Next wave of VCs judging Startup Battlefield 200 contenders at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 revealed

TechCrunch has announced the next group of judges for Startup Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2026, adding five venture capitalists who will evaluate early-stage startups on the Disrupt Stage. The conference runs October 13-15 at Moscone West in San Francisco, and the judges will spend each day probing founder teams on the fundamentals that matter for long-term company building.

The newly revealed panel includes Aditi Maliwal, a general partner at Upfront Ventures who focuses on pre-seed and seed investments in fintech, enterprise SaaS, AI applications, and developer tools; her portfolio credits include Clair, Writer, Arcade, and General Translation, and she previously led a Series A in Chime. Michael Palank joins from MaC Ventures, a majority Black-owned firm that backs seed-stage consumer and enterprise startups using a culturally informed thesis; his background includes work in Hollywood talent representation. Nell Daly is co-founder and managing partner of Revenge Capital, an evergreen, sector-agnostic fund that targets founders who are often overlooked, and she draws on a prior career as a psychotherapist in her founder-first approach. Grace Ge of Amplify Partners invests in AI, developer tooling, data infrastructure, and modern SaaS—particularly the layer between foundation models and enterprise apps—and her portfolio includes companies such as Pinecone and Eppo. Crystal Huang, a general partner at GV, focuses on enterprise SaaS, AI infrastructure, and fintech with an emphasis on product- and developer-led go-to-market strategies; her past roles include investing at NEA and GGV Capital and working in technology M&A at Blackstone.

Judges at Startup Battlefield aim to surface companies that can endure beyond a single polished presentation, pressing founders on conviction, clarity, and execution to determine whether a startup has category-leading potential. For more than 15 years, Startup Battlefield has been a platform where early-stage companies that later shaped markets were first showcased, and the Disrupt stage offers a live view of how experienced investors evaluate emerging teams.

Attendees who want to watch the competition in person can register for Disrupt 2026 and save up to $200 if they sign up before rates rise on September 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT; group registration offers additional savings. The full Disrupt agenda lists the complete roster of VC judges and programming for the event.