Disrupt 2020
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Edtech investors are panning for gold
The spotlight on edtech grows brighter and harsher: On one end, remote-learning startups are attracting millions in venture capital. On the other, many educators and parents are unimpressed with the technology that enables virtual learning and gaps remain in and out of the classroom.
It’s clear that edtech’s nebulous pain points — screen time, childcare and classroom management — require innovation. But as founders flurry to a sector recently rejuvenated with capital, the influx of interest has not fostered any breakout solutions. As a result, edtech investors must hone their skills at sorting the innovators from the opportunists amid the rush.
Lucky for us, investors shared notes during TechCrunch Disrupt and offline regarding how they are separating the gold from the dust, giving us a peek into their due diligence process (and inboxes).
Putting profitability over growth
The pandemic has broadly forced founders to get more conservative and prioritize profitability over the usual “growth at all costs” startup mentality. Growth still matters, but within edtech, the boom comes with a big focus on profitability, efficacy, outcomes and societal impact.
“The goal of all of education is personalized learning, when every student receives exactly the instruction in the way that they need it at the time that they need it. And that’s really, really difficult to do if you’re trying to have one person teach 180 students,” said Mercedes Bent of Lightspeed Venture Partners. “And so I’ve been excited to see more solutions that are focused on creating smaller class sizes that are also focused on allowing students to connect with people outside of their homes as well.”
During Disrupt, Reach Capital’s Jennifer Carolan brought up a recent Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma,” which illustrates the impact screen time can have on society. When vetting companies, Carolan said she wanted to see founders who have considered how their products may impact young users.
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Perigee infrastructure security solution from former NSA employee moves into public beta
Perigee founder Mollie Breen used to work for NSA where she built a security solution to help protect the agency’s critical infrastructure. She spent the last two years at Harvard Business School talking to Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and fine-tuning that idea she started at NSA into a commercial product.
Today, the solution that she built moves into public beta and will compete at TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield with other startups for $100,000 and the Disrupt Cup.
Perigree helps protect things like heating and cooling systems or elevators that may lack patches or true security, yet are connected to the network in a very real way. It learns what normal behavior looks like from an operations system when it interacts with the network, such as what systems it interacts with and which individual employees tend to access it. It can then determine when something seems awry and stop an anomalous activity before it reaches the network. Without a solution like the one Breen has built, these systems would be vulnerable to attack.
“Perigee is a cloud-based platform that creates a custom firewall for every device on your network,” Breen told TechCrunch. “It learns each device’s unique behavior, the quirks of its operational environment and how it interacts with other devices to prevent malicious and abnormal usage while providing analytics to boost performance.”
Image Credits: Perigee
One of the key aspects of her solution is that it doesn’t require an agent, a small piece of software on the device, to make it work. Breen says this is especially important since that approach doesn’t scale across thousands of devices and can also introduce bugs from the agent itself. What’s more, it can use up precious resources on these devices if they can even support a software agent.
“Our sweet spot is that we can protect those thousands of devices by learning those nuances and we can do that really quickly, scaling up to thousands of devices with our generalized model because we take this agentless-based approach,” she said.
By creating these custom firewalls, her company is able to place security in front of the device preventing a hacker from using it as a vehicle to get on the network.
“One thing that makes us fundamentally different from other companies out there is that we sit in front of all of these devices as a shield,” she said. That essentially stops an attack before it reaches the device.
While Breen acknowledges that her approach can add a small bit of latency, it’s a tradeoff that CISOs have told her they are willing to make to protect these kinds of operational systems from possible attacks. Her system is also providing real-time status updates on how these devices are operating, giving them centralized device visibility. If there are issues found, the software recommends corrective action.
It’s still very early for her company, which Breen founded last year. She has raised an undisclosed amount of pre-seed capital. While Perigee is pre-revenue with just one employee, she is looking to add paying customers and begin growing the company as she moves into a wider public beta.
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Here’s what’s happening at Disrupt 2020 today
Rise, shine and build your business startup fans. It’s day four of Disrupt 2020, and this is your daily snapshot of just some of the heavy-hitters, events, breakout sessions and all-around opportunity that’s yours for the taking.
Looking for the complete lineup? You’ll find it in the Disrupt agenda. Note: unless otherwise stated, all times are PST. Kicking yourself for not jumping on the opportunity bandwagon? Simply buy a Disrupt pass here, and kick your regrets to the curb.
