The Builders Stage is coming back to TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 with a clear focus: helping founders move from building a startup to scaling a company. The stage will bring founders, startup operators, investors, and technology leaders together at Moscone Center in San Francisco on October 13-15.
More than 10,000 founders, investors, startup operators, and technology leaders are expected at the event. The Builders Stage is one of six industry-focused stages at Disrupt 2026, and its agenda is built around practical sessions on fundraising, hiring, go-to-market strategy, AI, product decisions, and the pressures that come with growth.
A stage built around the scaling problem
The agenda makes a sharp distinction between starting a company and building one that can grow. The sessions are aimed at founders who are already thinking about capital, talent, revenue, product-market fit, and the jump from seed to Series A.
That focus shows up across the program. Some sessions examine how startups can earn investor trust before they have revenue. Others look at how teams change once AI tools and agents become part of daily work. Several sessions return to a common theme: growth is not just about speed, but about the quality of the systems underneath it.
Speakers named in the agenda include Grant Lee, CEO and co-founder of Gamma; Leah Solivan, founder and general partner at Precedent.vc; Robby Stein, VP of Product at Google; Josh Reeves, CEO and co-founder of Gusto; and many more. The event also includes live Q&A, giving attendees the chance to engage directly with speakers.
AI shapes the agenda, but does not define every company
AI runs through much of the Builders Stage program, but the agenda does not treat every startup as an AI model company. One session, How to Win When You’re Not Building AI, brings in Shan Shan, Investment Manager, Baillie Gifford, and Yuri Sagalov, Managing Director at General Catalyst, to discuss how founders can compete in a market where AI receives much of the attention.
That session is built around fundamentals: efficient growth, retention, revenue quality, and disciplined execution. The point is not that AI is unimportant. It is that companies still need durable business signals, especially when investor interest is pulled toward the newest technology wave.
Another session, What Happens When OpenAI Ships Your Roadmap, addresses a worry shared by many AI founders: a larger AI company could launch something that competes directly with their product. Michel Tricot, CEO and Co-founder, Airbyte; Rob Toews, Partner, Radical Ventures; and Linda Tong, CEO, Webflow, are listed for that discussion.
The agenda frames this as a question of defensibility. Strong products can still be vulnerable if they become features of larger platforms. The session is designed to examine where defensibility can exist and what founders can do when AI giants move into nearby territory.
Fundraising expectations are moving earlier and faster
Several Builders Stage sessions focus on capital, especially at the earliest stages. Winning Pre-Seed Without a Product looks at how founders compete for funding before a product exists. Puneet Agarwal, Managing Partner, True Ventures; Austin Clements, Managing Partner, Slauson and Co; and Sandhya Venkatachalam, Founder and Managing Partner, Axiom Partners, are scheduled for that conversation.
The session centers on story, conviction, and founder-market fit. In that context, credibility has to be built before revenue appears, because investors are being asked to make a decision before traditional proof points are available.
The agenda also looks ahead with The Series A in 2027, featuring Jahanvi Sardana, Partner, Index Ventures; Shailendra Singh, Managing Director, Peak XV; and Janelle Teng Wade, Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners. The session addresses a harder Series A environment and what “fundable” will mean in 2027.
That fundraising thread continues into go-to-market. The 90-Day GTM: Why $0–$10M ARR Is the New Baseline (and How to Actually Get There) features Ryan Meadows, Chief Revenue Officer, Lovable, and Tomasz Tunguz, General Partner and Founder, Theory Ventures, with more speakers to be announced. The session connects faster distribution, AI-enabled execution, and changing investor expectations to compressed GTM timelines.
Operations, hiring, and product strategy move to the center
The Builders Stage agenda treats hiring and organizational design as core startup strategy. Hiring When AI Is a Co-Founder, with Josh Reeves, CEO and Co-founder, Gusto, explores how early-stage companies decide what humans should own and what can be delegated to AI. The session also looks at how hybrid teams can move quickly while preserving accountability and culture.
A related session, Hiring, Compensation and Culture in the Most Competitive Market Ever, features Matt Birnbaum, Founder, Wylder.co, and Atli Thorkelsson, VP, Talent Network, Redpoint Ventures, with more speakers to be announced. It addresses AI talent competition, secondary sales, incentives, and employee expectations as companies rethink the human infrastructure of startups.
Product strategy gets equal attention. From MVP to Billions of Users: How Product Decisions Must Change at Scale features Robby Stein, VP, Product, Google. The session focuses on how product decision-making changes when updates affect billions of users, including the balance between speed, trust, innovation, and reliability.
Other sessions examine what comes after an initial product win. So You’ve Got a Hit Product. How Does Your Company Do It Again? features Filip Kaliszan, CEO and Co-founder, Verkada; and Aaron Jacobson, Partner, New Enterprise Associates, with more speakers to be announced. The discussion is aimed at companies trying to move from one successful product to a repeatable multi-product engine.
Growth is being measured beyond the first spike
The agenda also spends time on whether early traction is real. PMF Red Flags: How to Tell If You Really Have It features Rajeev Dham, Managing Director, Sapphire Ventures; and Rahul Vohra, Founder and Head of Superhuman Mail, with more speakers to be announced. The session looks at how early excitement, usage spikes, and pilot wins can be mistaken for durable product-market fit.
Customer acquisition appears in The Zero-to-1K Playbook: How to Get Your First 1,000 Customers Without a Marketing Budget, featuring Grant Lee, CEO and Co-founder, Gamma; Leah Solivan, Founder and General Partner, Precedent.vc; and Elia Wallen, Founder and CEO, Engine. The session focuses on community building, product-led growth, founder-led sales, strategic outbound, and word-of-mouth momentum.
Viral growth gets its own treatment in How to Create Viral Growth and Capitalize on It, with Zach Yadegari, Founder, Cal AI. The session separates overnight attention from the harder task of turning momentum into retention and long-term company building.
The Builders Stage also includes sessions on M&A as an early-stage strategy, multi-model AI products, founder pressure, and lessons from Startup Battlefield judges. Together, the agenda presents startup building as a set of connected decisions: what to build, who to hire, how to fund it, how to reach customers, and how to keep the company durable after the first signs of success.