San Francisco’s TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 conference has an unorthodox but timely selling point: If you recently lost your job, you can come for free.
Tickets to the conference, scheduled for Sept. 19 to 21 at Moscone West in SoMa, usually range from $95 to $650. But the media company, on June 9, unveiled a “limited quantity” of free bottom-tier passes, which exclude attendees from stage presentations but are good enough to get laid-off techies into the exhibition hall and to some breakout sessions and roundtables.
TechCrunch lays out the stipulations on a website page titled “Laid Off = Free Tix.” Prospective attendees qualify for a free ticket if they have been sacked from any sector in any country within the past year. But don’t try it if you’re employed now or or a full- or part-time student — TechCrunch writes that it will review all applicants, and says there’s a limited pool of free passes. The free option appears to be available as of publication.
With this move, the conference host has appealed to a massive pool of possible attendees. Tech layoffs have shaken the industry for almost a year, with massive job cuts at Bay Area titans like Meta and Salesforce alongside a steady stream of startup layoffs and mini “restructurings.”
The free tickets, the host writes online, are a way of helping those people look for new work. TechCrunch writes that attendees can “see who’s hiring” by meeting representatives from companies, “network with 10,000 attendees” and “gain competitive insights” by listening in on presentations.
In an event called “Startup Battlefield 200,” 200 young companies will showcase their products on the conference’s exhibition floor — one of a few areas open to the free ticket holders.
But those on the lower tier will miss the conference’s stage shows, themed around industry sectors like artificial intelligence, hardware and software-as-a-service. TechCrunch is advertising NBA great Shaquille O’Neal, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Cloudflare chief operating officer Michelle Zatlyn as featured guests, among a larger slate of venture capital and tech types. Former Los Angeles Laker and current concrete peddler Rick Fox is set to be in attendance, as is messaging app Signal President Meredith Whittaker and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens.
Ticket discounts are also available for students, bulk orders, nonprofit organizations and entrepreneurs (“from stealth mode to Series D founders and beyond”). Prices are slated to increase Aug. 11.
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