🧠 What I saw and heard at TechCrunch Disrupt

Here's how many people swarmed San Francisco for the show. I hope they like AI.

It has been a minute since I hit a legit conference on the scale of TechCrunch Disrupt. The media outlet synonymous with startup coverage in San Francisco claims 12,000 attendees descended on Moscone West for the three-day event. During those days, 20 startups pitched and competed for a $100,000 Startup Battlefield prize, and should come as no surprise to anyone that the winner had AI in its name.

Here are my big takeaways.

First, congrats to BioticsAI, which took home the show’s top honors. It’s a startup that uses AI to identify fetus malformations, which is an incredibly high-stakes problem to tackle — and certainly one of the most noble pursuits on display at the show.

AI hype isn’t new to tech, but it is having a moment, thanks in part to web3 and blockchain losing some luster, but also because OpenAI, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta (among others) have kicked off a public arms race to get the large language models and related services they offer into everyone’s workflows and tech stacks.

It has also illuminated dollar signs in venture capitalists’ eyes, setting the stage for this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt show floor, where having an explicit “AI” section almost seemed redundant, given that booths throughout the rest of the floor had found ways to work AI into their names, signage, and marketing claims. Many of these were compelling—don’t get me wrong—but there were clearly some entities out there whose AI claims were looser and less fully baked than others, if you catch my drift.

That said, watching pitches on the Battlefield stage is a treat. Disrupt hosted founders from around the world, and it’s inspiring to see these people make the trip to put their work in front of thousands of people and try to make their case to the investors or potential partners and customers who may be watching.

I didn’t make it to most of the higher-ticket talks, which included Shaquille O’Neal or Kevin Systrom (though I really do enjoy his latest news app). I was mainly there to meet some old friends and get to know a few new faces, which I’ll be able to share more about later.

(Soft announcement: I registered a new domain on Friday, and there’s nothing there yet, but there will be very soon, including a project I’ve been collaborating on with someone a few subscribers to this newsletter may know.)

No, I’m not taking Maven Ventures Founding Managing Partner Jim Scheinman’s (shown below) advice from this talk on how to found a billion-dollar AI startup. (Spoiler: The secrets are having a good management team, big vision, and large total addressable market.) It is going to be fun, though, and it will have quite a bit to do with AI.

Stay tuned.

Side work

• Assessment on my blog about why Instacart and Klaviyo’s presumed unicorn IPOs were such a big deal for tech right now

Side reads and watches

• The first chapters of "The Song of the Cell" by Siddhartha Mukherjee, recommended to me by an old friend this week and living up to his pitch

• The amazing work that same friend has been doing with the Jackie Banana Foundation, which was set up to help cancer patients traveling to get treatment

• That last episode of "Ahsoka," which I won’t spoil but did appreciate for the new contributions to Star Wars lore