Twenty of the most promising and creative early-stage startups — chosen from the elite Startup Battlefield 200 — will pour for glory and $100,000 into the world-renowned Startup Battlefield competition at TC Disrupt October 18-20 in San Francisco.
They will have to work hard to impress the judges, who will hear their pitch and answer tough questions. We’ve already announced the first group of judges and the second tranche of seasoned innovators and investors are ready to help declare the champion.
Wait, did you know that? Startup Battlefield isn’t just exciting to watch; it’s a masterclass in how investors think. The feedback from the judges provides insight into the criteria they use to determine whether a company is viable or not. Watch and learn what investors are looking for, what motivates them, and what drives them to schedule a meeting.
Without further ado, here are the following four judges ready to help crown the next Startup Battlefield champion:
Mandela Schumacher-Hodge Dixon is the CEO of All Raise, a non-profit organization with a mission to accelerate the success of female and non-binary investors, founders and operators in technology. Dixon’s career in the tech industry began when she dropped out of her PhD program at age 25 to start her own company and became one of the first black women to raise capital in Silicon Valley.
Before All Raise, Dixon founded and served as CEO of Founder Gym, a training program that teaches underrepresented founders how to raise venture capital. She was also the founding portfolio services director at Kapor Capital and the global director of Startup Weekend Education (acquired by Techstars). Dixon is an active angel investor, limited partner, Sequoia Capital Scout and a first member of First Round Capital’s Angel Track program.
Dixon has been recognized as one of Entrepreneur magazine’s 100 Most Powerful Women, a Forbes 30 Under 30 awardee, and LinkedIn’s Top 10 Voices in Venture Capital and Startups.
Charles Hudson is the founder and managing partner of Precursor Venturesa start-up venture capital firm focusing on investments in the first institutional financing round for the most promising software and hardware companies.
Before founding Precursor Ventures, Charles was a partner at SoftTech VC, where he identified investment opportunities in mobile infrastructure, mobile applications and marketplaces. He also supported SoftTech portfolio companies on business and business development issues.
Hudson was also the co-founder and CEO of Bionic Panda Games, an Android-focused mobile games startup. Prior to SoftTech VC and Bionic Panda Games, he held various leadership roles at Serious Business (acquired by Zynga), Gaia Interactive, Google and IronPort Systems (acquired by Cisco Systems).
Nicole Johnson, a partner at Forerunner Ventures, pays close attention to entrepreneurs who have an unbridled, round-the-clock passion for what they build. Armed with a background in psychology, she loves to dig into the consumer psyche to discover why we do what we do, how we interact with the world, and how to identify what drives consumer behavior.
Johnson joined Forerunner in 2013 as an investment analyst and team member number three. Her investments include Calibrate, CoProcure, Dutch, Nécessaire, Neighborhood Goods, The Expert, Thingtesting and Stadium Goods (exited).
Prior to joining Forerunner, Johnson worked at SapientNitro, a brand and digital strategy consulting firm, where she supported Fortune 500 retailers with their global retail strategies. She was named Forbes 30 under 30, Venture Capital in 2016.
Dave Munichiello is General Partner at GV, where he leads the team’s investments in data, platforms and infrastructure. Prior to GV, Munichiello built and led business software sales and operations teams for highly technical products in rapidly changing markets.
As a senior executive at Kiva Systems, Munichiello helped grow the robotics and software platform to $120 million in annual revenue before it was acquired by Amazon. He was a veteran and former paratrooper. His career prior to Kiva included management consulting for the Boston Consulting Group and leading teams as captains in elite units of the United States Army.
His military leadership roles include running a high-tech organization in Europe; serve as adjutant to the four-star general in charge of U.S. armed forces in Europe, Africa and Afghanistan; and deployment with dedicated operations teams around the world to take advantage of the world’s most advanced technologies.
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