TechCrunch has unveiled the second wave of venture capital investors who will judge the Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. The pitch competition runs from October 13 to 15 at Moscone West in San Francisco, featuring early-stage founders competing for a $100,000 prize.
The Startup Battlefield 200 Format and Stakes
For founders, the Startup Battlefield 200 serves as a major career milestone, while audience members gain insight into how venture capitalists evaluate growing companies. Hand-picked founders each receive six minutes to present their businesses on stage. Following the presentation, judges question the teams on execution capabilities, market size, timing, and defensibility, according to TechCrunch. These follow-up discussions offer critical lessons for the thousands of founders watching from the audience.
Newly Announced VC Judges
TechCrunch added five prominent investors to the judging panel, joining ten previously announced venture capitalists on the Disrupt agenda. The newly named judges bring diverse expertise across artificial intelligence, enterprise software, robotics, and fintech:
- Vaibhav ‘Dr.V’ Agrawal: Co-founder and general partner at ODDBIRD VC, a pre-seed fund launched in 2024. Agrawal is a trained physician with an MBBS and a Stanford MBA who previously served as a general partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners India. His current portfolio includes healthcare AI company Anterior, which has raised $64 million.
- Anu Bharadwaj: Partner at ICONIQ focusing on enterprise software and AI. Bharadwaj previously served as president and COO of Atlassian for nearly 12 years, scaling products like Jira and Confluence to billions in annual revenue, and held leadership roles at Microsoft.
- Sho Sho Leigha Ho: Partner on General Catalyst’s seed team and board observer at Together AI. Joining in 2024 as the firm’s youngest partner, her public investments include Graylark, Autoscience, Standard Kernel, and The Interaction Company of California (Poke), which Cognition acquired in July 2026.
- Miloni Madan Presler: Partner at IVP (Institutional Venture Partners), partnering with first-time founders building inflection-stage technology companies from Series B through pre-IPO. Her background includes growth equity roles at Summit Partners and Warburg Pincus.
- Aidan Madigan-Curtis: Partner at Eclipse Ventures investing in AI, IoT, and supply chain software. Recognized as one of Business Insider’s 22 Investors to Know in Robotics and Physical AI, she previously scaled Apple Watch manufacturing at Apple and served as a VP and general manager at Samsara.
Event Registration and Deadlines
The event takes place alongside gatherings of over 10,000 tech leaders at Disrupt 2026. Attendees and participants can register to save up to $200 on passes before ticket prices increase on September 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT.
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