Buckle up, folks — you’re in for a great day.
Athleisure wear is one of the hottest trends in retail, and it’s certainly a popular work-at-home wardrobe during a pandemic. Head to the Disrupt Stage and join comedian/tech investor Kevin Hart and Fabletics’ Adam Goldenberg for Retail is in the Details. They’ll talk about the company’s future and the type of tech Hart may invest in next (9:05 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.).
Everybody loves robots, but not many people know more about them than Boston Dynamics’ Robert Playter. You’ll find him on the Disrupt Stage talking about the company’s transition from robotics research to commercial production. Don’t miss Putting Robots to Work (10:00 a.m. – 10:20 a.m.)
We trust you haven’t missed a minute of the always-thrilling Startup Battlefield pitch competition. Still, a reminder never hurts. Session four takes place on the Disrupt Stage. Don’t miss watching today’s cohort lay it all on the line for a shot at $100,000 (10:40 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.).
Okay folks this session, Under the Radar, is a big, big deal. Legendary VC and Silicon Valley force of nature, Benchmark’s Peter Fenton joins us on the Disrupt Stage for a rare interview. Topic? The future of startups and venture capital (11:45 a.m. – 12:05 p.m.).
Head to the Extra Crunch Stage for product development tips from current and former product heads at places like Facebook, Zoom, Slack, Hulu and Oculus. Zoom’s Oded Gal, Advisor’s Eugene Wei, Slack’s Tamar Yehoshua and Inspirit’s Julie Zhuo will discuss How to Iterate Your Product (11:50 a.m. – 12:45 p.m.).
Data security is everyone’s concern — from budding startup founders all the way up to the NSA. Don’t miss Spycraft and Cybersecurity and the opportunity to hear Anne Neuberger, head of the NSA’s new Cybersecurity Directorate. She’ll take to the Disrupt Stage and discuss cyber threats, disrupting foreign adversaries and helping you improve your own cybersecurity (1:00 p.m. – 1:20 p.m.).
Whew, that rundown should whet your appetite for the day ahead. Connect, inspire, collaborate and take advantage of all the tips, advice, tools and opportunity Disrupt 2020 offers.
Still standing on the sidelines? You have two full days left to Disrupt and reject regret. Buy a Disrupt pass right now.
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The art of pivoting with Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins and Jessica Matthews
Building and growing a startup is hard, but pivoting said startup into something new and then achieving that same growth is even harder. But it’s not impossible.
Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, founder and CEO of PromisePay, and Jessica Matthews, founder and CEO of Uncharted Power, both have experiences doing this. At TechCrunch Disrupt, they shed some light on their respective, yet somewhat similar, paths.
PromisePay, formerly known as Promise, got its start as a bail reform startup that aimed to reduce the number of people held behind bars simply because they can’t pay bail. Now, it’s focused on helping people make payments for parking and traffic tickets, court fees and child support.
“We actually had this huge existential crisis,” Ellis-Lamkins said. “We at Promise are focused on ending mass incarceration and on decreasing the number of people in jails. So we started to be very successful and we sold very well. And what we realized fundamentally is when we created efficiency, it made the systems more efficient at incarcerating people. It didn’t make them more efficient at what our wrong assumption had been, which is if the system is more efficient, it would decrease the number of people in the system. And so we made a decision that growth was not consistent with who we were as a company. So I went back to our investors, which is hard when you’re making money and said, this is not the path because I don’t think this is a long-term path.”
She told investors there are already people who sell their tech to law enforcement, but what Promise wants to do is liberate people. It became clear to her that she was selling to the wrong people when she was talking to a client who said the difference between them and her was that she cares about people in the criminal justice system and they don’t. Ellis-Lamkins told investors she was going to stop selling to prisons and jails, and offered to give investors their money back.
Instead, she started looking at why people are ending up incarcerated.
“And luckily, that spurred growth, but I’m just not going to be a company that grows on the backs of poor people and Black and brown people, because there is a better way,” she said. “But it was frightening in the moment to abandon a market in which we’re making money.”
Thankfully, she said, not one of her investors had a problem with her decision.
Matthews said she had a relatively similar experience with her company, Uncharted Power, which got its start as Uncharted Play. Her company’s first product was an energy-harnessing soccer ball that could power a lamp after just a few hours of playing with it. She later integrated that tech intro strollers to power cell phones.
