From Toast to Bessemer: Who founders will hear from at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026
Building a startup means making decisions before you have all the answers. When should you scale? How do you know you really have product-market fit? What does it take to land enterprise customers? How do you build the right team? And when you finally get in front of an investor, how do you make sure your pitch earns another conversation? On November 4 at SoWa Power Station in Boston,TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026will bring together founders, investors, and operators who have tackled those questions from different sides of the table. Hosted by TechCrunch in partnership with Fidelity Private Shares, the full-day event goes beyond fundraising and AI to explore the realities of finding customers, building teams, sharpening a pitch, developing founder leadership, and scaling companies both inside and outside traditional startup hubs.Save 25% on your ticket today, andbring a colleague along for free with our limited BOGO deal. Boston founders do not have to look far for an example of what can happen when a startup finds its market and continues evolving with its customers. Steve Fredette, president, co-founder, and director ofToast, takes the Impact Stage for “Building a Company That Keeps Reinventing Itself.” Toast’s story offers founders a compelling case study in identifying a customer problem, finding product-market fit, winning customers, and ultimately scaling a Boston startup into a public company. But reaching scale does not mean the work is finished. Fredette’s conversation will look at what it takes to continue evolving a company as customer expectations, technology, and the market change around it, while staying connected to the needs that helped create the business in the first place. Growth can be exciting. Growing too early can be expensive. Kent Bennett, partner atBessemer Venture Partners, will lead “Finding Product Market Fit Before You Scale,” focusing on one of the most important questions an early-stage founder can answer: Are customers actually telling you that you are ready to grow? The session will give founders a chance to think more critically about the signals that matter before adding headcount, increasing spend, or accelerating go-to-market efforts. It is a useful counterpoint to startup culture’s constant pressure to move faster. Sometimes the smartest next move is making sure the foundation is actually there. That same tension takes center stage withRudina Seseri, founder and managing partner ofGlasswing Ventures. In “When to Scale and When to Hit the Brakes,” Seseri will explore how founders can distinguish between the moments that call for acceleration and the moments when restraint may protect the business. Founders are constantly making trade-offs between growth and discipline. Knowing when not to scale can be just as consequential as knowing when to go all in. AI is reshaping how new companies think about products, operations, and teams, but adding AI to an existing process is different from building a company around it from the start. Lior Div, CEO and co-founder of7AI, will tackle that distinction in “Built for AI From Day One.” For founders building in the current technology environment, the conversation provides an opportunity to think beyond AI as a feature and toward how it can influence the architecture and operating model of an entire company. The startup world does not begin and end in Silicon Valley. Chase Garbarino, CEO and co-founder ofHqO, will take the Impact Stage for “The Boston Founder Playbook,” examining what it means to build and scale a company from Boston. For founders across New England and the broader East Coast ecosystem, the conversation offers a particularly relevant perspective on talent, customers, capital, and community outside the Bay Area. Combined with Fredette’s Toast story, it also gives this year’s Summit a strong local through line: Ambitious companies can be built in Boston, and founders here do not need to copy Silicon Valley to do it. A pitch does not have to close the deal. It has to make someone want the next conversation. Dave Balter, venture partner atTrue Venturesand CEO ofEdisyl, will explore that idea in “Your Pitch Has to Earn the Next Conversation.” For founders accustomed to explaining their companies every day, the session is a reminder that knowing your business and communicating its story are two different skills. Later in the afternoon, attendees will see that theory put into practice. Catch the full list of Founders Summit speakers here. At “So You Think You Can Pitch?,” founders will put their stories to the test live on the Build Stage. Balter will be joined byChirag Shah, partner atDefine Ventures, andSimran Suri, principal atMaveron, as startups make their cases in front of an investor judging panel. For attendees, it is an opportunity to watch what happens when founders have limited time to make an idea connect, and to hear how investors react in real time. It is one of the most interactive parts of the Founder Summit program and a chance to learn from both the pitches that land and the ones that leave questions unanswered. The rest of the program stretches across many of the decisions founders are facing right now. Hunter WorlandofNEAwill explore why distribution may become a startup’s next competitive advantage.Vineet Edupuganti, co-founder and CEO ofCogent Security, will discuss building 10x teams.Tina TosukhowongofTDK Ventureswill examine the hidden signals that can identify category winners. Fidelity Private Shareswill also bring its perspective to conversations about fundraising trends withKristen Craftand enterprise relationships withEvan Schnidman. Together, the agenda creates a day that is not just about raising the next round or chasing the latest AI trend but is also about building the company. TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 takes place November 4 at SoWa Power Station in Boston. The day brings together candid founder conversations, practical sessions, smaller roundtables, live pitching, networking, and a closing reception presented by Fidelity Private Shares. With the event approaching quickly and only so many spots left, don’t wait to register! Act now on our limited time offer andsave 25% on your Founder Summit ticket.
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