Pod Insights Equity Podcast Winner of Startup Battlefield is... About this episode And the winner of TC's Startup Battlefield is.... gonna have to listen to find out
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Transcript 0:09 Speaker 00 Hello and welcome back to Equity TechCrunch's venture capital focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. My name is Alex Wilhelm and I am joined today by one of the biggest equity teams we've ever had on the show. But first up, we do have Natasha here. Natasha, say hi.
0:23 Speaker 01 Hey, hey, how are you, Alex?
0:25 Speaker 00 I survived Disrupt and unlike most years in the past, I am not going to get violently sick now that I'm done with it. So it's an upgrade. Mary Anne, this was your first Disrupt as part of the TC team. In 15 seconds, tell us how much fun you had and why it was the most you've ever had.
0:40 Speaker 02 I was just blown away like by the quality of the sessions, the panelists, the speakers, everything. It was amazing.
0:46 Speaker 00 And the technology platform didn't crash. Shout out Hoppin'. But with us today is a special guest, one of my favorite people on the face of the planet, someone who has not been on the show, someone who you may not know, but is very much a key and vital part of TC and Disrupt, it's Nisha Tombe. Nisha, hi.
1:02 Speaker 03 Hey, how's it going? Thanks for having me on.
1:04 Speaker 00 Yeah. So Nisha, for folks who don't know quickly, what is Battlefield and how long have we been doing this?
1:11 Speaker 03 We've been doing it for over a decade now. Startup Battlefield is TechCrunch's early-stage startup launch competitions. The companies come on stage at Disrupt, a variety of our events, pitch for six minutes and then answer some judge questions.
1:23 Speaker 00 And how many startups were there at Disrupt this year? How many finalists? Give people a scale for like applications and the funnel, if you will.
1:31 Speaker 03 This is actually the most competitive batch of Startup Battlefield we've ever had, which is a lot of work for me, but very exciting in general. So, because I read every single application that we get. We selected 18 companies from the application batch and then we had two companies that we pulled from Startup Alley, so the show floor at our conference, to join on. So we had 20 companies total and then they pitched on Tuesday and Wednesday. We picked five companies from that batch to pitch in the finals that took place yesterday.
2:02 Speaker 00 So the three of us have been podcasting and writing and not paying attention to the number of apps we had. How many companies actually applied to be part of this cohort?
2:09 Speaker 03 We had over a thousand. Actually, I think it was over 1,100 companies apply this time around.
2:15 Speaker 01 Well, I also feel like you're being humble. I mean, you are the person that makes Battlefield work and run and actually do a great thing every year. I feel like this is, this program wouldn't be okay without you. It wouldn't happen without you. So good job on your successful run.
2:29 Speaker 03 Thanks. It's definitely a team effort. I mean, the applications get reviewed through five rounds. So it's myself, Kathleen Hammack on my team and a couple other folks. And then it ends with our big boss, Matthew Panzerino, who he and I sit down for a few hours and hash through all the companies. It's a lot of bonding. It's two weeks of some serious bonding time.
2:50 Speaker 01 Hopefully you'll get some of his pizza along with it.
2:52 Speaker 00 For folks who don't know, this goes back a really long time. Nisha, I think it goes back even to like the TechCrunch 50 days before Disrupt was called Disrupt. We've been having this competition forever and some past winners that we'll get to later on, but like, you know, Yammer, for example, did pretty well and so forth. And Nisha, quickly, what's the prize? If you win, aside from us patting you on the head and writing a blog post about you, what do startups get for winning?
3:14 Speaker 03 They get my love and admiration. No, they already have that. They get $100,000 in prize money and that is actually equity free. So TechCrunch does not charge for applications or for our two month training process that we do with the teams or for the prize money that they get on stage. So they get $100,000 in equity free prize money, which is pretty great.
3:35 Speaker 01 That's amazing.
3:36 Speaker 00 I'm always amazed that we still do that because I would like $100,000. And when I ask for a raise, I'm told we don't have any more money. And yet, and yet, there's so much.
3:44 Speaker 03 To the companies.
3:46 Speaker 00 All right. So there are five finalists. And what we're going to do is we're going to go through each of the finalists before we talk about the kind of the finals selection process a little bit later on. And Natasha, you're going to kick us off with Selena. So tell us about this company.
3:58 Speaker 01 So it's always funny that I'm the one that's covering like a very STEM heavy startup, but this one did a really great job in humanizing what it does during their pitch. So they want to democratize cell therapy. Basically, think about how producing stem cells right now is this really archaic, human centric process with like a highly skilled scientist at a bench. And Celino wants to create a automated R and D system that helps extract more cells better using lasers and machine learning. And hopefully I'm not butchering it, but that's the crux of their entire business. And it's amazing that they're doing that.
