This is the moment that early-stage startup founders across Europe have been waiting for. We’ve flung open the application window for Startup Battlefield, which takes place at Disrupt Berlin 2018 on November 29-30.
TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield is where Yammer, Mint, Dropbox, Cloudflare, and hundreds of others companies launched their products to the world. If you need a refresher, here’s how Startup Battlefield works.
Our experienced team of TechCrunch editors reviews every application in a highly competitive vetting process. Our acceptance rate is typically around 3%. Ultimately, we’ll choose around 15 early-stage startups to compete. Prior to their time on stage, each team receives expert pitch coaching from seasoned TechCrunch Startup Battlefield editorial team.
All competing teams have six minutes on the Disrupt Main Stage to pitch their company and demo their product to a panel of judges — consisting well-known investors, and entrepreneurs. Then they have 6 minutes to answer any follow-up questions the judges may have. Notable judges from last year’s Battlefield included Eileen Burbidge (Passion Capital), Sonali De Rycker (Accel), Roelof Botha (Sequoia Capital) and Carlos Eduardo Espinal (SeedCamp), and you can be sure that this year’s crop will possess equally impressive bonafides.
The judges winnow the field down to around five teams that go on to a second and final round of pitching. And from that elite group comes one champion who will hoist the Disrupt Cup, bag a $50,000 equity-free cash prize and become the investor-and-media darling of Disrupt Berlin.
All of this non-stop action takes place in front of a live and riveted audience — filled with thousands of startup fans, media outlets and potential investors and customers. What’s more, we live-stream the entire event around the world (and make it available later on-demand) on TechCrunch.com, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
Winning certainly has its privileges, but you don’t even have to win to reap significant rewards. Take Aircall for example. This French startup — a cloud-based call center solution — competed in the first round of Startup Battlefield San Francisco in 2015. Even though the company never made it to the finals, it just received a second round of funding. We’re talking $29 million. In the three years since it competed in Startup Battlefield, Aircall has raised a total of $40.5 million. That’s a mighty fine consolation prize.
Plus, all Startup Battlefield teams join the ranks of the Startup Battlefield alumni community. This community consists of nearly 800 companies that have collectively raised more than $8 billion in funding and produced more than 100 exits and IPOs. Companies like Mint, Dropbox, Yammer, TripIt, Getaround and Cloudflare. Imagine the networking possibilities that await you in this elite group.
This is as good a time as any to remind you that applying to and competing in Startup Battlefield is 100 percent free. TechCrunch does not charge any fees or take any equity from startups.
Startup Battlefield goes down at Disrupt Berlin 2018 on November 29-30 at Arena Berlin. This is your chance to launch your early-stage startup to the world. It could be a life-changing event. What are you waiting for?
