{"id":634753,"date":"2026-09-24T17:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T17:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/634753\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T17:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T17:32:11","slug":"the-next-wave-of-vcs-judging-startup-battlefield-at-disrupt-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/634753\/","title":{"rendered":"The next wave of VCs judging Startup Battlefield at Disrupt 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

For founders, Startup Battlefield 200 is one of the biggest moments of their careers. For everyone else in the TechCrunch Disrupt\u00a02026<\/a> audience, it\u2019s one of the best ways to learn how great companies are actually evaluated by VCs.<\/p>\n

This startup pitch competition is as intense as you\u2019d expect. From October 13\u201315 at San Francisco\u2019s Moscone West, every hand-picked founder has six minutes to make their case, but the most revealing moments often come after the presentation ends. That\u2019s when the judges start asking the questions every investor, customer, and future employee will eventually want answered. Can this team execute? Is the market big enough? Why now? What\u2019s defensible? Those conversations are as valuable for the thousands of founders watching from the audience as they are for the companies onstage.<\/p>\n

\"TechCrunch<\/a>Image Credits:Kimberly White \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why we\u2019re continuing to build one of the strongest judging panels in Startup Battlefield\u2019s history. Today we\u2019re excited to introduce another group of five top-tier\u00a0investors\u00a0who\u2019ll help identify the companies with the potential to become tomorrow\u2019s breakout success stories.<\/p>\n

Join the Startup Battlefield contenders and VC judges on the main stage, alongside 10,000+ tech leaders attending Disrupt, and watch the next generation of startups compete for their place in TechCrunch history. Register now to save up to $200<\/a> on your pass before prices increase on September 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT.<\/p>\n

The next five VCs deciding which Startup Battlefield contenders advance<\/p>\n

Without further ado, meet the next batch of investors who will judge which early-stage founder walks away with the $100,000 prize. Get to know these judges, along with the first 10 already announced on the Disrupt agenda<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"TechCrunch<\/a>Image Credits:TechCrunch<\/p>\n

Vaibhav \u2018Dr.V\u2019\u00a0Agrawal, Co-Founder and General Partner, ODDBIRD VC<\/p>\n

Dr.V<\/a> is the co-founder and general partner of ODDBIRD VC<\/a>, a pre-seed fund he founded in 2024 to back AI companies reindustrializing the West \u2014 with a focus on health and bio, critical supply chains, and real-world automation. A trained physician with an MBBS degree, Agrawal also holds an MBA from Stanford and previously served as a general partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners India, where he backed early-stage startups beginning in 2016. His current portfolio includes Anterior, a healthcare AI company that has raised $64 million from NEA and Sequoia.<\/p>\n

Anu Bharadwaj, Partner, ICONIQ<\/p>\n

Anu Bharadwaj<\/a> is a partner at ICONIQ<\/a>, where she focuses on enterprise software and AI companies. Before joining ICONIQ, Bharadwaj served as president and COO of Atlassian for nearly 12 years, where she led the product, engineering, and enterprise business across Jira, Confluence, and the Atlassian Cloud platform as the company scaled to billions in annual revenue. She previously held leadership roles at Microsoft and holds a bachelor of engineering in computer science from R.V. College of Engineering.<\/p>\n

Sho Sho Leigha Ho, Partner, General Catalyst<\/p>\n

Sho Sho Leigha Ho<\/a> is a partner on General Catalyst<\/a>\u2018s seed team, where she invests in early-stage founders. She serves as a board observer at Together AI. She joined General Catalyst in 2024 as its youngest partner. Her public investments include Graylark, Autoscience, Standard Kernel, and The Interaction Company of California (Poke), which Cognition acquired in July 2026. She holds an AB from Harvard and is based in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

Miloni Madan Presler, Partner, IVP<\/p>\n

Miloni Madan Presler<\/a> is a partner at IVP<\/a> (Institutional Venture Partners), where she partners with first-time founders building inflection-stage technology companies in enterprise software, healthcare, and security, from Series B through pre-IPO. She brings a disciplined growth equity and private equity perspective to company building, shaped by earlier roles at Summit Partners and Warburg Pincus. Presler holds a degree in Economics and Finance from Johns Hopkins University and speaks four languages.<\/p>\n

Aidan Madigan-Curtis, Partner, Eclipse Ventures<\/p>\n

Aidan Madigan-Curtis<\/a> is a partner at Eclipse Ventures<\/a>, where she invests in AI, IoT, computer vision, and software solutions for manufacturing, logistics, supply chain, and climate transition. Named one of Business Insider\u2019s 22 Investors to Know in Robotics and Physical AI, she leads Eclipse\u2019s Carbon Optimization framework to track real emissions reductions across the firm\u2019s portfolio. Before venture, Madigan-Curtis was a senior executive at Apple \u2014 scaling Apple Watch manufacturing from zero to millions of units per week \u2014 and a VP and general manager at Samsara, where she helped grow the company from pre-revenue to over $1 billion in ARR. She holds a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from Stanford University.<\/p>\n

Grab your Disrupt ticket savings and don\u2019t miss Startup Battlefield 200<\/p>\n

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026<\/a> is happening October 13-15 in San Francisco, bringing 10,000+ tech leaders, VCs, and founders together to meet the next generation of breakout startups, connect with the leaders who could change their\u00a0startup\u2019s trajectory, and get a front-row seat to where the industry is headed. Save up to $200 on your ticket<\/a> before rates increase on September 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Save an additional 30% when you register as a group<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Kevin<\/a>Image Credits:Kimberly White \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For founders, Startup Battlefield 200 is one of the biggest moments of their careers. For everyone else in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,42481,80141,6845,80],"class_list":["post-634753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-startup-battlefield","tag-startup-battlefield-200","tag-techcrunch-disrupt","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}