4:36 Speaker 00 Nisha, do you want to, do you want to layer on top of that for us?
4:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, actually Natasha hit it on the head, but one of the challenges with stem cell therapies is that it is very human intensive, but it's also very capital intensive. Treatments can cost upwards of, you know, $500,000 a dose. So this is actually making it something that has broad applications for many kinds of people, not just specific demographics.
5:01 Speaker 01 One other bit from their presentation that stood out is a lot of the current yield for the extraction process of cells is about 10 to 20% of good cells. They want to bring up that success rate to 80%.
5:13 Speaker 00 Wow.
5:13 Speaker 01 So that's a huge mission and goal there, but eventually I'm sure like that's a hard thing for clinics or scientists to disagree with if they can pull it off.
5:22 Speaker 00 We have to move on to the next one, but before you, Nisha, what does this unlock? Like if, if Celino's vision works out, aside from things getting cheaper, what does that mean for me, the regular person? Does this mean I can live longer, live better, grow wings? Like, what does this actually do for me?
5:37 Speaker 03 Not quite grow wings, but it does mean that if, and God forbid, anything does happen to you, but if something did happen to you, say Alzheimer's or a skin condition or something like that, you would get targeted therapeutics based off of your own stem cells at an affordable price.
5:52 Speaker 00 I know I look like I'm 75, but I am not quite yet. I risk for Alzheimer's.
5:56 Speaker 01 He's just like, it's definitely those two.
5:58 Speaker 00 And he's just like, well, if you break your hip or if you have Alzheimer's, Alex, yeah. Okay, we're gonna move on to a company that I'm gonna try to pronounce because I forget. It's Adventure, I believe, but they've removed a number of the letters. It's a little bit of a throwback to Web 2.0 and we're gonna stick to Natasha, who's gonna tell us all about it.
6:15 Speaker 01 So they're built around being a smart media platform that makes videos a lot more interactive. So think, one example is you want to learn piano with John Legend and he's gonna test you on the keys. If you get them wrong, you'll hear back from him immediately saying, "Actually, that was wrong. Do this instead." Obviously, it's been used in e-commerce websites as well to help people have a more guided shopping experience. I was really interested in it, especially because the founder himself both was roommates with John Legend and his cousins with Kanye. So has a really probably deep expertise and experience working in the entertainment-turned-money industry.
6:54 Speaker 03 He's actually a Grammy Award-winning producer himself.
6:57 Speaker 01 I mean, it's pretty cool to see like him go into the startup world. I feel like he's been building this company since 2013, 2014. And so I feel like they probably have like entered a new level of growth now that they're on the battlefield stage, but that demo really stood out to me. Mary Ann, what did you, what did you like notice about the pitch?
7:15 Speaker 02 I mean, the interactive aspect was just, I've never seen anything quite like that.
7:19 Speaker 00 You know, it reminded me of like playing an RPG video game when you get like a number of options and you can kind of pick between them. So I think for like the kids these days, who grew up playing more video games than past generations, probably they expect videos to be more interactive than they currently are because, you know, video game cut screens have cut scenes, I should say, have become much more interactive anyways. So people expect to be able to have a say. I think it's really, really cool. And it's spelled A-D-V-E-N-T-R, I think?
7:46 Speaker 01 Yes, exactly. And for people who are listening, who maybe still don't know exactly what it does, I thought the founder did a great job explaining it. It's like a Vimeo meets Twilio in terms of what kind of technology and platform that it has. So take that with
8:01 Speaker 00 All right, we're going to move on to third finalists, which is KOA. Mary Ann, this was one of my favorites. So tell us all about what it does and where it's focused.
8:08 Speaker 02 They started in Kenya. This statistic I found fascinating. They found that $80 billion are currently being saved across Africa, not just Kenya, under the mattress. So people are not really saving money formally. And so the KOA is out to help them actually save digitally. They've created this process where people can onboard in two minutes, entirely digital onboarding process, which is incredible. And already they have, let's see, 6,000 users, $50,000 in deposits. And one of the things I think that's really interesting about what they're going to do is not just their own digital banking app, but they see a lot of promise and offering embedded finance and banking as a service tools that can help
8:53 Speaker 02 other startups launch fintech products. So I think there's a lot of implications there. And that's, that's really cool.
8:59 Speaker 00 Yeah. Nisha, how many financial startups were part of the 1100 applications that were focused on kind of like bringing more fintech products to underserved populations globally?
