The Future of Work Social Mixer + Open Demos: Worktech, Robotics & Agentic AI

Inside the event

This is an official side event of the TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: the biggest tech event of the year. Join us in downtown San Francisco for yet another edition of our Future of Work-themed social mixer + open demos! This event is an open-mic formula - just bring your laptop, join us, and step up to pitch and present your demo. This event is optimized for making deals. We'll host a blitz round of intros on stage and give you plenty of time to mingle with investors at the demo tables. We will also ask investors to come up to the stage at the end of the evening and share their discoveries of the night. Due to the high number of applicants, at this moment the pitch submissions are closed. The Future of Work Social Mixer & Open Demos event is independently organized and operated solely by Ontology of Value. TechCrunch Media, LLC is not responsible for the event's content, programming, speakers, venue, attendee conduct, or any incidents, injuries, or claims arising from the event. Ontology of Value agrees to indemnify and hold harmless TechCrunch Media, LLC from any liability related to the event. Sponsors

Fidelity Private Shares is a trusted equity management platform built for private companies at every stage of growth. From early fundraising through IPO, it provides a structured system for managing cap tables, valuations, governance, and equity planning. By helping to keep ownership data accurate and connected across equity events, companies can move efficiently through fundraising, reduce diligence friction, and stay investor-ready as complexity increases. Backed by Fidelity’s reputation for trust and rigor, Fidelity Private Shares combines institutional credibility with tools designed for the pace of modern startups.

TechnologyWire is the leading tech newswire for tech PR and press release distribution, publishing your tech press releases on TechCrunch, CIO, eWeek & 100+ premium outlets.

Mos Health is your AI health teammate, built into the flow of work, turning healthy intentions into action. Hosted @ HumanMade

HumanMade is a non-profit community-based training, manufacturing, and prototyping studio on a mission to democratize access to the tools of innovation.

It brings together makers and fabricators of all types - from entrepreneurs to hobbyists, teachers to artists, inventors to explorers and more. HumanMade provides a wide range of industrial workshops where members can take training courses and use all of our equipment to build or make almost anything. Our Point of View Today, building stuff is not the moat anymore. In fact, it's understanding the market and the particular pain points you are tackling, and the Go-to-Market strategy — both relate to you and your professional history as a founder. Yes, AI might build your product and your operations, but the human is still on the receiving end of your offer: both as a decision-maker in sales and as the ultimate recipient of your work, whether it's direct sales or a chain of a hundred interactions. Therefore, this is the "origin story" event. We'd love to hear your "why" — not just your pitch. You need to build your case: show us why everything you've ever done in your life brought you to this problem and this moment in time. And why, of all humans, YOU are the person to step forward and solve it. When & Where 📍 HumanMade, 655 Bryant St, San Francisco 📅 Monday, October 12th, 2026 (on the eve of TechCrunch Disrupt 2026!) 🕔 5:00-9:00 PM PT 📅 Agenda: 5:00 - 5:30 PM | Networking 5:30 - 5:40 PM | Welcome from the Organizer: Ontology of Value® + Host: HumanMade + Sponsors: Fidelity Private Shares, Mos Health 5:40 - 5:45 PM | Sponsor: TechnologyWire 5:45 - 5:50 PM | Community partners: Funding Breakthrough Lab, B4SF 5:50 - 6:00 PM | Keynote talk by the Community Partner, Pavel Vinitsky, PhD, Synexis 6:00 - 6:15 PM | Fireside Chat with Nick Linck, The Residency 6:15 - 6:25 PM | Workshop on power pitching by Lital Cohen, Stanford Graduate School of Business & Plug'n'Play 6:25 - 6:35 PM | Keynote talk by Robin P. Zander, Zander Media: "The Great AI Divide" 6:35 - 7:00 PM | Surprise Pitch by a Special Guest + Spotlight & Showcase pitches 🚀 moderated by Natalie Pan, Funding Breakthrough Lab 7:00 - 8:45 PM | Open Demos 8:45 - 9:00 PM | Investors share their discoveries on stage; moderated by Nicholas Ferraro, New York Life 9:00+ | Networking; music, greetings, farewell Special Guests Nick Linck is the Founder of The Residency: the new paradigm in business/entrepreneurship education and in developing and funding startups. Robin Zander is the Founder and Director of Responsive Conference which has brought together leaders reshaping work since 2016. He runs Zander Media, a strategy-first production company, and writes Snafu, a weekly newsletter on authentic influence for 7,500 founders and operators. Robin will give the following talk for us: The Great AI Divide. AI makes building easy. The founders who win do the hard, human work AI can't do for us. Robin Zander, founder of Zander Media and Responsive Conference, shares three pieces of advice for founders who feel behind on AI. Lital Cohen is a communication and executive presence coach at Stanford Graduate School of Business and a former national champion in Toastmasters public speaking. She prepares founders from around the world at Plug and Play to present effectively to audiences and investors, focusing on delivery, presence, and impact. At the event, she will give us an energetic workshop on power pitching and making a lasting impression. Jury Members Oleh Podobied, ITCAPITAL Ventures Featured Companies Meet the startups taking the stage with a Spotlight or Showcase package this edition: AskMAE.ai (Spotlight) — Turns domain expertise into AI-powered software: an "EQ/IQ" AI operating system with built-in safety guardrails for automating complex business tasks. Samson (Spotlight) — An AI smartwear ecosystem transforming passive workout tracking into second-skin athletic intelligence and real-time guidance. conspace (Spotlight) — An AI workspace that does the busywork: one shared memory for your whole company, with your rules deciding who may see what. Apex Replicant (Showcase) — An expert judgment platform that captures what your best people know and turns it into a "Digital Protégé" AI assistant your whole team can ask, day or night. Farmio (Showcase) — AI-native food supply chain infrastructure across Asia, connecting every department, workflow, and operation into a single intelligent layer inside the communication channels businesses already use. MuseCool (Showcase) — 1-to-1 music lessons for children, at home and online, powered by "The Muse": an AI teaching assistant that listens to each lesson and turns it into homework, practice games, and a progress dashboard. Ascensio Systems Inc / ONLYOFFICE (Showcase) — An open-source office suite for editing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, with real-time collaboration that can be embedded into any platform or self-hosted for full data privacy. Why Should I Participate? We are a community focused on building (and disrupting!) the future of work — sharing and promoting innovation in work tech, agentic AI, and robotics so that humans and AI can happily cohabitate in the labor market and build a wonderful economy together. This time around, we are putting together a social mixer and demo night in one. This isn’t your standard pitch night. This gathering is for founders, operators, investors, and builders who want to shape how humans and AI collaborate in the workplace of tomorrow. It’s your chance to connect authentically, get feedback for your project, talk to investors in powerful, intimate one-on-one conversations, and see where the future of work is headed. Pitching & Demos We will open several demo tables. Do you have a project you'd like to share? Join us on October 12 and step forward to (1) give a blitz standup pitch on stage, (2) show a demo from your laptop. Would you like to additionall