Startups don’t need to go viral to win customers
At TechCrunch Disrupt last week, two founders and a VC discussed how to not just gain an early following but keep one.
Startups
VCs, Superhuman Mail founder share red flags about product market fit
Top investors from Iconiq and Sapphire Ventures, along with Rahul Vohra, the founder of Superhuman Mail share the do’s and don’ts for building hit products.
TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 roundtables: Go deeper on the challenges founders are solving right now
TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 is coming to SoWa Power Station in Boston on November 4, bringing founders, investors, and operators together for a full day of candid conversations, practical sessions, live pitching, networking, and smaller…
Carta and NewView partner, hoping to entice more startups to let employees sell shares early
A new program wants to encourage more startups to allow workers to cash out early by making it easier to transact tender offers.
From Toast to Bessemer: Who founders will hear from at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026
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…
Agent cloud startup Daytona hits $1B valuation backed by FirstMark and a who’s who of angels
Daytona is building a cloud for agents that’s like giving every agent its own computer. It has attracted founders of Stripe, Perplextity, Datadog, Mercor, and others as angels, it says.
Warhound raises $200M to engineer war dogs and arm them with Anduril gear
Warhound, the brainchild of Ben Lamm and Palmer Luckey, emerges from stealth to genetically engineer dogs for military and law enforcement.
OpenAI working on new $30B raise at $1.25T valuation ahead of IPO
Should OpenAI command an over $1 trillion valuation with this round, it would break records as the most highly valued private company ever.
The secret to fast startup growth isn’t early sales, top names in tech say
At this year’s Disrupt, Lovable GTM lead Luke Arno, Polsia’s Ben Broca, and Theory Ventures’ Tomasz Tunguz gave founders some tips on how to achieve true sales success in the first 90 days.
Former OpenAI science lead launches Warp Science to automate wet labs with robots
Wearing cameras and sensor gloves, the startup’s human chemists will train robots to perform various lab tasks.