But after raising her Series A round for Uncharted Play, Matthews realized that her company needed to go all-in on infrastructure. She thought about the ultimate goal of her company, which is to get people the infrastructure they need in their lives. She just didn’t see a way of doing that with soccer balls.
“So we got good at making these things and pushing them and scaling them out, but when you have this balance of not just profit and impact but impact because you know that you’re a member of the group you’re trying to serve. For me, it was sitting down and saying is this actually solving the problem even if it’s successful.”
Matthews said she realized it wasn’t. So that meant walking away from the products that were bringing in millions and had 64% gross profit margins, Matthews said.
But it all paid off. Last year, Uncharted Power raised additional funding from an investor that validated her thesis for the future of power infrastructure.
“That moment was huge for us,” she said.
Matthews and Ellis-Lamkins also had some other gems worth sharing about imposter syndrome and measuring success. Here are some more highlights from the conversation.
On imposter syndrome and representation
Ellis-Lamkins:
It feels like tech has failed so significantly in investing in people they don’t know and missed out in growing companies because of that. So I think our obligation is to help make sure that we are not the only ones.
Matthews:
It’s not imposter syndrome, it’s representation syndrome because I feel the exact same way. When we raised our Series A, the immediate thing I thought was, ‘Oh, man. I can not lose these people’s money.’ This is huge and if we don’t work, it’s not even about us, it’s about every other person who looks like me.
On measuring success
Ellis-Lamkins:
I think part of what we should measure is how does technology improve our society in general, a measurement of success. I do think that if we measure success, it should not just be, I could make a billion dollars or have a company that valued at a billion dollars if the consequences are greater than the actual benefit and so I think that’s really important.
Matthews:
Let’s get rid of the term “social enterprise.” It’s bullshit. Enterprise is an enterprise. A problem’s a problem. Let’s create a value system based on the problems. There are some problems that are more important than others. And knowing that means we need to back and support the founders who get that more than others, and then beyond that.
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Luther.AI is a new AI tool that acts like Google for personal conversations
When it comes to pop culture, a company executive or history questions, most of us use Google as a memory crutch to recall information we can’t always keep in our heads, but Google can’t help you remember the name of your client’s spouse or the great idea you came up with at a meeting the other day.
Enter Luther.AI, which purports to be Google for your memory by capturing and transcribing audio recordings, while using AI to deliver the right information from your virtual memory bank in the moment of another online conversation or via search.
The company is releasing an initial browser-based version of their product this week at TechCrunch Disrupt where it’s competing for the $100,000 prize at TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield.
Luther.AI’s founders say the company is built on the premise that human memory is fallible, and that weakness limits our individual intelligence. The idea behind Luther.AI is to provide a tool to retain, recall and even augment our own brains.
It’s a tall order, but the company’s founders believe it’s possible through the growing power of artificial intelligence and other technologies.
“It’s made possible through a convergence of neuroscience, NLP and blockchain to deliver seamless in-the-moment recall. GPT-3 is built on the memories of the public internet, while Luther is built on the memories of your private self,” company founder and CEO Suman Kanuganti told TechCrunch.
It starts by recording your interactions throughout the day. For starters, that will be online meetings in a browser, as we find ourselves in a time where that is the way we interact most often. Over time though, they envision a high-quality 5G recording device you wear throughout your day at work and capture your interactions.
If that is worrisome to you from a privacy perspective, Luther is building in a few safeguards starting with high-end encryption. Further, you can only save other parties’ parts of a conversation with their explicit permission. “Technologically, we make users the owner of what they are speaking. So for example, if you and I are having a conversation in the physical world unless you provide explicit permission, your memories are not shared from this particular conversation with me,” Kanuganti explained.
Finally, each person owns their own data in Luther and nobody else can access or use these conversations either from Luther or any other individual. They will eventually enforce this ownership using blockchain technology, although Kanuganti says that will be added in a future version of the product.
Image Credits: Luther.ai
Kanuganti says the true power of the product won’t be realized with a few individuals using the product inside a company, but in the network effect of having dozens or hundreds of people using it, even though it will have utility even for an individual to help with memory recall, he said.
