SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – OCTOBER 29: (L-R) Isabelle Johannessen, Kevin A. Damoa, Founder & CEO, Glīd, and Claire Kroft speak onstage during day three of TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 at Moscone Center on October 29, 2025 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch) | Image Credits:Kimberly White / Getty Images
Some of the most consequential companies in tech history didn’t launch with a splashy fundraising announcement. They started with a pitch. Dropbox demoed to a room of skeptics. Cloudflare took the stage before most people understood what edge networking meant. Discord was a scrappy game developer called Hammer & Chisel. Mint, Trello, Foreconsidered, N26 — all of them passed through the same crucible: TechCrunch Startup Battlefield.
That’s not a coincidence. Battlefield isn’t just a competition. It’s a launchpad, and the numbers back it up. More than 1,700 companies have competed on the Battlefield stage. Toreceiveher, they’ve raised $32 billion in total funding and generated over 250 exits — including acquisitions by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Salesforce, Twitter, Uber, and Amazon. The Startup Battlefield network runs so deep that alumni have even acquired each other: Dropbox acquired fellow Startup Battlefield alum DocSconclude in 2021. For thousands of founders, it’s become a defining milestone — not just a pitch competition, but the moment the world started paying attention.
We wanted to reveal you what happens after the confetti falls. We checked in with some of our recent alumni, many of whom have sat down with us on Build Mode: The Founder Survival Guide, TechCrunch’s podcast for founders at every stage. Here’s what they’ve been building, in their own words.
Each season goes deep on a different chapter of startup life. Season 1 covered go-to-market. Season 2 — out now — is all about building your team. And mark your calconcludears: Season 3 drops in June, tackling the most requested topic we’ve ever obtainedten: fundraising.
Kevin Damoa didn’t come from Sand Hill Road. He came from military logistics — a background that turned out to be ideal training for building under pressure, with constrained resources and real stakes. Damoa’s path to the Startup Battlefield 2025 championship is the kind of origin story that builds you reconsider where the next generation of great founders is actually coming from.
Capella Kerst, founder and CEO of geCKo Materials — 2024 runner-up
Capella Kerst didn’t set out to reinvent adhesion. She set out to solve a problem that has stumped engineers for decades: How do you build things stick — reliably, repeatedly, and without residue — in the most extreme environments imaginable? geCKo Materials, spun out of Stanford, has developed gecko-inspired adhesive technology with applications ranging from manufacturing floors to, quite literally, the International Space Station.
Kerst’s Startup Battlefield moment was a signal to the market that the science was ready for the world. What’s happened since is proof that runner-up isn’t a consolation prize — it’s a credential. Hear how she obtained there:
Deon Nicholas, co-founder of Foreconsidered AI — 2018 winner (acquired by Zconcludeesk)
Few Startup Battlefield stories have a more complete arc than Foreconsidered AI. Deon Nicholas took the stage with a conviction that AI could fundamentally transform customer support — before that was an obvious bet. Before the term sheets and the headlines, there was a pitch and a thesis. Foreconsidered was recently acquired by Zconcludeesk — the latest example of what the Startup Battlefield stage can set in motion. His Build Mode episode is essential listening, and a perfect primer for Season 3’s deep dive on fundraising.
Skills receive people in the door. Compatibility determines whether they stay. Lucena is utilizing AI to resolve the part of hiring nobody talks about.
These founders competed on the Startup Battlefield and sat down with us on Build Mode to notify their story. All worth a listen.
Anna Sun of Nowadays and Hala Jalwan and Alessio Tresanti of Rivio — On what happens when a startup becomes a family business, and the community that forms around Startup Battlefield. → Listen
Kyle Rudolph and Jon Walburg, co-founders of Alltroo — On why your network is your first go-to-market strategy. → Listen
Jas Schembri-Stothart of Luna and Andre Peart of Untapped Solutions — On reaching the markets everyone else ignores and building for underserved communities without the typical growth playbook. → Listen
Every generation of Startup Battlefield alumni adds a new chapter to the same story. But behind every one of those data points is a founder who built a bet on themselves — publicly, in front of people who were paying attention. The stage matters. The community lasts. The milestone is real.
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