TechCrunch Founder Summit’s agenda revealed: Unlock fundraising, hiring, and AI insights in Boston on November 4

TechCrunch has put the agenda out for its Founder Summit, set for November 4 at Boston’s SoWa Power Station. The pitch is simple: instead of making founders stumble through every lesson alone, the event lines up people who’ve already made the calls and lived with the results.

A big slice of the day is about money. Brian Devaney of Underscore will talk through what investors want now, where founders lose leverage, and what goes wrong between the first check and the term sheet. Vineet Edupuganti, who raised an $11 million round for Cogent Security, is set to focus on a different question: which investors actually help a company, and which ones just add noise.

The agenda also leans hard into the messy parts of being a founder. Brian Halligan, the HubSpot co-founder and a Sequoia partner, will discuss how the CEO job changes as a company grows. Melissa Taunton of NEA will cover early hiring, while Kent Bennett of Bessemer Venture Partners will take on the slippery problem of product-market fit and the danger of scaling too soon.

AI gets its own lane, too. Lior Div, co-founder and CEO of 7AI, will talk about what changes when AI is the foundation of a startup instead of a feature bolted on later. And TDK Ventures investment director Tina Tosukhowong will walk through the firm’s “King of the Hill” framework, with a focus on economics, scalability, and timing.

There’s also a hometown angle. Chase Garbarino, co-founder and CEO of HqO, will make the case for building from Boston, not Silicon Valley, after raising $200 million and expanding to more than 30 countries. TechCrunch says the day is meant to spill beyond the sessions themselves, with founders and investors mixing in the room before the whole thing wraps into future months of startup drama.