TechCrunch names five more judges for Startup Battlefield 200
Aditi Maliwal, Michael Palank, Nell Daly, Grace Ge and Crystal Huang will judge the early-stage startup competition at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026.
TechCrunch has announced five additional venture capital judges for its Startup Battlefield 200 competition, which is scheduled to take place during TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 from 13–15 October in San Francisco.
The newly named judges are Aditi Maliwal of Upfront Ventures, Michael Palank of MaC Ventures, Nell Daly of Revenge Capital, Grace Ge of Amplify Partners and Crystal Huang of Google Ventures.
TechCrunch said Maliwal invests at the pre-seed and seed stages across fintech, enterprise software-as-a-service, artificial intelligence applications and developer tools. Palank focuses on seed-stage consumer and enterprise companies, including investments across AI, fintech, healthcare, media, entertainment, aerospace and defence.
Daly is co-founder and managing partner of Revenge Capital, an evergreen, sector-agnostic fund that backs overlooked founders in the United States and United Kingdom. Ge invests in AI, developer tooling, data infrastructure and modern SaaS, with a focus on the layer between foundation models and enterprise applications.
Huang focuses on enterprise SaaS, AI infrastructure and fintech at GV, with an emphasis on product-led and developer-led go-to-market strategies. TechCrunch described Startup Battlefield 200 as its early-stage startup pitch competition, but the supplied announcement does not provide the complete judging roster.
TechCrunch said Disrupt 2026 is expected to bring together more than 10,000 technology leaders, investors and founders. It also promoted ticket savings of up to US$200 before prices were due to rise on 25 September at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time.
