This Builder Stage session brings together Katie Stanton ( Moxxie Ventures), Thomas Krane ( Insight Partners), and Sangeen Zeb ( GV). They've seen thousands of decks, led major rounds, and helped steer startups from scrappy beginnings to breakout scale. You'll hear what actually moves a pitch from "maybe" to "we're in," including the metrics that matter, how to tell your growth story, and what causes investors to walk away.
Few embody what it means to build with discipline in a tough market better than Chris Britt, co-founder and CEO of Chime. What began as a scrappy fintech challenger has grown into one of the rare companies to go public in today's challenging environment. In his session, Building a Company that Lasts, Britt will share the lessons behind Chime's rise - from weathering market headwinds to making the leap from private to public when so few manage it.
More than a decade ago, Jason Citron took the Disrupt stage to pitch his early-stage company in the Startup Battlefield competition at TechCrunch Disrupt as a scrappy founder pitching his vision. Today, he's built Discord into one of the most successful consumer platforms of its era - valued in the billions and redefining how communities connect, game, and share online.
David Fischer - Former CRO at Meta, Fischer scaled annual revenue from less than $1 billion to over $100 billion, connecting 200 million businesses with customers worldwide. Earlier, he built Google's early sales engine. Adam Bain - Former COO of Twitter, Bain built its sales, product, and ad operations from scratch, growing revenue from millions to billions in five years.
During the pandemic, one of our toughest challenges was sourcing enough supplies to keep up with surging demand. In the years since, we've seen our fair share of ups and downs on that front, but one thing has remained constant: the importance of strong, trusted relationships with our suppliers. They've been incredible partners through it all, and those collaborations have been key to helping us navigate post-pandemic growth with resilience and adaptability.
Entrepreneurs perhaps expect to lose sleep (and all sense of control over their inbox) when scaling their venture from a startup into a unicorn. However, one millennial founder was warned he'd have to also lose his entire leadership team in the process. When Alex Bouaziz launched the HR platform Deel in 2019, he was just 25 years old. Although he had already put his weight behind a couple of "nice but very small scale" startups, he insists that this was a "completely different beast".