The Clock Is Ticking on Disrupt 2026 Side Events

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 is barreling toward San Francisco’s Moscone West from October 13–15. More than 10,000 founders, investors, and tech’s sharpest minds will pack the halls. But the real action? It spills well beyond those three days.

That’s where the Disrupt Side Events program comes in. From October 10–16, you can host your own gathering — a dinner, a workshop, a VC office-hours session — and get it promoted directly to Disrupt’s massive audience. The catch? The application deadline is this Friday, September 4, at midnight PT. Yes, that’s days away.

If you’ve been sitting on an idea for a meetup, now’s the time to move. Here’s everything you need to know.

Why Bother Hosting a Side Event?

Side Events put you in the driver’s seat. Instead of hoping you run into the right people in a crowded expo hall, you create the room where conversations happen. Your brand, your agenda, your crowd.

Here’s what you get:

• Direct access to thousands of the most curious and capable people in tech.
• Real relationships with potential partners, investors, and future collaborators — not just business cards.
• Full control over your narrative. You decide what to showcase and how to frame it.
• Buzz that lingers long after the event ends, thanks to promotion through Disrupt’s official channels.

Approved Side Events are listed on the official calendar and pushed out through Disrupt’s marketing. That’s free exposure to an audience that’s already primed for innovation.

What Kind of Event Can You Host?

Pretty much anything that fits your vision. Past Disrupts have seen industry roundtables, intimate dinners, casual happy hours, deep-dive workshops — you name it. The format is yours to design.

One recommendation: aim for the evenings of October 13–15. There’s less competition for attention, and the post-conference energy is perfect for real conversations. Just make sure your event is open to both Disrupt attendees and the broader public.

What You Need Before Applying

Don’t wing it. The application form asks for specifics, so have these locked down first:

• A venue in the Bay Area — this is strictly in-person, so location matters.
• A title, description, and venue details ready to paste in.
• A quick read of the Side Events Host Guide and the Side Event Host T&Cs so there are no surprises.

If you hit a snag, the Side Events team is just an email away. They’re genuinely helpful.

Who Should Apply?

Venture capitalists looking to spark dialogue. Companies launching something new. Community builders with a point of view. If you have a following, a network, or just a killer idea for bringing people together, this is your shot.

There’s zero cost to apply and zero cost to participate. The organizers prioritize events that add real value for founders, investors, and the startup ecosystem — but beyond that, you know your community best.

So here’s the bottom line: the deadline is September 4 at midnight PT. The application takes minutes. The payoff could define your quarter.

Apply now. Tell them what you want to build, who you want to reach, and what you need logistically. They’ll handle the rest — and you’ll be at the center of the Bay Area’s biggest tech week.

The revenge plot that refuses to die

Even if you’ve never cracked open the 1844 novel or sat through one of its many adaptations, you know the shape of The Count of Monte Cristo. A young man, full of promise, gets betrayed by people he trusts. He’s thrown into a hellhole, left to rot. Then comes the escape, the hidden treasure, the new identity, and the slow, surgical dismantling of everyone who wronged him.

That formula is so sturdy that filmmakers keep borrowing it — often without a single mention of Alexandre Dumas. Sometimes it’s a coincidence. Often it’s not. Directors know the skeleton works, so they just dress it in different clothes.

Here are six movies that are, whether they admit it or not, The Count of Monte Cristo in disguise.

1. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

The most obvious one, and the most beloved. Andy Dufresne is Edmond Dantès — a brilliant, innocent man railroaded into prison by a rival’s jealousy. He endures years of brutality, befriends a father figure (Red as a less glamorous Abbé Faria), and quietly digs his way out. The payoff isn’t a treasure chest of gold; it’s a lifetime of savings hidden under a fake name.

The parallel isn’t subtle, and Stephen King has acknowledged the influence. But the movie stands so tall on its own that most viewers never stop to think about the 1840s source material. It’s a revenge story about patience, and patience is the rarest weapon in cinema.

2. Oldboy (2003)

Park Chan-wook’s masterpiece takes the Monte Cristo template and drags it through hell. Oh Dae-su is imprisoned for 15 years without explanation — no trial, no crime, just a hotel room that becomes a cell. When he’s released, he has five days to find out who did this to him and why.

