TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 announces Boston speaker agenda
TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 will be held on November 4 at SoWa Power Station in Boston, bringing together founders, investors and operators for a full-day programme on company building. Hosted by TechCrunch in partnership with Fidelity Private Shares, the event will address product-market fit, customer acquisition, team building, founder leadership, fundraising, enterprise relationships and AI.
The announced agenda features Steve Fredette, president, co-founder and director of Toast; Kent Bennett, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners; Rudina Seseri, founder and managing partner of Glasswing Ventures; and Lior Div, CEO and co-founder of 7AI. It also includes live pitches, smaller roundtables, networking and a closing reception presented by Fidelity Private Shares.
Scaling decisions and product-market fit
Fredette will appear on the Impact Stage in a session titled Building a Company That Keeps Reinventing Itself. The discussion will use Toast’s path from a Boston startup to a public company to examine how a business can evolve as customer expectations, technology and markets change while remaining connected to the customer needs that shaped it.
Bennett’s session, Finding Product Market Fit Before You Scale, focuses on the signals founders should assess before adding headcount, increasing spending or accelerating go-to-market activity. Seseri will address the related question of when to expand and when restraint may protect a business in When to Scale and When to Hit the Brakes.
Those themes sit alongside the broader startup-event circuit, where TechCrunch Disrupt investor meeting programme highlights investor meetings as a core part of the founder ecosystem, while the Boston programme concentrates on the operational choices that precede and follow a fundraising conversation.
AI, regional company building and pitching
Div will lead Built for AI From Day One, distinguishing between adding AI to an existing process and designing a company around AI from its inception. The session will consider how AI can influence a company’s product architecture and operating model, rather than being treated solely as a feature.
Chase Garbarino, CEO and co-founder of HqO, will present The Boston Founder Playbook on the Impact Stage. His conversation will examine building and scaling from Boston, including perspectives on talent, customers, capital and community beyond Silicon Valley.
Dave Balter, venture partner at True Ventures and CEO of Edisyl, will discuss how a pitch can earn a further investor conversation. Later, Balter will join Chirag Shah of Define Ventures and Simran Suri of Maveron on the judging panel for So You Think You Can Pitch?, where founders will present live on the Build Stage.
Broader operating questions
Other sessions include Hunter Worland of NEA on distribution as a possible competitive advantage, Vineet Edupuganti of Cogent Security on building 10x teams, and Tina Tosukhowong of TDK Ventures on signals that can identify category winners. Fidelity Private Shares representatives Kristen Craft and Evan Schnidman will contribute to conversations on fundraising trends and enterprise relationships.
For business leaders, the programme’s practical implication is that scaling should be treated as a sequence of connected decisions: validate customer demand, communicate the company clearly, build the appropriate team and align growth plans with the operating model.