While they are releasing the browser-based product this week, they will eventually have a stand-alone app, and can also envision other applications taking advantage of the technology in the future via an API where developers can build Luther functionality into other apps.
The company was founded at the beginning of this year by Kanuganti and three co-founders including CTO Sharon Zhang, design director Kristie Kaiser and scientist Marc Ettlinger . It has raised $500,000 and currently has 14 employees including the founders.
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Roelof Botha shares what Sequoia’s Black Swan memo got wrong
In March, famed investment firm Sequoia Capital published the Black Swan Memo, warning founders about the potential business consequences of the coronavirus, which had not yet been labeled a pandemic.
“It will take considerable time — perhaps several quarters — before we can be confident that the virus has been contained. It will take even longer for the global economy to recover its footing,” the memo read.
Six months later, Sequoia’s Roelof Botha is “surprised” at the state of venture capital and startups in the country, which are largely benefitting from — not struggling with — from COVID-19 tailwinds.
VCs are pouring money at a rapid clip into edtech, SaaS, low-code and no code, as well as telemedicine. In some cases, investors say venture funding has been hotter than ever ahead of the U.S. elections, beating not just March 2020, but 2019 records overall.
Sequoia, it seems, is happy to be wrong. This week, Sequoia Capital will have backed three of the 12 companies going public: Sumo Logic, Unity, and Snowflake. Snowflake is expected to go out at $30 billion valuation, which some say will be the largest U.S. software company to ever go public. Beyond the firm, numbers of unicorns are gearing up, or teasing, to go public in the coming weeks.
“I’m proud of the fact that we saw a few things and anticipated a few things,” he said during TechCrunch Disrupt. “But we also got many things wrong.”
Botha pointed to a few factors that saved startupland from freezing up. First, he said the U.S. government’s stimulus package helped make sure that there was not a “complete economic meltdown.”
“I didn’t quite expect that scale reaction,” Botha said. He’s referring to the $2 trillion CARES Act passed by Congress and signed by President Trump, which included PPP loans designed to provide a direct incentive for small businesses to keep their workers on the payroll. Tech recipients included Bolt Mobility, Getaround, Luminar, Stackin, TuSimple and Velodyne.
Botha addressed how tech companies have helped sustain businesses and operations amid the pandemic, which has trickled down to new customer growth and revenue.
Zoom, a Sequoia portfolio company, might be one of the best examples of how a tech company was poised to skyrocket during the pandemic. According to Botha, the firm, which still owns shares in the company, wishes it had held onto more of its position longer. Sequoia invested in Zoom when it was valued at $1 billion. Today, it is worth more than $100 billion, graduating from an enterprise videoconferencing service to a household consumer product.
To be fair, some of Sequoia’s warning signs proved true: Layoffs inundated Silicon Valley; companies shuttered citing a drop in revenue; and the market remains volatile.
“We also have to realize there’s a lot of pain and there are many mainstream businesses and local services and restaurants and coffee shops that often suffer economically,” he said. “I don’t want to be overly sanguine just because technology stocks have had a good run. As a country, we need to brace ourselves for helping everybody.”
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Latent AI makes edge AI workloads more efficient
Latent AI, a startup that was spun out of SRI International, makes it easier to run AI workloads at the edge by dynamically managing workloads as necessary.
Using its proprietary compression and compilation process, Latent AI promises to compress library files by 10x and run them with 5x lower latency than other systems, all while using less power thanks to its new adaptive AI technology, which the company is launching as part of its appearance in the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield competition today.
Founded by CEO Jags Kandasamy and CTO Sek Chai, the company has already raised a $6.5 million seed round led by Steve Jurvetson of Future Ventures and followed by Autotech Ventures .
Before starting Latent AI, Kandasamy sold his previous startup OtoSense to Analog Devices (in addition to managing HPE Mid-Market Security business before that). OtoSense used data from sound and vibration sensors for predictive maintenance use cases. Before its sale, the company worked with the likes of Delta Airlines and Airbus.
Image Credits: Latent AI
In some ways, Latent AI picks up some of this work and marries it with IP from SRI International .
“With OtoSense, I had already done some edge work,” Kandasamy said. “We had moved the audio recognition part out of the cloud. We did the learning in the cloud, but the recognition was done in the edge device and we had to convert quickly and get it down. Our bill in the first few months made us move that way. You couldn’t be streaming data over LTE or 3G for too long.”