The twist at the end is so devastating that it rewrites everything you thought you knew. But strip that away, and you’ve got Dantès’ arc: wrongful imprisonment, a mysterious benefactor, a single-minded quest for vengeance. The corridor fight scene is iconic, but the structure is pure Dumas.

3. V for Vendetta (2005)

V is Edmond Dantès with a Guy Fawkes mask and a flair for the theatrical. He was betrayed by the state, experimented on, and left for dead in a fire. He emerges with a new identity, a hidden base, and a plan to tear down the entire system that destroyed him.

The difference is scale. Dantès wants to punish specific men; V wants to topple a fascist government. But the bones are identical — the wronged prisoner becomes something more than human, and the revenge becomes a public spectacle. It’s a political thriller built on a personal grudge, and that’s exactly what makes it work.

4. The Lion King (1994)

Wait. Stick with me here.

Simba is Dantès, exiled from his kingdom after a betrayal he didn’t deserve. Scar is Fernand Mondego — the jealous rival who engineers the downfall and steals the prize. The difference is that Simba doesn’t plan a meticulous revenge; he just comes home and takes back what’s his.

But the emotional core is the same. The hero loses everything, lives in obscurity, then returns transformed — older, wiser, and ready to confront the past. Add Timon and Pumbaa as the comic-relief version of Faria’s mentorship, and you’ve got a children’s movie that’s secretly a 19th-century revenge novel. Shakespeare did the same thing with Hamlet, so Disney clearly has a type.

5. The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)

Okay, this one isn’t secret. It’s literally the same story. But it deserves a mention because it’s the rare adaptation that actually understands the assignment.

Jim Caviezel plays Dantès with a simmering rage that never quite boils over, and Guy Pearce makes Fernand a genuinely hateable villain. The movie streamlines the novel mercilessly — the Abbé Faria’s role is compressed, the treasure is found in a single scene, and the revenge is more physical than psychological. But it captures the spirit: the transformation from naive sailor to cold, calculating aristocrat.

If you’ve only seen the 2002 version, you’ve seen the skeleton. The book adds layers of patience and cruelty that no two-hour film can contain.

6. John Wick (2014)

This one’s a stretch, but hear me out. John Wick is a man who had everything — love, peace, a quiet retirement — and lost it all to a betrayal. The theft of his car and the killing of his dog aren’t just random acts of violence; they’re the destruction of his last connection to his wife. That’s his trigger.

What follows is a rampage, not a careful plan. But the underlying structure is Monte Cristo: the wronged man who was once feared, now returned to exact a terrible price. The difference is that Dantès uses intelligence and money; Wick uses guns and a bulletproof suit. Both are unstoppable forces, and both are driven by grief dressed as vengeance.

It’s not a perfect parallel, but it shows how far the template can stretch. Action movies about revenge don’t need to be subtle about their influences — they just need to make you feel the weight of the wrong.

Why this story never gets old

Dumas understood something that most writers miss: revenge is only satisfying when the hero earns it. Dantès spends years in prison, years planning, years executing. The payoff isn’t just the punishment of his enemies — it’s the transformation of himself.

That’s why these movies work. Whether it’s Andy Dufresne crawling through a sewer or Simba climbing Pride Rock, the audience has watched the hero suffer, grow, and change. The revenge is the reward for that patience.

So the next time you watch a film about a betrayed man who returns from the dead to settle scores, you’re watching The Count of Monte Cristo. The name might change, but the story never does.

A Familiar Name, A Different Game

You read that right. There’s a new social network called Twitter.now on the block, and it’s being operated by a startup called Operation Bluebird. The founding team includes Stephen Coates, who once served as Twitter’s trademark counsel. That’s a detail that matters — because this isn’t just another microblogging clone. It’s a direct shot at the legacy of the bird.

According to Ars Technica, X Corp. sued the company last year, asking a Delaware judge to block Operation Bluebird from launching a platform called Twitter. But Operation Bluebird fired back, arguing that X had effectively abandoned trademarks like “Twitter” and “Tweet” when it rebranded to X in 2023. The case is still winding through the courts.

