From Toast to Bessemer: The Founders and Investors Speaking at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026

Building a startup means making decisions before you have all the answers. When should you scale? How do you know you truly have product-market fit? What does it take to land enterprise customers? How do you build the right team? And when you finally get in front of an investor, how do you ensure your pitch earns another conversation?

On November 4, TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 will convene founders, investors, and operators at SoWa Power Station in Boston—people who have tackled these questions from different sides of the table. Hosted by TechCrunch in partnership with Fidelity Private Shares, the full-day event goes beyond fundraising and AI to explore the realities of finding customers, building teams, sharpening a pitch, developing founder leadership, and scaling companies both inside and outside traditional startup hubs.

Save 25% on your ticket today, and bring a colleague along for free with our limited BOGO deal.

Featured Speakers in Boston

Steve Fredette on Building a Company That Keeps Reinventing Itself

Boston founders need look no further for an example of what can happen when a startup finds its market and continues evolving with its customers. Steve Fredette, president, co-founder, and director of Toast, takes the Impact Stage for "Building a Company That Keeps Reinventing Itself."

Toast's story offers founders a compelling case study in identifying a customer problem, finding product-market fit, winning customers, and ultimately scaling a Boston startup into a public company. But reaching scale does not mean the work is finished. Fredette's conversation will examine what it takes to continue evolving a company as customer expectations, technology, and the market change around it—while staying connected to the needs that helped create the business in the first place.

Kent Bennett on Knowing When Product-Market Fit Is Real

Growth can be exciting. Growing too early can be expensive. Kent Bennett, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, will lead "Finding Product-Market Fit Before You Scale," focusing on one of the most important questions an early-stage founder can answer: Are customers actually telling you that you are ready to grow?

The session will give founders a chance to think more critically about the signals that matter before adding headcount, increasing spend, or accelerating go-to-market efforts. It is a useful counterpoint to... [content continues]

via TechCrunch AI