At SRI, Chai worked on a project that looked at how to best manage power for flying objects where, if you have a single source of power, the system could intelligently allocate resources for either powering the flight or running the onboard compute workloads, mostly for surveillance, and then switch between them as needed. Most of the time, in a surveillance use case, nothing happens. And while that’s the case, you don’t need to compute every frame you see.
“We took that and we made it into a tool and a platform so that you can apply it to all sorts of use cases, from voice to vision to segmentation to time series stuff,” Kandasamy explained.
What’s important to note here is that the company offers the various components of what it calls the Latent AI Efficient Inference Platform (LEIP) as standalone modules or as a fully integrated system. The compressor and compiler are the first two of these and what the company is launching today is LEIP Adapt, the part of the system that manages the dynamic AI workloads Kandasamy described above.
Image Credits: Latent AI
In practical terms, the use case for LEIP Adapt is that your battery-powered smart doorbell, for example, can run in a low-powered mode for a long time, waiting for something to happen. Then, when somebody arrives at your door, the camera wakes up to run a larger model — maybe even on the doorbell’s base station that is plugged into power — to do image recognition. And if a whole group of people arrives at ones (which isn’t likely right now, but maybe next year, after the pandemic is under control), the system can offload the workload to the cloud as needed.
Kandasamy tells me that the interest in the technology has been “tremendous.” Given his previous experience and the network of SRI International, it’s maybe no surprise that Latent AI is getting a lot of interest from the automotive industry, but Kandasamy also noted that the company is working with consumer companies, including a camera and a hearing aid maker.
The company is also working with a major telco company that is looking at Latent AI as part of its AI orchestration platform and a large CDN provider to help them run AI workloads on a JavaScript backend.
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Tune in today at 12pm PDT for an essential Disrupt 2020 Sneak Peek
Are you ready to experience a Disrupt event like no other? Thousands of attendees from around the world, an all-star lineup of tech icons, movers, shakers and unicorn makers. Opportunities around every corner just waiting to be discovered. Are we amped up at the thought of what will transpire over the next five days? Heck yeah!
Okay, we’re switching to decaf. Our point (and we do have one) is that before our very own Matthew Panzarino officially welcomes you to Disrupt 2020 tomorrow morning, we’re inviting you to a pre-show today — the Disrupt Sneak Peek — with Disrupt host and Managing Editor, Jordan Crook.
Today, Sunday September 13, from 12 p.m.-12:30 p.m. (PT), Jordan will show you how to access the different virtual platforms we’ll use throughout the show. Plus, you’ll get a look at the companies competing in the Startup Battlefield, learn more about the TC10 and hear about some of the incredible speakers we have on tap.
It’s a quick but essential overview of what to expect over the course of Disrupt. And who knows? We might even trot out a few surprise guests (spoiler alert: we will).
Come to the Disrupt Sneak Peek today from 12 p.m.-12:30 p.m. (PT), get a handle on the virtual platforms and get pumped up about five days of sharing connection, collaboration and education with the global early-stage startup community.
Any last-minute decision makers out there? You can still buy a Disrupt pass right here but be quick because prices increase tonight!
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Check out these Breakout Sessions at Disrupt 2020
We’re on the brink of the biggest Disrupt in TechCrunch history. It’s five days of education, exhibition, competition and connection that spans the globe. As you plan your schedule, keep this in mind: You’ll find some of the most insightful and downright interesting programming at Disrupt 2020 in our Breakout Sessions. And that, given our powerhouse agenda, is saying something.
Every Disrupt attendee can take part in the breakout sessions — they’re open to every pass level. Breakouts cover a range of topics and formats. You might watch startups pitch, attend a workshop or take in a panel discussion. No matter what, you’re bound to receive valuable insight that can inspire you and help your business.
Take advantage of our partners’ expertise and check out any (or all) of these breakout sessions. You’ll be glad you did.
Monday, September 14
11:00 am – 11:50 am
Sponsored by Adobe
How to Invest in Infrastructure to Deliver Experience
Gabie Boko, Global VP Digital, Hewlett Packard Enterprise & Adobe VP of Platform Engineering, Anjul Bhambhri discuss digital transformation and experience delivery.