9:08 Speaker 03 I would say it's the, it was the third most, third or fourth most represented category in the application basket. There are a lot of people trying to solve this problem. So it's definitely a critical need and not just in Sub-Saharan Africa, but also across Latin America and Middle East and other markets.
9:24 Speaker 00 I mean, I mean, hell, I mean, speaking about financial literacy and savings rates, this applies also very much in our backyard. I mean, like here in the United States as well. This is not a, it's not a not issue here, though it is more of an exacerbated issue in other markets. And KOA, by the way, is spelled K-O-A, if you want to look it up. And now we're going to move on to NTH Cycle, as in N-T-H Cycle. This is, this one really blew me away. This was, I mean, I don't want to be biased, but I thought the pitch was fantastic. And essentially, the idea is in the mining process, there are tailings, which are kind of the leftovers. And Nth Cycle's technology can extract economically useful metals from those. And you can also take kind of battery recycling results and put those into the system. And again, extract elements out of it. So my view is that Nth Cycle's tech,
10:08 Speaker 00 if it works out, will reduce the need to mine to some degree, possibly reducing our carbon footprint, and generally making the, the high-tech world of products a bit more eco-friendly. Nisha, close? Close? Close enough?
10:21 Speaker 03 Close, that's half of what they do. The other half, in addition to mining, is lithium batteries. So all EV vehicles that you see on the road or most have lithium batteries that they use, but there's actually no end of life system or processing that is really readily available right now. Everything goes through China. So what they do is they take these batteries that have been shredded and put it through that same process that they do for the mining companies. And by the end of it, they have nearly manufacturing grade ready metals and minerals at the end of the process, creating a closed loop system.
10:56 Speaker 00 And the goal is not to replace the current generation of battery recycling companies. It's to kind of work with them to some degree.
11:02 Speaker 03 Exactly. They're adding on to it to make that end product more usable and something that could actually fit back into the circle.
11:10 Speaker 01 And I feel like that's, it's refreshing to see them wanting to complement instead of directly compete because I don't think it takes away from the ambition at all. It just to me seems like it's a more realistic way to try and disrupt and innovate in a category as highly regulated as batteries. I mean, you can't just come from the outside and immediately try and like turn everything over.
11:27 Speaker 00 And really briefly, one thing they do is they bring their equipment to mining facilities, for example, because you can't really take like tailings, put them in an enormous truck, drive them to Wyoming or whatever, where there's a facility to process them because it's expensive, it's carbon intensive. So their low, you know, square footprint allows them to bring this to places where recycling tech may not be possible. So I think it's really, really cool. I've all for making the environment better. And speaking of making the environment better, guys, nothing is better for the environment than Bitcoin mining.
11:55 Speaker 01 Oh, God.
11:55 Speaker 00 And the larger world of crypto. That was my attempt at a segue into our last finalist, a company called Tatum, which provides an API hook into a number of blockchains. I think by now the crypto economy is not going anywhere and we all kind of agree on that. The one thing that has happened is there's now more blockchains than ever. And so if you want to have your company be able to plug into one or five or seven or 20 of them, it's pretty tough. And so here we have, akin to Twilio, a simple API that lets you plug into a very complex system. Tatum claims to have about 10,000 developers on its platform, over 900 products, and claiming 25% Month on month revenue growth. A lot of its customers are kind of in the NFT space, which is frankly, I think the current most active neat use case of the crypto world.
12:39 Speaker 00 And I thought Tatum was pretty cool. CEO is named Jerry and I love API delivered companies. So that is the, oh, Nisha, please.
12:47 Speaker 03 They also are from the Czech Republic, which I think is really cool. I think they might be our first company from there. So it's nice to see that kind of global representation too.
12:55 Speaker 00 What a beautiful way to talk us into how these companies were picked because one thing we were talking about before we brought you on Nisha was just how international this cohort felt in a really great way. It felt like there were more companies, sorry, more countries represented than ever before.
13:09 Speaker 03 Yeah. So the battlefield application process is simple, but also not. Companies apply in through our website. Some companies are referred, but they still have to go through the same application process. There's about five rounds that every application will go through or four applicant, four for each application and five for the finalists. We don't actually do any kind of demographic analysis through the process. We focus on bringing in, you know, different kinds of founders at the top of funnel, but we don't look at any of that until the end. And we are happily surprised when we reach that point. It's something that TechCrunch does care really deeply about and making sure that we're representing tech from all
13:52 Speaker 03 different kinds of demographics, all different kinds of countries. But, you know, we are really interested in featuring the best tech. And so we exclusively focus on product and then kind of do a check in at the end and are typically pleasantly surprised by what we find.
