You can learn a lot from a good founder session. But sometimes the next action-changing conversation happens five minutes after the conversation ends. And you’ll have another reason to be sure to be there, as the event takes place tomorrow. This format is designed to allow founders to learn in different ways throughout the day.
On November 4th, TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 will bring founders and investors to Boston’s SoWa Power Station for a day of hands-on learning, candid conversations, live pitches, small roundtables, and networking.
Register now to save up to $100 on passes and get a second pass for free. Or save up to 30% on group bundles.
Full day founder bootcamp
Starting with the Build Stage: Practical lessons for building what comes next
The Build stage focuses on decisions that founders make while they are still forming, testing, and growing their business. These sessions provide an in-depth look at the mechanics behind starting a company, from sales and fundraising to team building and pitching.
NEA’s Hunter Worland begins the conversation about why distribution can be a startup’s next competitive advantage, especially when powerful technology alone isn’t enough to win customers.
Fidelity Private Shares’ Kristen Craft provides the latest perspective on funding trends, helping founders understand how the capital landscape is changing and what it means for their next round of funding.
This stage also gets tactical about building high-performing teams and honing the story you tell investors, customers, and potential employees.
Dave Balter of True Ventures and Edisyl answers a seemingly simple question. “Will your pitch generate another conversation?”
The value of Build Stage is clear. These are lessons that founders can immediately take back to their companies.
Use impact stages to think about what happens after something starts working
If the Build stage is about creating momentum, the Impact stage is about what happens after that momentum becomes reality. This is a place where founders can step back and think about bigger decisions around product-market fit, scaling, company relationships, leadership, and long-term growth.
Steve Fredette, president, co-founder, and director of Toast, brings a perspective on building and scaling one of Boston’s most storied startup success stories.
Rudina Seseri, founder and managing partner of Glasswing Ventures, explores the tensions that all founders eventually face. It’s about when to scale up and when to pump the brakes to actually protect your business.
Bessemer Venture Partners’ Kent Bennett addresses product-market fit before scale, helping founders think more critically about whether the signals they’re seeing really justify the next stage of growth.
Chase Garbarino, CEO and co-founder of HqO, brings back the conversation about the Boston Founder’s Handbook and his perspective on building ambitious companies outside of the Bay Area.
The impact stage is valuable because it creates space for founders to get out of the weeds a bit and ask themselves if they’re scaling the right thing, in the right way, at the right time.
Go deeper into the roundtable
Main stage sessions allow you to gain perspective. Roundtables give room for specific opinions.
Founder Summit’s small roundtables are built around highly focused problems that many founders are actively solving today, from breaking into difficult verticals and building trust in companies to building lean teams and opening doors with big customers.
Define Ventures’ Chirag Shah takes a deep dive into what happens when your first industry is one of the most difficult to enter.
In a technical session with Shishir Tewari from Procore Technologies, the conversation about AI moved from broad hype to the practical challenges of mitigating hallucinations in a better enterprise context.
ADIN.AI’s Merve Kirapci gets very specific about enterprise sales and what it takes to win major global accounts before Series A.
Andy Tang of Draper Associates starts a conversation with a different kind of founder. What if you’re building something that doesn’t even have a name on the market yet?
IFTTT’s Linden Tibbets explores how AI has the potential to change the assumptions founders have about team size, productivity, and what small businesses can realistically achieve.
The value here is participation. Rather than just hearing how others have approached problems, founders can bring in their own questions, compare experiences with those around the table, and come away with ideas that are much closer to the actual business.
Watch us test startup pitch advice live
Founder Summit will also give attendees the opportunity to see what happens when founders get their stories in front of investors in real time.
In So You Think You Can Pitch?, founders make their case in front of investors including Dave Balter, Chirag Shah, and Maveron’s Simran Suri.
This is one of the most interactive parts of the day because it turns pitching advice into something founders can actually see. That means you can see what captures investors’ attention, where the story loses momentum, and what questions immediately pop up.
For anyone preparing to raise money, sell, hire, or simply explain their company more clearly, seeing these reactions live can be invaluable.
Create meaningful connections with Braindate networking
The Networking Lounge, powered by Braindate, gives attendees another way to connect intentionally throughout the day.
Schedule a one-on-one conversation. Join a small group. Find someone you want to talk to about the very challenge you’re working on.
Listen to a session on product-market fit, then find other founders working on the same problem. Watch pitch contests and compare notes with others who are preparing their own fundraisers. Listen to the Boston Founder’s Handbook, then meet other founders who are doing just that. Braindate helps you turn your content into conversations.
Please continue at the closing reception.
The day ends with a closing reception hosted by Fidelity Private Shares, giving attendees time to continue the conversation without rushing to the next session.
This is important because some of the most useful connections at an event occur after sharing a room, asking a question, or having a conversation earlier in the day.
One day, several learning methods were discovered.
Founder Summit isn’t built around one type of conference experience. Build Stage provides founders with practical lessons they can apply today. The Impact stage creates room for greater growth and leadership decisions. Roundtables allow you to ask questions and dig deeper. A live pitch contest puts founders’ storytelling to the test. Braindate is intentional about networking. And reception provides a place to continue that conversation. That combination makes the day worthwhile.
Bring a partner and cover more ground
TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 will be held on November 4th at SoWa Power Station in Boston. There’s still time to join us in Boston. The current Founder Summit pass includes access to breakout sessions, roundtables, Braindate networking, Expo Hall, and post-event session materials.
Even better, buy one pass now and get the second one for free. Bring in your co-founders. Please bring your partner. Regardless, have someone with you throughout the day to text you takeaways from the session. Get a pass, bring someone for free, and join Boston’s founder community.
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