Second Wave of Startup Battlefield Judges at Disrupt 2024

Startup Battlefield is one of the highlights of Disrupt, and we can’t wait to see which of the thousands of candidates will be chosen to pitch to top VC panels at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, which will take place October 28-30 in San Francisco. It’s always epic, and each candidate is on track to making a huge impact on the world.

The judges’ opinions provide insight into their criteria for determining whether a company is viable. Get a front-row seat to their expert opinions and learn the key characteristics that make a startup thrive, only at Disrupt 2024.

We’re excited to reveal our next group of investors who will evaluate startups and present an intense, revealing Q&A after each pitch. Stay tuned for more big names to be announced soon!

Morgan Beller, General Partner, NFX

Morgan is a general partner at NFX, a seed-stage venture capital fund. Morgan most recently worked at Facebook, where she originally joined as part of the corporate development team in May 2017. Her primary project was to try to answer the question, “How should Facebook think about blockchain?” This led to the creation of a dedicated blockchain team, which later became Diem and Novi. Morgan was head of strategy at Novi at Facebook. Before joining Facebook, Morgan led corporate development at Medium, where she led the acquisition of Embedly and helped develop the subscription strategy. Prior to that, Morgan was on the transaction team at Andreessen Horowitz. For the second half of her time there, she focused exclusively on the early-stage ecosystem.

Shravan Narayen, Partner, Vice President, Professional Development

Shravan is a partner at IVP, which primarily invests in enterprise infrastructure and applications built by opinionated founders solving deep technical problems. Shravan’s investments include Perplexity, Baseten, Chainguard, Cortex, Eightfold, and Glean. Prior to IVP, Shravan worked across the startup lifecycle, from pre-PMF to IPO, most recently in product at Snowflake. He seeks to bring that context to working with founders building next-generation companies.

Jon Rosenbaum, Managing Director, Insight Partners

Jon (also known to friends and colleagues as “Rosie”) joined Insight Partners in 2014. He focuses on vertical and horizontal application software and is responsible for executing deals and assisting with post-close portfolio management. He also specializes in helping portfolio companies acquire and execute M&A transactions. He currently serves on the board of directors for multiple Insight companies, including 6sense, LeanTaaS, SimpleNexus, Templafy, Florence, ComplianceQuest, and Earnix. Some of his exits include Docusign (NASDAQ: DOCU), nCino (NASDAQ: NCNO), Frontline Education (acquired by Thoma Bravo), and CloudCraze (acquired by Salesforce).

Sharon Winter, Vice President, Atomic

Sharon is a serial entrepreneur and company builder at Atomic, a venture studio specializing in the critical 0-1 phase of startup development. Her superpower is turning ideas into successful companies. At Atomic, Sharon has played a key role in inventing over 100 companies and building over a dozen to Series A, leveraging her experience in engineering, design, growth, and business operations. Prior to joining Atomic, Sharon founded eight profitable companies across multiple industries, including entertainment, media, gaming, CPG, and SaaS, with two successful exits. Her background in industrial design and robotics and human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University has equipped her with the skills to quickly understand and adapt to different markets. Sharon’s goal is to achieve product-market fit faster, making her a key force in Atomic’s mission to build the next generation of market-leading companies.

Sangeen Zeb, General Partner, Google Ventures

Sangeen is a General Partner at GV, focusing on AI and high-growth investments. He works with both early and late-stage startups, and his investments include Chronosphere, Courier, Lacework, and Medallion. Prior to joining GV in 2021, Sangeen was an investor at Founders Circle Capital, where he helped lead the firm’s investments in Attentive, Algolia, Cohesity, Confluent (IPO), Databricks, Segment (acquired by Twilio), Robinhood (IPO), and UiPath (IPO). He spent over five years at Centerview Capital, where he raised investments in Affirmed Networks (acquired by Microsoft) and Sauce Labs (acquired by TPG), and began his investment career at Summit Partners.

Register now and save!

The Startup Battlefield winner, who will walk away with $100,000 net, will be announced at Disrupt 2024. This is your chance to see the future of technology—make sure you’re there! Buy your tickets here . Save up to $600 when you register before August 24.