On Tuesday morning at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, our senior producer Maggie Nye rolled up her jacket sleeve to show me her new tattoo: a classic pixelated runner arrow. TechCrunch’s Becca Szkutak got a matching runner, while Theresa Loconsolo had a smiling moon.
I assumed that at some point during the whole hiatus, Maggie and Becca wandered into some trendy San Francisco tattoo shop to solidify their friendship with some appropriate tech-themed ink (and maybe Teresa was there, too?). That seemed like a more reasonable explanation than the reality, which is that they were getting these tattoos at Disrupt—yes, literally at Disrupt, on the Moscone Center convention floor, while upstairs, there was probably a discussion going on about product-market fit or artificial intelligence.
Hundreds of startups showed their stuff in the Expo Hall as part of Battlefield 200 — there are robo-chefs, spaceship insurance providers, a shortcut to recycling plastic — and then, amid the chaos, Tattd turned their booth into a mini tattoo shop.
Tattd is a platform that helps tattoo seekers find artists whose portfolios match the type of tattoo they are looking for.
The startup uses genetic artificial intelligence to create a mock-up of a design, but these synthetic designs aren’t actually implanted into anyone’s body. Instead, Tattd puts the AI-generated design through a reverse image search to find an artist whose work is similar to the mockup, so the customer and artist can work together to create an original design, just as they would normally do when connecting with a tattoo artist.
“If you go to ChatGPT and say something like, ‘I want to see a Japanese traditional style butterfly with heavier lines,’ they don’t know what that means,” founder Laura Schaack told TechCrunch.
A few feet away, TechCrunch deputy managing editor Karyne Levy had an escape key tattooed on her arm.
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Before founding Tattd, Schaack led operations for two startups: WearAway, a fashion rental company acquired by Grin, and Lemonsqueeze, a marketplace expansion platform acquired by Knotel. But Schaack always had an eye for the arts. She studied art history at New York University and her body is decorated with a collage of tattoos – at Disrupt she got a California stamp on her elbow.
“There are a number of people who have tried to break into the tattoo industry without tattoos, and they’ve all failed,” Schaack said. While you can’t judge a founder by their looks, he says the lack of tattoos reflected a lack of interest, investment or experience in the industry.
“I’m so deeply passionate about this industry, I have a lot of tattoos and I’m here to support artists to build businesses in a way that takes care of both the client and the artist,” he said. There are 900 artists on Tattd and the platform works with a third party to help them find health and financial advisors.
Schaack said about 30 people got tattoos over the three days of TechCrunch Disrupt.
There was a TechCrunch logo on the flash sheet, but (unfortunately) no one branded their love for our brand on their body.
