Meet the next wave of VCs judging Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026

TechCrunch has added five investors to the Startup Battlefield 200 judging roster for Disrupt 2026, expanding the panel that will evaluate six-minute pitches from hand-picked early-stage founders on the main stage. The competition runs October 13–15 at Moscone West in San Francisco, and the judges will press founders with follow-up questions designed to probe execution capability, market opportunity, defensibility and timing.

The new judges include Vaibhav 'Dr.V' Agrawal, co-founder and general partner of ODDBIRD VC, a pre-seed fund he started in 2024 focused on AI-driven reindustrialization including health and bio, critical supply chains, and real-world automation. Agrawal is a trained physician with an MBBS and an MBA from Stanford and previously served as a general partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners India; his current portfolio includes Anterior, a healthcare AI company that has raised $64 million from NEA and Sequoia.

Anu Bharadwaj joins the panel from ICONIQ, where she focuses on enterprise software and AI companies; she previously spent nearly 12 years as president and COO of Atlassian overseeing product, engineering and enterprise business lines. Sho Sho Leigha Ho is a partner on General Catalyst’s seed team and a board observer at Together AI; she joined General Catalyst in 2024 as its youngest partner and has public investments including Graylark, Autoscience, Standard Kernel and The Interaction Company of California (Poke).

Miloni Madan Presler represents IVP, bringing experience in growth equity and private equity and a focus on partnering with first-time founders scaling inflection-stage companies from Series B through pre-IPO. Aidan Madigan-Curtis of Eclipse Ventures invests in AI, IoT, computer vision and industrial software; she previously scaled Apple Watch manufacturing and was a VP and general manager at Samsara, and leads Eclipse’s Carbon Optimization framework to measure emissions reductions across its portfolio.

TechCrunch said the judges will join the previously announced panel to determine which startups advance and ultimately win the $100,000 prize. Disrupt expects more than 10,000 attendees and is offering ticket savings of up to $200 if purchased before rates rise on September 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT, with an additional 30% discount for group registrations.