Don’t miss these special breakout sessions at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021

Comment

Go ahead and add “produce a world-class tech conference” to the long list of items that can complete the expression “It takes a village to…” TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 runs September 21-23, and we’d like to take a moment to give a major shout-out to a vital part of the TechCrunch village — our sponsors.

Admin Tip: Buy your pass to Disrupt before the price goes up on September 20.

TechCrunch sponsors don’t just write a check; they bring their deep knowledge and expertise to the party to help early-stage founders move their business to the next level and beyond. Michael McCarthy, the CEO of Repositax, attended Disrupt 2020 and shared his thoughts on the breakout sessions with us:

There was always something interesting going on in one of the breakout sessions, and I was impressed by the quality of the people participating. Partners in well-known VC firms spoke, they were accessible, and they shared smart, insightful nuggets. You will not find this level of people accessible and in one place anywhere else.

We have an impressive slate again this year, and our enormous thanks go out to our TC Disrupt 2021 sponsors: Aerospace Corporation, Cedar, Checkr, Connection, Foxxum, Google Cloud, hub.brussels, Mambu, rlaxx TV, SeedInvest, Sentry Software and Xero.

Let’s take a look at the sponsored breakout sessions scheduled over three days. You’ll find them, along with more than 50 other presentations, in the Disrupt 2021 agenda.

You Complete Me: In the age of the composable ecosystems, we’re all partners now — from frenemies to pure collaborations. So why is now, more than ever, the right time to invite friends and challengers to the table? The truth is we have to build for an unknown future, with a shared strategy and value outcome. Join Elliot Limb, chief customer offer at Mambu, to learn five ways to encourage more symbiotic relationships in the platform economy. Presented by Mambu.

So, You Want to Build a Space Business? The space industry is changing faster than ever, with new technologies and lower launch costs democratizing access to space and driving a new era of innovation. The opportunities to build the next great business are seemingly endless, but space can be a difficult and unforgiving place, especially for those new to the domain. This session will feature practical insights and advice from experienced space leaders for entrepreneurs looking to get their business off the ground. Presented by The Aerospace Corporation.

The Connection IT Superhero Awards: Connection and TechCrunch have teamed up to celebrate and recognize IT people who have gone the extra mile with the inaugural Connection IT Superhero Awards. Winners of the five category awards will be announced live, presented by Connection’s Chief Innovation & Growth Officer, Jamal Khan. These awards are about people, not products, for the many out there deserving recognition for their daily efforts. We think some well-earned awards are a great place to start. Nominate your IT Superhero here by August 24. Presented by Connection.

Demo Derby — How Startups are Disrupting the Status Quo with Innovative Data Analytics, AI and Modern App Development: Startups need to move quickly and focus limited resources on areas where they can differentiate. In this fast-paced session, learn from startups and Google experts how you can leverage Google technologies to serve customers better and get to market more quickly. In a series of short demos, see how innovative startups and Google experts have used Google compute, storage, networking and AI technologies to “disrupt” the status quo. Presented by Google Cloud.

How Circle’s $4.5B Public Listing will Change Startup Fundraising: Circle acquired SeedInvest in 2019, as a further step toward realizing its vision of a more open, global, connected and inclusive financial system. Fast-forward to today; Circle recently announced its plans to become a $4.5 billion public company, with more than $1 billion of fresh capital. In this session, Jeremy Allaire, Circle CEO and co-founder, and Ryan Feit, CEO and co-founder of SeedInvest, will break down the evolution of the two companies and how they plan to double down on online fundraising to make it faster and easier for entrepreneurs. Presented by SeedInvest.

Belgian Startup Pitch Competition: Join us for the seventh edition of our Belgian Startup Pitch Competition. We look forward to seeing you there! Presented by hub.brussels.

Illuminating the Next Great Entertainment Frontier — The Connected TV Metaverse: While the proliferation of operating systems and OTT platforms have made TV more convenient and accessible, the magnitude of players in this ecosystem have also made television more complicated to navigate — for programmers, advertisers and viewers. We all want our programming in each of its various delivery methods, provided in an easy-to-navigate, fast-to-discover, intuitive interface. Join an in-depth conversation with media industry veterans and technology futurists as they identify the outlook of the CTV world. Presented by Foxxum and rlaxx TV.

