And the winner of Startup Battlefield at Disrupt 2024 is . . . Salva Health

Over the last three days, 20 startups participated in the incredibly competitive Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt. These 20 companies were selected as the best of the Startup Battlefield 200 and competed for a chance to take home the Startup Battlefield Cup and $100,000. After three days of intense pitching, we have a winner.

The startups taking part in the Startup Battlefield had all been hand-picked to participate in our startup competition. All the companies presented a live demo in front of multiple groups of VCs and tech leaders serving as judges for a chance to win $100,000 and the coveted Disrupt Cup.

After hours of deliberations, TechCrunch editors pored over the judges’ notes and narrowed the list down to five finalists: Gecko Materials, Luna, MabLab, Salva Health, and Stitch3D.

These startups made their way to the finale to demo in front of our final panel of judges, which included Navin Chaddha (Mayfield), Chris Farmer (SignalFire), Dayna Grayson (Construct Capital), Ann Miura-Ko (Floodgate), and Hans Tung (Notable Capital).

We’re now ready to announce that the winner of TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 2024 is . . .

Winner: Salva Health

Six years ago, while researching for a college entrepreneurship competition, Valentina Agudelo identified a troubling gap in breast cancer survival rates between Latin America and the developed world, with women in her native Colombia and the rest of the continent dying at higher rates due to late detection. She realized that breast cancer is highly treatable when diagnosed early, yet many Latin American countries have large rural populations lacking access to mammograms and other diagnostic tools. So Agudelo and her two best friends decided to create Salva Health, a theoretical portable device that would detect breast cancer early.

Read more about Salva Health in our separate post.

Runner-up: Gecko Materials

It looks fake, or at least like a good illusion: There’s Gecko Materials founder Capella Kerst dangling a full wine bottle from her pinky finger, the only thing keeping it from smashing to pieces being the super-strong dry-adhesive her startup has brought to market. But it’s no trick. It’s the result of years of academic research that Kerst built on by inventing a method to mass-manufacture the adhesive. Inspired by the way real-life geckos’ feet grip surfaces, the adhesive is like a new Velcro — except it only needs one side, leaves no residue, and can detach as quickly as it attaches. It can do this at least 120,000 times and, as Kerst noted in a recent interview with TechCrunch, can stay attached for seconds, minutes, or even years.

Read more about Gecko Materials in our separate post.

These two companies follow in the footsteps of Startup Battlefield legends like Dropbox, Discord, Cloudflare and Mint on the Disrupt stage. With over 1,500 alumni having participated in the program, Startup Battlefield Alumni have collectively raised over $29 billion in funding with more than 200 successful exits.