Next wave of VCs judging Startup Battlefield 200 contenders at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 revealed — SkimNews
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- Aditi Maliwal, General Partner at Upfront Ventures, will judge — she invests at the pre-seed and seed stages in fintech, enterprise SaaS, AI applications, and developer tools, and previously led Chime's Series A during a stint at a prior firm.
- Michael Palank, General Partner at MaC Ventures — a majority Black-owned firm backing seed-stage consumer and enterprise companies — will judge; he previously worked in Hollywood talent representation at William Morris and Overbrook Entertainment, Will Smith's production company.
- Nell Daly, co-founder and Managing Partner of Revenge Capital, will judge — the fund explicitly backs overlooked founders including women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, and neurodiverse entrepreneurs; Daly previously worked as a psychotherapist.
- Grace Ge, Partner at Amplify Partners, will judge — her portfolio includes Pinecone, Eppo, Vivun, Orb, and Avoca, with a focus on AI, developer tooling, data infrastructure, and the layer between foundation models and enterprise applications.
- Crystal Huang, General Partner at GV (Google Ventures), will judge — her portfolio spans Typeface, Pecan AI, Sardine, Cacheflow, PostHog, Roboflow, and Sift, with a lens on enterprise SaaS, AI infrastructure, and fintech.
- TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 runs October 13-15 at Moscone West in San Francisco, with 10,000+ tech leaders, VCs, and founders expected; tickets offer up to $200 in savings before rates rise on September 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT.
- Startup Battlefield has run for more than 15 years and is described by TechCrunch as 'the ultimate startup pitch competition,' launching companies that 'went on to define entire markets.'
Why it matters: Founders pitching into Startup Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2026 will be grilled by VCs with direct sector reach — including a Chime Series A lead (Maliwal), a Google Ventures general partner (Huang) writing checks into PostHog and Sift, and an Amplify partner (Ge) backing Pinecone. The bench's deliberate diversity — a majority Black-owned firm (MaC), a fund dedicated to overlooked founders (Revenge Capital) — signals TechCrunch is curating for breadth of investment thesis, not just check-writing firepower, at an event drawing 10,000+ attendees.
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