Achieve Sustainable IT with Prometheus, Grafana and Hardware Sentry: Implementing sustainability initiatives to achieve net-zero carbon emissions in the data center is a vital challenge. Join Bertrand Martin, Sentry Software’s co-founder and CEO, as he presents Hardware Sentry Exporter for Prometheus. Measure the power consumption and temperature of more than 250 platforms with this unique pure-software solution. Report CO₂ emissions, electricity usage and costs of applications and services in Grafana. Reduce the carbon footprint of your data center with intelligent optimization of ambient temperature. Presented by Sentry Software.

Hacking U.S. Healthcare: How a Simple Platform Can Help Solve Some of America’s Most Complex Healthcare Problems: Few things conjure more negative emotions than navigating medical billing; Americans urgently need solutions that prioritize their needs, decrease costs and elevate the patient journey so they can focus on getting care. Fortunately, digital innovation can provide exceptional patient experiences that remove friction for payers, providers and consumers alike. Hear how digital health unicorn Cedar has engineered a complete consumer-first digital platform that’s revolutionizing the financial experience for the entire healthcare industry. Presented by Cedar.

Powering the Small Business Economy with Cloud Technology: Small business is a critical engine of job creation, economic growth and innovation and a driver in our efforts to recover from a global pandemic. Fifteen years ago, a startup company from New Zealand called Xero was founded with the purpose of making life better for people in small business and their advisors. Xero achieved this by shifting accounting practices to the cloud and providing an open set of APIs, which has enabled more than 1,000 application partners to build affordable tech solutions connected to the Xero platform. Steve Vamos, CEO, will discuss how Xero is revolutionizing the way small businesses do business by using cloud and its platform to connect real-time data with bespoke business solutions that help small business owners be more successful. Steve will speak to a number of key initiatives that will change the game for startups and entrepreneurs who want to innovate and collaborate on the Xero platform, and he will explain how Xero’s vision extends beyond just technology to galvanizing a global community of support and purpose to help small businesses everywhere. Presented by Xero.

Why Employers are Ignoring a Large Candidate Pool that’s Necessary for Growth Today: Hear directly from Checkr CEO Daniel Yanisse and DDI CEO Aaron Hageman about why this job market is fueling the gig economy growth, how to tap into fair chance hiring and how it will help your employee base. Learn about the benefits of fair chance hiring, its impact on your bottom line and organizations and allies that promote fair chance hiring and why this matters to DEI efforts. Presented by Checkr.

Connection IT Superhero Awards Announcement: Use this link to nominate someone for the Connection IT Superhero Awards. The nomination deadline is August 24. Presented by Connection.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 takes place September 21-23. Do not miss the invaluable information waiting for you in the sponsored breakout sessions — just some of the Disrupt programming designed to help you build a bigger, better and stronger startup. Get your pass today!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2021? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

More TechCrunch

Strava announced a slew of features, including AI to weed out leaderboard cheats, a new ‘family’ subscription plan, dark mode and more.

Strava taps AI to weed out leaderboard cheats; unveils ‘family’ plan, dark mode and more

We all fall down sometimes. Astronauts are no exception. You need to be in peak physical condition for space travel, but bulky space suits and lower gravity levels can be…

Astronauts fall over. Robotic limbs can help them back up.

Microsoft will launch its custom Cobalt 100 chips to customers as a public preview at its Build conference next week, TechCrunch has learned. In an analyst briefing ahead of Build,…

Microsoft’s custom Cobalt chips will come to Azure next week

What a wild week for transportation news! It was a smorgasbord of news that seemed to touch every sector and theme in transportation.

Tesla keeps cutting jobs and the feds probe Waymo

Sony Music Group has sent letters to more than 700 tech companies and music streaming services to warn them not to use its music to train AI without explicit permission.…

Sony Music warns tech companies over ‘unauthorized’ use of its content to train AI

Winston Chi, Butter’s founder and CEO, told TechCrunch that “most parties, including our investors and us, are making money” from the exit.

GrubMarket buys Butter to give its food distribution tech an AI boost

The investor lawsuit is related to Bolt securing a $30 million personal loan to Ryan Breslow, which was later defaulted on.

Bolt founder Ryan Beslow wants to settle an investor lawsuit by returning $37 million worth of shares

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, launched an enterprise version of the prominent social network in 2015. It always seemed like a stretch for a company built on a consumer…

With the end of Workplace, it’s fair to wonder if Meta was ever serious about the enterprise

X, formerly Twitter, turned TweetDeck into X Pro and pushed it behind a paywall. But there is a new column-based social media tool in the town, and it’s from Instagram…

Meta Threads is testing pinned columns on the web, similar to the old TweetDeck

As part of 2024’s Accessibility Awareness Day, Google is showing off some updates to Android that should be useful to folks with mobility or vision impairments. Project Gameface allows gamers…

Google expands hands-free and eyes-free interfaces on Android

A hacker listed the data allegedly breached from Samco on a known cybercrime forum.

