categories)
- Considering your first term sheet
- Growing users fast
- Recruiting a fabulous team
- Building a tech stack (you won’t regret)
Between sessions, attendees also can meet the experts running the breakout sessions, as well as each other, via CrunchMatch, TechCrunch’s event networking platform that connects like-minded attendees and arranges a meeting time and place.
The TechCrunch team is already busy building an all-star lineup for experts for the breakout sessions and memorable interviews for the main stage. The response from the expert community around TechCrunch has been resoundingly clear. Everyone sees the need — the deeper education of early-stage founders — and they love the TC Early Stage format — a single day, highly interactive event that brings together early-stage founders with an unprecedented collection of experts from across the startup ecosystem.
Tickets for the San Francisco event are available now, so jump in and grab yours to secure your seat while they last.
Not an early-stage founder? That’s okay, too. Later-stage founders, investors or just general startup enthusiasts are welcome to attend. A limited number of “Innovator passes” are available for folks who are not early-stage founders.
Partners are also very welcome! The event has many sponsorship opportunities, including breakout sessions. Contact the sales team to learn more by filling out this form.