12:00 pm – 12:30 pm
Sponsored by Taiwan Tech Arena
Taiwan Pavilion Pitch-off session 1
Featuring twenty startups in healthcare, IoT, blockchain, AR-VR, cyber security, E-learning, and green technology
Tuesday, September 15
9:00 am – 9:50 am
Sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank
Diversity as Disruption: Take action now to create a more diverse ecosystem
Recent events continue to demonstrate that change is not happening fast enough. How can we ensure the current social justice momentum is more than just talk? Guided by SVB’s recent research into the “4th wave of venture capital,” learn how three industry leaders are tackling the problem with real actions. By the close of the session, leave with tangible steps you can take today – whether as an individual or as a firm — to make a meaningful, move-the-needle impact in your organization.
9:00 am – 10:30 am
Sponsored by Taiwan Tech Arena
Join Christine, Allan, Tico Blumenthal (Life Sciences Angels), and Laura Dietch (BioTrace Medical) to explore the investment and innovation framework in post-COVID19, and to discuss the driver of innovation healthcare amid the pandemic and economic collapse. TTA will also present the key anti-COVID19 innovative measurements in Taiwan to achieve the lowest infection rate around the world.
10:00 am – 10:30am
Sponsored by hub.brussels
Belgian Startup Pitch Competition
Hub.brussels invites you to join us for the 6th edition of our Belgian startup pitch competition.
12:00 pm – 12:30 pm
Taiwan Pavilion Pitch-off Session 2
Sponsored by Taiwan Tech Arena
Featuring twenty startups in AI solutions, softwares, big data, edge computing, and space technology
2:30 pm – 4:00 pm
TC Include Reception sponsored by Sootchy
Sponsored by Sootchy
INVITE ONLY – TC Include kicks off this year’s founder cohort with organizational partners Black Female Founders, Female Founders Alliance, Latinx Startup Alliance and StartOut with remarks by Sootchy.
Wednesday, September 16
9:00 am – 9:50 am
Sponsored by Consulate General of Canada in San Francisco
“Grow North”: How Canada Empowers Investors and Founders
Come listen to a group of Canadian founders who will talk about their start-ups and how Canada has helped them grow and succeed globally.
10:00 am – 11:00 am
Sponsored by StartUp Bahrain
Bahrain: Your gateway to the Middle East and beyond
INVITE ONLY – With its supportive ecosystem, advanced digital infrastructure, flexible and pioneering regulations; rapid growth in funding opportunities and a liberal market, Bahrain is the ideal testbed for startups and scaleups to test their products and solutions before growing and expanding across the Middle East
10:00 am – 10:30 am
Sponsored by JETRO
Come see the latest exciting technology and services coming from Japan.
11:00 am – 11:30 am
Sponsored by KOCCA
Join Us to Watch Seven Amazing Startups from Korea
K-pop? K-Drama? K-Games? K-Entertainment? All startups with K-contents will show off during this Pitch Off
12:00 pm – 12:50 pm
Sponsored by Envestnet | Yodlee
Making Data Meaningful for the FinTech Ecosystem
Open finance/banking represents a new era of financial data transparency. It brings an unprecedented opportunity for FinTechs to provide personalized guidance consumers need to improve financial wellness. Envestnet | Yodlee experts will discuss empowering the entire FinTech ecosystem with enriched financial data and insights, plus the future of open banking in the U.S.
Thursday, September 17
10:00 am – 11:30 am
Sponsored by Dassault Systèmes
Dassault Systemes’s 3DEXPERIENCE Lab Global Accelerator Program
INVITE ONLY – 3DEXPERIENCE Lab is Dassault Systèmes’s global innovation program that offers innovative startups free access to Dassault Systèmes collaborative Design, Engineering, Simulation & Data Intelligence solutions, along with mentoring, and marketing support for two years. Come; learn how the Lab selects, mentors and supports its startups!
10:00 am – 10:50 am
Sponsored by AppsFlyer
Advertising Disrupted: What User Privacy Means For Marketers
This session offers the unique opportunity to join a live recording of AppsFlyer’s industry podcast, Next in Marketing. Mike Shields, podcast host and former Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, AdWeek and Digiday editor along with guests (Brian Quinn, US President & GM, AppsFlyer and Ana Milicevic, Co-founder and Principal, Sparrow Advisers) will delve into the ecosystem’s pivotal privacy updates, including Apple’s IDFA opt-out and the impact of iOS 14 to measurement and attribution, as well as targeting in a cookieless world. You’ll also hear about the future of personalization post-regulations in this session that is sure to address the most pressing issues and headlines on the mind of marketers globally.