Hacker claims theft of India’s Samco account data

A top European privacy watchdog is investigating following the recent breaches of Dell customers’ personal information, TechCrunch has learned.  Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) deputy commissioner Graham Doyle confirmed to…

Ireland privacy watchdog confirms Dell data breach investigation

Ampere and Qualcomm aren’t the most obvious of partners. Both, after all, offer Arm-based chips for running data center servers (though Qualcomm’s largest market remains mobile). But as the two…

Ampere teams up with Qualcomm to launch an Arm-based AI server

At Google’s I/O developer conference, the company made its case to developers – and to some extent, consumers –  why its bets on AI are ahead of rivals. At the…

Google I/O was an AI evolution, not a revolution

TechCrunch Disrupt has always been the ultimate convergence point for all things startup and tech. In the bustling world of innovation, it serves as the “big top” tent, where entrepreneurs,…

Meet the Magnificent Six: A tour of the stages at Disrupt 2024

There’s apparently a lot of demand for an on-demand handyperson. Khosla Ventures and Pear VC have just tripled down on their investment in Honey Homes, which offers up a dedicated…

Khosla Ventures, Pear VC triple down on Honey Homes, a smart way to hire a handyman

TikTok is testing the ability for users to upload 60-minute videos, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday. The feature is available to a limited group of users in select…

TikTok tests 60-minute video uploads as it continues to take on YouTube

Flock Safety is a multibillion-dollar startup that’s got eyes everywhere. As of Wednesday, with the company’s new Solar Condor cameras, those eyes are solar-powered and using wireless 5G networks to…

Flock Safety’s solar-powered cameras could make surveillance more widespread

Since he was very young, Bar Mor knew that he would inevitably do something with real estate. His family was involved in all types of real estate projects, from ground-up…

Agora raises $34M Series B to keep building the Carta for real estate

Poshmark, the social commerce site that lets people buy and sell new and used items to each other, launched a paid marketing tool on Thursday, giving sellers the ability to…

Poshmark’s ‘Promoted Closet’ tool lets sellers boost all their listings at once

Google is launching a Gemini add-on for educational institutes through Google Workspace.

Google adds Gemini to its Education suite

More money for the generative AI boom: Y Combinator-backed developer infrastructure startup Recall.ai announced Thursday it has raised a $10 million Series A funding round, bringing its total raised to over…

YC-backed Recall.ai gets $10M Series A to help companies use virtual meeting data

Engineers Adam Keating and Jeremy Andrews were tired of using spreadsheets and screenshots to collab with teammates — so they launched a startup, CoLab, to build a better way. The…

CoLab’s collaborative tools for engineers line up $21M in new funding

Reddit announced on Wednesday that it is reintroducing its awards system after shutting down the program last year. The company said that most of the mechanisms related to awards will…

Reddit reintroduces its awards system

Sigma Computing, a startup building a range of data analytics and business intelligence tools, has raised $200 million in a fresh VC round.

Sigma is building a suite of collaborative data analytics tools

European Union enforcers of the bloc’s online governance regime, the Digital Services Act (DSA), said Thursday they’re closely monitoring disinformation campaigns on the Elon Musk-owned social network X (formerly Twitter)…

EU ‘closely’ monitoring X in wake of Fico shooting as DSA disinfo probe rumbles on

Wind is the largest source of renewable energy in the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, but wind farms come with an environmental cost as wind turbines can…

Spoor uses AI to save birds from wind turbines

The key to taking on legacy players in the financial technology industry may be to go where they have not gone before. That’s what Chicago-based Aeropay is doing. The provider…

Cannabis industry and gaming payments startup Aeropay is now offering an alternative to Mastercard and Visa

Facebook and Instagram are under formal investigation in the European Union over child protection concerns, the Commission announced Thursday. The proceedings follow a raft of requests for information to parent…

EU opens child safety probes of Facebook and Instagram, citing addictive design concerns

Bedrock Materials is developing a new type of sodium-ion battery, which promises to be dramatically cheaper than lithium-ion.

Forget EVs: Why Bedrock Materials is targeting gas-powered cars for its first sodium-ion batteries