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Three Powerhouses Cover How to Prepare Now for Your Later-Stage Raise at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025
As startup founders and venture capital investors from seed to Series C and beyond descend upon Boston for TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, a crucial conversation is taking center stage. Joining forces are three powerhouse voices in the venture and AI-driven innovation landscape: Zeya Yang of IVP, Lila Preston of Generation Investment Management, and Andrea Thomaz, CEO and co-founder of Diligent Robotics.
Together, they’ll share the strategies, candid reflections, and real frameworks that founders should be thinking about now to land meaningful funding later. This session on preparing for a later-stage raise is one not to miss, as it goes beyond pitch decks to uncover the essential metrics, relationships, and storylines that investors seek.
Zeya Yang, partner at IVP, brings an unparalleled dual perspective – both investor and former product leader. His experience at a16z, Plaid, and Dropbox has allowed him to back companies like Graphite, Macro, and Tennr, all while fostering sharp product instincts and founder-first thinking in every cap table he joins.
Lila Preston, head of growth equity at Generation Investment Management, is an expert in scaling impact-focused companies since 2004. As a board member for nature-forward brands such as Nature’s Fynd and Pivot Bio, she has developed a global perspective shaped by work across Latin America, the UK, and the U.S., making her uniquely qualified to guide founders eyeing long-term growth.
Andrea Thomaz, CEO and co-founder of Diligent Robotics, brings the founder lens. A pioneer in social robotics, she has led groundbreaking AI innovation, engineered robots featured in The New York Times and Popular Science, and scaled a hardware startup tackling real-world problems. Her company is revolutionizing the healthcare workforce with collaborative robotics – and she knows firsthand how to build investor trust around moonshot tech.
Don’t miss this opportunity to gain expert insights on preparing for your later-stage raise at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
Source: techcrunch.com
