What happens if the first 10 employers are not at all people? TechCrunch, which takes place in Western Moscon in San Francisco from October 27-29, is delving into a new wave of startups that stumbled 2025 and replaced or augmented early employees with AI agents. Think outbound sales, billing, and customer support. It has been automated since day one.
Hosted on Builders Stage, the panel features a combination of technical founders and veteran operators who are actually doing it, debating where the boundaries between humans and machines should be drawn, and how far it is.
Meet the speaker
Caleb Peffer, founder and CEO of Firecrawl, helps plug more than 350,000 developers (and companies like Shopify and Zapier) directly into the live web. His development platform is restructuring how AI agents interact with the Internet and scale with clean data.
Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, founder and CEO of Artisan, made waves with the “Stop Hiring Humans” campaign. His company raised $35 million to build AI employees. Expect bold insight into replacing your team into the market with code.
Sarah Franklin, CEO of Lattice and former Salesforce president and CMO, is struggling to bring wisdom to impactful scaling companies. She builds and leads a real team at the highest level, knowing where AI can help and where it hurts.
Why this session is important
Whether you’re already embedding AI in your stack or testing a prompt to your product team, this conversation is more than just hype. It’s about realizing the meaning of ROI, trust, team dynamics, and building a business that moves faster with fewer human hands.
Ready to find your edge?
Join over 10,000 founders, VCs and innovators this October. Regular bird savings up to $668 on September 26th at 11:59pm – get tickets now and lock your spot.
TechCrunch Events
San Francisco
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October 27th-29th, 2025
