The Builders Stage Disrupt 2026 has published its opening agenda, and it reads like someone finally decided conference programming should be useful. More than 20 sessions across three days, all aimed at founders who are past the inspirational-keynote phase and want to know how, specifically, the numbers are supposed to work.
The event runs 13–15 October at Moscone West, 747 Howard Street, San Francisco, with organisers expecting more than 10,000 founders, investors, and operators across all six stages at Disrupt 2026.
What’s on the Builders Stage Disrupt 2026 Agenda
The line-up skews toward the unglamorous questions that actually keep founders up at night. One session, ‘What Happens When OpenAI Ships Your Roadmap’, addresses the anxiety felt across virtually every AI startup at the moment: what defensibility looks like when a foundation-model giant can absorb your product as a feature update. Another, ‘The Series A in 2027’, brings together partners from Index Ventures, Peak XV, and Bessemer Venture Partners to define what ‘fundable’ will actually mean when the current fundraising climate bites harder.
Robby Stein, VP of Product at Google, takes a fireside slot to discuss how product decision-making changes at billion-user scale, which is either deeply instructive or mildly surreal depending on where your own user count sits right now. Leah Solivan, founder and general partner at Precedent.vc and the former CEO of TaskRabbit, joins Grant Lee of Gamma and Elia Wallen of Engine for a session on landing the first 1,000 customers without a marketing budget. Precedent.vc has backed more than 150 companies across consumer technology, hardware, education, and marketplaces, so the panel has some receipts behind it.
Jas Khaira, Global Head of Blackstone N1, takes a solo slot on capital strategy for AI companies scaling faster than any previous generation. Alongside Khaira, Puneet Agarwal of True Ventures and Austin Clements of Slauson and Co. will unpack how pre-seed founders pitch without a product, which sounds impossible until you remember most of the industry’s most successful companies raised before the product was real.
One session worth watching for its marketing hook alone: ‘The Real Tokenmaxxing’, which, despite the name, is actually about orchestrating across multiple AI models rather than betting on one. The panel includes Mo Jomaa from CapitalG and Zuzanna Stamirowska, CEO and co-founder of Pathway.
The AI Disruptors 60 Reveal and What It Signals
Greenfield Partners will reveal its 2026 AI Disruptors 60 list live on 14 October at the event, with the list simultaneously displayed on the Nasdaq MarketSite tower in Times Square, according to a Greenfield Partners announcement. Submissions closed 5 August. Earlier classes of the list, highlighted in TechCrunch’s sponsored coverage of Greenfield Partners, included Anthropic, OpenAI, Harvey, and Lovable, though it should be noted that piece was produced by TC Brand Studio rather than TechCrunch’s editorial team.
The Builders Stage also makes room for founder wellbeing, which the industry still treats as optional. ‘Yes, It’s Hard to Be a Founder’ brings in David H. Rosmarin from Harvard Medical School alongside venture and founder voices to talk through burnout, decision fatigue, and the identity pressures of high-growth environments. Whether that session fills or empties depends on how honest an audience of founders is prepared to be in a conference hall.
The programme rounds out with a live investor Q&A featuring Startup Battlefield judges, including Stacy Brown-Philpot of Cherryrock Capital, Chi-Hua Chien of Goodwater Capital, Dayna Grayson of Construct Capital, Carter Reum of M13, and Alexa von Tobel of Inspired Capital. Audience members submit questions; investors answer candidly. Or so the format promises.
Tickets: What It Costs to Get in the Room
Early pricing is live. A standard Attendee Pass is currently $749 (regular price $1,049), a Founder Pass sits at $799 (regular $1,099), and an Investor Pass at $899 (regular $1,199). Student passes are available at $249 and Non-Profit passes at $299. All prices are subject to increase before the event. Full pricing and booking are available on the TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 tickets page.
Groups of four to nine receive a 15% discount, with passes starting at $220 per person; bundle options can push savings to 30%. If you are sending a team rather than attending solo, the group rate changes the maths considerably.
More speakers and sessions are still to be announced ahead of the October dates. Whether the agenda delivers on its promise of practical over performative is a question that gets answered in the room.
