On Tuesday morning at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, our senior producer Maggie Nee lifted up the sleeve of her jacket to show me her new tattoo: a classic, pixelated cursor arrow. TechCrunch’s Becca Szkutak found a matching cursor, while Theresa Loconsolo found a smiling moon.
I guessed that at some point during the whole Disrupt hoopla, Maggie and Becca wandered into some trendy San Francisco tattoo shop to cement their friendship with proper tech-themed ink (and maybe Theresa was there too?). This seemed like a more logical explanation than the reality, which is that they got these tattoos at Disrupt – yes, literally at Disrupt, on the convention floor of the Moscone Center, while upstairs, perhaps, there was a conversation going on about product-market fit or agentic AI.
Hundreds of startups showed off their wares in the expo hall as part of Battlefield 200 — there’s a robo chef, a spaceship insurance provider, a shortcut to recycling plastic — and then amid the chaos, Tat transformed his booth into a mini tattoo shop.
Tattd is a platform that helps tattoo seekers find artists whose portfolio matches the type of tattoo they are looking for.
The startup uses generative AI to create a mockup of a design, but these synthetic designs aren’t actually imprinted on anyone’s body. Rather, Tattd puts the AI-generated design through a reverse image search to find an artist whose work resembles the mockup, so the customer and artist can work together to create an original design, as is typically the case when they connect with a tattoo artist.
“If you go to ChatGPT and say something like, ‘I want to see a butterfly with heavy lines in the Japanese traditional style,’ they don’t know what that means,” founder Laura Shak told TechCrunch.
Just a few feet away, Carine Levy, TechCrunch’s deputy managing editor, was getting an escape key tattooed on her upper arm.
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Prior to founding Tatdi, Shak led the operations of two startups: WearAway, a fashion rental company that was acquired by Grin, and LemonSqueeze, a marketplace expansion platform that was acquired by Knotel. But Shaq has always had an eye for art. He studied art history at New York University, and his body is decorated with a collage of tattoos – in Disrupt, he found a California postage stamp near his elbow.
Shak said, “There are many people who have tried to break into the tattoo industry without tattoos, and they have all failed.” Although you can’t judge a founder by their looks, she says the lack of tattoos reflects their lack of interest, investment or experience in the industry.
She said, “I’m very deeply passionate about this industry, I tattoo a lot, and I’m here to support artists in building businesses in a way that takes care of both the client and the artist.” There are nine hundred artists on Tattd, and the platform partners with third parties to help them find healthcare and financial advisors.
Shak said about 30 people got tattoos over the three days of TechCrunch Disrupt.
The flash sheet had the TechCrunch logo on it, but unfortunately, no one tattooed their love for our brand on their body.
