TechCrunch Founder Summit in Boston to Feature Six Small-Group Roundtables on Startup Challenges

TechCrunch is preparing to hold its Founder Summit 2026 at SoWa Power Station in Boston on November 4, gathering founders, investors and operators for a day of conversations, practical sessions, live pitching and networking. Alongside the main programming, organizers have scheduled a set of smaller roundtables designed for more detailed discussion.

The roundtables invite attendees to bring their own questions and describe what they are seeing inside their companies. Participants will work through shared challenges with experts and fellow founders, on subjects ranging from enterprise sales and vertical strategy to artificial intelligence, lean teams and creating a category that does not yet exist.

Six roundtables are on the schedule. Alexandra Ames, founder and chief event strategist at Blueprint Lab, will lead a 10:45 a.m. session on how early-stage companies can approach events strategically before they can pay for a full-time events team. The talk is expected to cover choosing the right opportunities, defining success and stretching limited resources.

At 11:30 a.m., two sessions run at the same time. Chirag Shah, a partner at Define Ventures, will address what founders face when the market with the greatest potential is also among the hardest to enter, such as regulated industries or those with complex buyers. In the other, Shishir Tewari, head of enterprise data engineering at Procore Technologies, will discuss how knowledge graphs and GraphRAG can give AI systems stronger context and make them more reliable in real-world organizations.

The afternoon begins at 1:15 p.m. with Merve Kitapci, managing partner and CGO of ADIN.AI, who will examine how founders can win major enterprise customers early. Her session, titled around closing L'Oreal and Vodafone before a Series A, will touch on long buying cycles, multiple stakeholders and the credibility a prominent customer logo can bring. At 1:55 p.m., Andy Tang, a partner at Draper Associates, will lead a conversation for founders whose products do not fit an established category, including how to explain and sell them and how to help investors grasp the opportunity.

The last roundtable, at 2:35 p.m., features Linden Tibbets, CEO and founder of IFTTT. He will explore how smaller teams can use AI to raise speed and output without simply adding headcount, with attention to hiring, efficiency and how to structure an AI-enabled company.

The roundtables are only part of the program. Sessions on the Build and Impact Stages will cover product-market fit, hiring, founder leadership, fundraising, pitching and building and scaling companies outside the Bay Area. Toast co-founder Steve Fredette is among the leaders slated to share founder perspectives, and founders will then test their stories in a live competition called "So You Think You Can Pitch?"

Additional networking time will come from a Networking Lounge with Braindate and a closing reception presented by Fidelity Private Shares. TechCrunch is currently offering 25% off Founder Summit tickets for a limited time, along with a limited buy-one-get-one deal that lets attendees bring a colleague for free.