What Is Twitter.now, Exactly?

Coates laid out the vision in a LinkedIn post. “When X Corp. retired the Twitter brand, we saw an opportunity to build something new: a public square organized around trust, transparency, and user choice.” He was careful to distance the project from the old platform. “Twitter.now is not an attempt to recreate the old platform. We are building a different service, with trust signals that provide context for what users see and tools that allow people—not an opaque algorithm—to decide how much credibility and noise reach their feeds.”

Right now, the site is in testing. Early access costs $20. That’s a pay-to-play model, which is a bold move in a world where most social networks are free and ad-supported. But Operation Bluebird is betting that people will pay for something they can trust.

VERA: The AI That Grades Your Posts

The centerpiece of Twitter.now is an AI system called VERA. According to the company’s home page, VERA gauges posts, checks claims, and gives users the source of those claims, plus context. It then attaches a trust score to each piece of content. You’ll be able to set your preferred trust score threshold, and posts that fall below it get filtered out of your feed.

That’s an intriguing idea, but it raises a big question: who decides what’s trustworthy? The company says VERA is transparent about its reasoning, showing users the sources behind a claim. But AI moderation has a spotty track record, and the stakes are high.

VERA 2.0 Is Coming

Operation Bluebird told TechCrunch that VERA is currently in its initial version. “VERA 2.0, with expanded capabilities, is on the near-term roadmap, where the user will be able to set their app to only see posts above the threshold they choose,” the company said in an emailed statement. So the current version is just a taste of what’s planned.

The Moderation Minefield

Here’s the thing about social networks: moderation is a nightmare. As user numbers ramp up, platforms often find themselves forced to choose sides. The original Twitter had to navigate that minefield for years before Elon Musk took over. Bluesky has faced its own criticism lately for moderation missteps. And now Twitter.now is stepping into the same arena, armed with an AI that claims to solve the problem.

Will VERA actually work? That’s the million-dollar question. Trust scores are a noble concept, but they can be gamed. Bad actors could flood the system with fake sources, or the AI could develop blind spots. The company seems aware of this, which is why VERA 2.0 is on the roadmap. But in the fast-moving world of social media, a near-term roadmap can feel like a lifetime.

What’s at Stake in the Trademark Fight

The legal battle with X Corp. is still unresolved. X’s lawsuit sought an injunction to stop Operation Bluebird from using the Twitter name. Operation Bluebird’s defense hinges on the idea that X abandoned the trademark when it rebranded. That’s a clever argument, but it’s not a slam dunk. Trademark law is messy, and X has deep pockets.

If Operation Bluebird loses, the whole project could be dead on arrival. If it wins, we could see a wave of “retro” platforms trying to resurrect old brand names. Either way, this is a case worth watching.

Will Anyone Actually Pay $20?

That’s the other big question. Twitter.now is asking users to pay $20 for early access, and eventually a subscription fee. In a world where free Twitter alternatives like Bluesky and Threads exist, that’s a tough sell. But there’s a niche of users who are desperate for a platform that feels safe and credible. If VERA delivers on its promise, those users might be willing to open their wallets.

Operation Bluebird is positioning itself as the anti-algorithm, pro-user-choice network. It’s a compelling pitch, but the proof will be in the product. And right now, the product is still in testing.

The Bottom Line

Twitter.now is a bold experiment. It’s betting that trust can be quantified, that users want control over their feeds, and that people will pay for a better experience. The team has the legal chops — Coates knows trademark law inside out. But they’re up against a giant in X Corp., and the history of social media is littered with well-intentioned startups that couldn’t scale moderation.

Still, you have to admire the audacity. In a landscape dominated by a few big players, here’s a startup that’s willing to take on the legacy of Twitter, name and all. Whether it succeeds or crashes, it’s going to be interesting to watch.

If you’re curious, you can sign up for early access now. Just be prepared to pay $20 and to be patient while the kinks get worked out. And keep an eye on that Delaware courtroom — the next chapter of this story might be written there.