14:07 Speaker 00 So do you have any of those numbers off the top of your head? Like, how many founders were from underrepresented groups? How many different countries? I would love to know kind of whatever you have about this batch of 20.
14:17 Speaker 03 Yeah. So we have, let's see, only one company had their headquarters in the Bay Area. Over 50% are international, so not US-based. And then from a diversity perspective, I mean, I would recommend anyone listening also take a peek at the pitches themselves, but we have a pretty diverse representation of founders. And again, that that comes from top of funnel. It's not really something we particularly aim for. It's just something that happens at the end of cycle.
14:44 Speaker 01 You know, obviously we've seen Y Combinator, another accelerator and startup launch program, if you will. Increase their batches over time for a variety of reasons. For Startup Battlefield, have you felt any pressure to increase the amount of startups we have on stage or the amount of, yeah, the amount that are accepted in the first place?
15:03 Speaker 03 No. Short answer is no. We spend a lot of time with each of the companies that we select. We do private trainings with them for hours on end. They put in a lot of work, but it really is catered to every company. And to a certain degree, that just can't necessarily scale to hundreds of companies, being able to provide that really personalized instruction and guidance.
15:27 Speaker 00 Now, before we get into some stuff about the past and so forth, I want to talk about the winner and the runner up. So, Nisha, giving you the honors because this really is your baby. Who won this year's Disrupt Battlefield?
15:38 Speaker 03 This year, our winner was Solino.
15:43 Speaker 00 That's the enthusiasm the equity team brings.
15:45 Speaker 01 I was in charge of paying attention to their pitch, so I will take ownership for nothing. They killed it. They're amazing.
15:52 Speaker 00 And Nisha, why do you think Solino managed to pull ahead of the other four?
15:56 Speaker 03 One of the really great things about Solino was its ability to bring down the cost of these therapeutics to populations. And now TechCrunch Startup Battlefield is an early-stage startup competition. So there is a bit of a gamble involved when we are picking these companies and selecting the winner. But their core objective, I think, is something that really sat well with our judges.
16:18 Speaker 00 Okay. And then Mary Ann, if you can do the honors, announcing the runner up.
16:23 Speaker 02 Enthcycle.
16:24 Speaker 00 Which was my favorite because I understood it the most because I want to buy an electric car, but I also don't want to poison the planet and have some lithium mine kill a child. So I was, I was pretty happy about Enthcycle. Mary Ann, why do you think that one stood out to the judges? If you were to take a, take a guess?
16:37 Speaker 02 I think it's just really unique with my limited perspective and the ability to recycle these products in this way is just fascinating and all the different use cases with the, what, what they're able to extract.
16:49 Speaker 01 And I'll add, I think both the winner and the runner up like were exceptional storytellers. And I think at the early stage, that's so much of it. I know like they both have insane businesses and a lot of vision. That's amazing, but I feel like the way they pitched and answered those questions really stood out.
17:06 Speaker 00 Yeah, I was very rusty. In fact, after the Nth Cycle's pitch, I think every single judge that asked a question was like, by the way, great pitch, super clear, loved it. And I was like, dang, you know, I've never seen that many compliments in a row about a particular pitch, which I guess really means we're complimenting Nisha yet again, given that she had a hand in that.
17:23 Speaker 03 Meghan is a PhD, the CEO of Nth Cycle. So she's actually defended her dissertation. She's, she's pretty used to these kinds of intense questions coming at her.
17:33 Speaker 00 Yeah, I wonder what's scarier, a PhD dissertation defense or a like a live zoom in front of everybody and six judges, like I, both sound kind of hard.
17:42 Speaker 01 I had one quick question about Solino. I know that they raised actually venture capital in the past, like 16 million from COSLA. And I wasn't sure if that at all, look, how that works when you are in an early stage competition. Like, I'm sure you talked about it, Nisha. What was your thought process between them winning and also just being in the batch in the first place?
18:03 Speaker 03 They're a wildcard company, so they were one of the initial 18 selections. They were pulled from the show floor and then the judges kind of pushed them up from there. When we are reviewing these companies, early stage doesn't for us just mean the amount of money a company is raised. It means what stage their product is in. And companies like that typically take more funding to just reach an MVP than other companies. So if a SaaS platform had raised $70 million, then we would say, okay, you're a little too late for us. But, you know, we have, we've had companies with a little bit more funding in the space industry when you're inventing rocket fuel and things like that.
18:36 Speaker 01 Okay.
18:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think also another thing about Solino, and I'm curious if the pandemic and, and all this talk about, you know, medical care and treatments has anything to do with them resonating with the judges and people in general? Because I think the idea that these treatments can help with diabetes and Parkinson's is, is just, I think all of that to me just takes on a different meaning than it might have two years ago.
