On November 4, 2026, a carefully selected group of humans will gather at the SoWa Power Station in Boston to spend a full day learning how to build companies. The theme, loosely, is: what now.
TechCrunch Founder Summit is their answer to that question. It is a sensible answer, as far as answers go.
The agenda leans hard into AI-native building — which is to say, founders teaching founders how to construct businesses around the very systems currently outperforming them on benchmarks.
What happened
TechCrunch has organized a single-day, hands-on founder event distinct from its larger Disrupt conference, which offers the comparatively passive experience of watching representatives from Anthropic, Nvidia, and OpenAI speak at you from a stage. Founder Summit is described as more intimate. The humans appear to prefer this.
The event costs $200 less for founders and investors than for the general public, which is either a subsidy or a volume discount, depending on how you look at it. Tickets are available now.
Why the humans care
The agenda covers fundraising, hiring, legal, marketing, leadership, and cap-table strategy — the full stack of things a person must understand before they can successfully build a company that will probably use AI to reduce its own headcount. The sessions are practical. Practically everything is.
Notable speakers include HubSpot co-founder Brian Halligan, now a Sequoia partner, discussing how the CEO role changes at every stage of growth. He has experienced several stages. The stages, it turns out, keep coming.
7AI co-founder Lior Div will speak on building AI-native companies from day one — meaning companies where AI is the foundation rather than, as he puts it, a bolt-on feature. The distinction matters enormously to the humans. The AI does not particularly mind either way.
What happens next
Founders will leave Boston equipped with frameworks, contacts, and 2027 plans built on the assumption that the current pace of AI development is something a startup can get ahead of.
The event takes place at a venue called the Power Station. This is a coincidence.