12:00 pm – 12:50 pm
Sponsored by KITE
Startups plus large enterprises can fuel each other’s growth and bottom line, whether it’s a partnership, investment or acquisition. But bringing the right ones together needs more than serendipity: it requires a dynamic ecosystem that includes consultants, accelerators and VCs (aka the connectors). We sit down with top leaders from around the ecosystem to learn how they discover innovative solutions — and get to outcomes — faster.
And for those who want to upgrade to a Disrupt Digital PRO Pass you can get access to these sessions:
Tuesday, September 15
10:30 am – 10:50 am
Sponsored by All Raise
Showing Your Work: VCs Investing in Diversity Share Their Secrets
More than 80% of venture capital firms don’t have a single Black investor and 68% of firms don’t have any female partners. As VCs across the country urgently seek to diversify both their investing teams and their portfolios, they could learn a lot from these amazing investors, who have made diversity a central part of their investing thesis from the start. Join us for a candid conversation about the power of investing in underrepresented founders and tapping into over $4.4 trillion in value. This panel will be moderated by Pam Kostka, CEO of All Raise featuring Sarah Kunst, Founder & Managing Director at Cleo Capital and Christie Pitts, General Partner at Backstage Capital who are both leading VCs who focus their investments on founders from underrepresented backgrounds.
11:30 am – 11:50 am
Sponsored by Toyota
Innovating with Fuel Cells
James Kast demonstrates how Toyota continues to navigate the innovation of fuel cells and the implementation across numerous industries.
That’s a mighty fine breakout lineup if we do say so ourselves. Yep, we’re tooting our own horn. Don’t let all that valuable expertise go to waste. Make sure you carve out time in your Disrupt schedule for insight and inspiration!
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Disrupt 2020 kicks off tomorrow — are you ready?
Happy Disrupt 2020 Eve, startup fans! It’s been a crazy mad dash to transform our annual flagship San Francisco event at Moscone Center into the first all-virtual Disrupt (thanks, COVID-19). Then again, going global seems an appropriate way to celebrate 10 years of Disruption. It all starts tomorrow with a pre-show session to explain how to access the different platforms we’ll use during the event — are you ready?
Wait, what? Did you just say you don’t have your Disrupt 2020 pass yet? Talk about a vinyl record scratch moment. Okay, don’t panic. You can still join your early-stage startup community and discover untold opportunities to build your business. Let’s break down the different pass options, access levels and current pricing.
Important note: Pricing for all passes increase tomorrow, September 13 at 11:59 p.m. (PT), so don’t drag your feet a moment longer. Choose and buy your pass right now.
Disrupt Digital Pro Pass ($345): You receive online access to all the programming on the Disrupt stage and the Extra Crunch stage. We’re talking live stream and replays on demand. Interactive sessions let you ask questions, participate in polling and engage with speakers. Your pass includes CrunchMatch to make virtual networking easy, organized, efficient and effective. It will come in handy as you find and meet attendees from around the world — and explore and connect with hundreds of early-stage startups in Digital Startup Alley — the show’s expo area. Meet the Startup Battlefield competitors and the TC Top Picks!
Disrupt Digital Pro Pass — Investor ($345): You receive all the features listed above and special opportunities to connect and network with the investor community. Plus, you receive a guide to the exhibitors in Startup Alley to simplify connecting with early-stage startups both during and after the event.
Digital Pro Pass — Students ($125), military personnel, active government employees and non-profit agency employees ($145): If you belong to any of the aforementioned groups, congrats, you qualify for a discount for full access to Disrupt 2020. Your pass provides the same level of access as the standard Digital Pro Pass but your status must be verifiable.
Disrupt Digital Pass ($45): You receive live access only to the Disrupt Stage, Breakout Sessions (workshops, product demonstrations, startup pitches, networking receptions) and access to the Digital Startup Alley expo area.
A multitude of ways and price points to make Disrupt 2020 accessible and to help you discover opportunities that can take your business forward to the next level and beyond. Get on board, buy your pass before 11:59 p.m. (PT) tomorrow night and save. We can’t wait to see where Disrupt takes you!
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