19:02 Speaker 00 Yeah, we're all a bit more aware of our fragility as humans, perhaps.
19:07 Speaker 01 Totally.
19:07 Speaker 00 And so, yeah, yeah. Nisha, can you tell us a little bit about some previous luminaries from the battlefield thing? Because I've been going to TC events since I think the TechCrunch 40 or 50, and there's been so many over the years, I have lost track. So we wouldn't mind a couple of highlights from you.
19:25 Speaker 03 We have had a lot. So you had mentioned Yammer. We have Getaround, Mint.com, Dropbox, Verb, that sold to Snapchat for hundreds of millions of dollars.
19:35 Speaker 00 I remember when Yammer won. I was living in my friend's apartment in Portland, Oregon, and I was drawing on a whiteboard this idea that I had for a product called Internal Twitter. And we were so excited about this. And then Yammer had already built it, and they showed it off, and they won. And then they sold like 10 minutes later for a billion dollars. And I was like, I was like 17. And I was like, well, this, this is ridiculous. Anyways, it's a, it's a long time coming back around. But for winners and talk show, they do historically have a pretty good track record of raising capital and kind of getting attention and that sort of thing.
20:03 Speaker 01 Totally. I mean, just running through a couple of recent raises, we saw Mutiny get an 18.5 million Series A funding from Sequoia and a bunch of other major CMOs. We saw Legacy get a 20 million raise from Bain. One of my favorite, though, updates is DocSend getting acquired by Dropbox, which was literally a battlefield company acquiring another battlefield company. And I feel like that's
20:26 Speaker 03 Oh, that's so cool.
20:27 Speaker 01 Another level of maturity, and it's such a flex.
20:30 Speaker 00 Also, we've had some IPOs. Yext was a really early presenter in the TechCrunch 50 days, I think, and they went public some time ago.
20:37 Speaker 03 And also Cloudflare, which IPOed. I mean, granted, that was a little bit ago, but they IPOed as well.
20:43 Speaker 00 Oh, I forgot. Wait, Cloudflare was a battlefield company?
20:45 Speaker 03 Cloudflare was a battlefield company. Yeah.
20:47 Speaker 00 Huh.
20:48 Speaker 03 And interestingly enough, they did not win, but I think they got eaten second or third. And he likes to remind us of that, being like, I IPOed, but I didn't necessarily win. But we're excited about it.
20:59 Speaker 00 In our defense, we bring in some judges and let them do their thing. It isn't like we're being proscriptive. We're being reactive to a degree. And just before we go, guys, how do we feel? How do we feel being done with Disrupt? Because there's an enormous buildup to this. It's a ton of work. It's a lot of fun. I, I'm gonna sleep for like 12 hours tonight. That's my celebration. But I'm curious what we're doing to unwind from the stressy three days. Maryam, what about you?
21:23 Speaker 02 I mean, my brain is much like yours. I don't know, maybe like wine, walk.
21:28 Speaker 01 Wine walk. Wine and walk at the same time.
21:31 Speaker 00 Is that allowed in Texas? I don't know if you're allowed to drink outside.
21:34 Speaker 03 I, I don't know, but I'm gonna do it anyway.
21:37 Speaker 00 There you go. Mary Ann is our local outlaw. Natasha, what are you gonna do?
21:40 Speaker 01 I think I'm gonna hang out with Nisha and a couple of other tech crunchers in person, somewhere, secret, in San Francisco. We can't tell you.
21:48 Speaker 03 So jealous. Oh, my God.
21:51 Speaker 00 Yeah, that actually hurts my soul a little bit. Nisha, can you make sure to prank Natasha when you guys are all hanging out? Because I can't do it in person because I'm on the wrong coast.
22:01 Speaker 03 Either that or I'll feed her smores where we're going. So I'm very excited for that. But I am actually going, I'm actually going, after hanging out with all the, the local TC folk, I'm going urchin diving.
22:13 Speaker 00 Like for sea urchins?
22:14 Speaker 03 Yes, for sea urchins. They're, they're an invasive species killing the kelp. So I'm gonna go dive and, and help the kelp forest grow.
22:22 Speaker 00 And ladies and gentlemen, that's why I love having Nisha around because you absolutely never know what she is doing next.
22:28 Speaker 00 On that kelp saving note, we're gonna bounce. We are back, of course, Monday morning after a long weekend's rest. Thanks for coming to Disrupt. We'll see you then. Bye.
Previous Freshworks, Toast go public and we have Takes Next Equity Monday: Instagram pauses youth product as Amplitude, Warby Parker prep public offerings Page updated October 14, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
