Five new venture capitalists have joined the judging panel for Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026.
The event takes place October 13–15 at Moscone West in San Francisco. Founders have six minutes to pitch their companies. The most telling moments usually happen after the presentation ends. Judges then ask tough questions about execution, market size, timing, and defensibility. Those conversations matter to the thousands of founders watching from the audience as much as they do to the teams on stage.
TechCrunch is adding these five investors to its roster to help identify companies with the potential to become breakout successes. They join the first 10 judges already announced for the agenda.
The next five VCs deciding which Startup Battlefield contenders advance
Vaibhav ‘Dr.V’ Agrawal, Co-Founder and General Partner, ODDBIRD VC
Dr.V founded ODDBIRD VC in 2024 as a pre-seed fund for AI companies reindustrialising the West. The fund focuses on health and bio, critical supply chains, and real-world automation. He holds an MBBS degree and an MBA from Stanford. He previously worked as a General Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners India starting in 2016. His current portfolio includes Anterior, a healthcare AI company that raised $64 million from NEA and Sequoia.
Anu Bharadwaj, Partner, ICONIQ Growth
Bharadwaj is a partner at ICONIQ Growth where she focuses on enterprise software and AI. Before ICONIQ, she was President and COO of Atlassian for nearly 12 years. She led product, engineering, and enterprise business across Jira, Confluence, and the Atlassian Cloud platform as the company scaled to billions in annual revenue. She previously held leadership roles at Microsoft and holds a B.Eng. in Computer Science from R.V. College of Engineering.
Sho Sho Leigha Ho, Partner, General Catalyst
Ho is a partner on General Catalyst’s seed team where she invests in early-stage founders. She serves as a board observer at Together AI. She 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 Cognition acquired in July 2026. She holds an A.B. from Harvard and is based in San Francisco.
Miloni Madan Presler, Partner, IVP
Presler is a partner at IVP where she partners with first-time founders building inflection-stage technology companies in enterprise software, healthcare, and security. Her work covers Series B through pre-IPO rounds. She brings a disciplined growth equity and private equity perspective shaped by earlier roles at Summit Partners and Warburg Pincus. She holds a degree in Economics and Finance from Johns Hopkins University and speaks four languages.
Aidan Madigan-Curtis, Partner, Eclipse Ventures
Madigan-Curtis invests in AI, IoT, computer vision, and software solutions for manufacturing, logistics, supply chain, and climate transition. Business Insider named her one of 22 Investors to Know in Robotics and Physical AI. She leads Eclipse’s Carbon Optimization framework to track real emissions reductions across the firm’s portfolio. Before venture, she was a senior executive at Apple, scaling Apple Watch manufacturing from zero to millions of units per week. She was later VP and General Manager at Samsara, helping grow the company from pre-revenue to over $1 billion in ARR. She holds a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from Stanford University.
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TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 brings 10,000+ tech leaders, VCs, and founders together to meet the next generation of breakout startups. Attendees can connect with the leaders who could change their startup’s trajectory and get a front-row seat to where the industry is headed. Save up to $200 on your ticket before rates increase on September 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Save an additional 30% when you register as a group.
