The key facts
- Founder Summit 2026 will take place on November 4 at SoWa Power Station in Boston
- Six roundtables: events, verticals, GraphRAG, enterprise AI sales, new categories, AI for small teams
- Speakers include representatives of Define Ventures, Procore, ADIN.AI, Draper Associates, IFTTT, and the Toast co-founder
Summit format
TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 will take place on November 4, 2026, at SoWa Power Station in Boston. The one-day event will bring together founders, investors, and operators for discussions, hands-on sessions, live pitches, networking, and roundtables for deeper conversation. In addition to the roundtables, the Build and Impact stages will feature discussions on product-market fit, hiring, founder leadership, fundraising, pitching, and scaling companies beyond the San Francisco Bay Area.
Roundtables and speakers
Six roundtables are planned. Alexandra Ames, founder and chief event strategist at Blueprint Lab, will talk about event strategy for companies that do not yet have an in-house events team (10:45–11:15, Roundtable 2). Chirag Shah, partner at Define Ventures, will discuss choosing the first, hardest vertical market — regulated industries, complex buyers, and specialized customers (11:30–12:00, Roundtable 1).
AI topics
Shishir Tewari, head of enterprise data engineering at Procore Technologies, will lead a session on GraphRAG and knowledge graphs as a way to reduce AI system hallucinations and increase trust in them within organizations (11:30–12:00, Roundtable 2). Merve Kitapci, managing partner and CGO at ADIN.AI, will break down how to close large enterprise clients like L’Oreal and Vodafone before a Series A round — taking into account long sales cycles and multiple stakeholders (13:15–13:45, Roundtable 2).
New categories and lean teams
Andy Tang, partner at Draper Associates, will lead a discussion about products for which no category yet exists: how to explain and sell them and how to convey the opportunity to investors (13:55–14:25, Roundtable 2). Linden Tibbets, CEO and founder of IFTTT, will discuss how small teams can use AI to grow their speed and volume of work without increasing headcount (14:35–15:05, Roundtable 1).
The rest of the program
Attendees will be able to hear, among others, Toast co-founder Steve Fredette, as well as watch the live pitch competition “So You Think You Can Pitch?”. The program also includes a Networking Lounge with a Braindate format and a closing reception with participation from Fidelity Private Shares. The organizers note that the value of the roundtables lies in the opportunity to ask a question that matters for your own company and to exchange experiences with other attendees.
