Meet the VCs Judging Startup Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2026

For startup founders, getting a spot in Startup Battlefield 200 can be a major career milestone. For the thousands of people attending TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, the competition also offers a rare look at how experienced investors assess young companies and decide which ideas have the potential to grow.

Startup Battlefield is built around high-pressure pitches. From October 13–15, selected founders will take the stage at Moscone West in San Francisco, with just six minutes to explain their company, product, market opportunity and vision.

But the pitch itself is only part of the challenge.

Once those six minutes are over, the judges get the opportunity to dig deeper. Their questions can reveal what investors really want to know about an early-stage company: Can the founders execute? Is the market large enough? Why is this the right time for the business? And does the company have something that competitors will struggle to copy?

Those discussions can be just as useful for founders sitting in the audience as they are for the startups competing onstage.

TechCrunch is continuing to expand its Startup Battlefield judging panel with another group of experienced venture capital investors. Five more investors have now been announced, bringing expertise across artificial intelligence, enterprise software, healthcare, security, manufacturing, logistics and other areas of technology.

The judges will help determine which founders move forward in the competition and ultimately compete for the $100,000 prize.

Meet the five new Startup Battlefield judges

Vaibhav “Dr.V” Agrawal — ODDBIRD VC

Vaibhav “Dr.V” Agrawal is co-founder and general partner of ODDBIRD VC, a pre-seed fund he launched in 2024. The firm focuses on AI companies working to reindustrialize the West, particularly in healthcare and bio, critical supply chains and real-world automation.

Agrawal is a trained physician with an MBBS degree and also holds an MBA from Stanford. Before launching ODDBIRD VC, he was a general partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners India, where he began backing early-stage startups in 2016.

His current portfolio includes Anterior, a healthcare AI company that has raised $64 million from NEA and Sequoia.

Anu Bharadwaj — ICONIQ

Anu Bharadwaj is a partner at ICONIQ, where she focuses on enterprise software and AI companies.

Before joining the firm, Bharadwaj spent nearly 12 years at Atlassian, eventually serving as president and COO. During her time there, she led product, engineering and enterprise operations across Jira, Confluence and the Atlassian Cloud platform as the company expanded to billions of dollars in annual revenue.

Earlier in her career, she held leadership positions at Microsoft. She earned a bachelor of engineering in computer science from R.V. College of Engineering.

Sho Sho Leigha Ho — General Catalyst

Sho Sho Leigha Ho is a partner on General Catalyst’s seed team, where she invests in early-stage founders. She also serves as a board observer at Together AI.

Ho joined General Catalyst in 2024 as its youngest partner. Her public investments include Graylark, Autoscience, Standard Kernel, and The Interaction Company of California (Poke), which was acquired by Cognition in July 2026.

She holds an AB from Harvard and is based in San Francisco.

Miloni Madan Presler — IVP

Miloni Madan Presler is a partner at Institutional Venture Partners (IVP). She works with first-time founders building technology companies at major growth stages, with a focus on enterprise software, healthcare and security.

Her investment work covers companies from Series B through pre-IPO, combining a growth equity and private equity perspective with company-building experience.

Before joining IVP, Presler held roles at Summit Partners and Warburg Pincus. She earned a degree in Economics and Finance from Johns Hopkins University and speaks four languages.

Aidan Madigan-Curtis — Eclipse Ventures

Aidan Madigan-Curtis is a partner at Eclipse Ventures, where she invests in AI, IoT, computer vision and software companies working across manufacturing, logistics, supply chains and climate transition.

Business Insider previously named her one of its 22 Investors to Know in Robotics and Physical AI. At Eclipse, she leads the firm’s Carbon Optimization framework, which tracks real emissions reductions across its portfolio.

Before moving into venture capital, Madigan-Curtis held a senior executive role at Apple, where she helped scale Apple Watch manufacturing from zero to millions of units per week. She later became a VP and general manager at Samsara, helping the company grow from pre-revenue to more than $1 billion in annual recurring revenue.

She holds a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from Stanford University.

Startup Battlefield 200 takes center stage at Disrupt 2026

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 will take place October 13–15 in San Francisco, bringing together more than 10,000 tech leaders, venture capital investors and founders.

For Startup Battlefield 200 participants, the event provides an opportunity to pitch their companies in front of experienced investors and a large technology audience. For attendees, the competition offers a closer look at the ideas, teams and business models that investors are evaluating at the earliest stages.

The newly announced judges will join the first 10 investors already announced for the Startup Battlefield judging panel.

TechCrunch is also offering ticket savings ahead of the event, with attendees able to save up to $200 before prices increase on September 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Groups can receive an additional 30% discount when registering together.

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