Tattd gave four tattoos to TechCrunch writers on Startup Battlefield

On Tuesday morning at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, our senior producer Maggie Nye rolled up the sleeves of her jacket to show me her new tattoo: a classic dotted index arrow. TechCrunch’s Becca Szkutak got a matching ticker, while Teresa LoConsolo got a smiling moon.

I guessed that at some point during all the Disrupt hype, Maggie and Becca wandered into one of San Francisco’s trendy tattoo shops to enhance their friendship with appropriately tech-themed ink (and maybe Teresa was there too?). That seemed like a more plausible explanation than the reality, which was that they got these tattoos at Disrupt — yes, literally at Disrupt, in the Moscone Center conference room, while upstairs, there might have been talk going on about product market fit or proxy AI.

Hundreds of startups showed off their wares in the expo hall as part of Battlefield 200 — there are robot chefs, spacecraft insurance providers, an acronym for plastic recycling — and then amid the chaos, Tattd turned its booth into a mini tattoo shop.

Tattd is a platform that helps tattoo seekers find artists whose profiles match the type of tattoo they are looking for.

The startup uses artificial intelligence to create a mockup of the design, but these artificial designs are not actually drawn on anyone’s body. Instead, Tattd puts the AI-generated design through a reverse image search to find an artist whose work resembles the mockup, so the client and artist can work together to create an original design, as one typically does when they contact a tattoo artist.

“If you go to ChatGPT and say something like, ‘I want to see a traditional Japanese style butterfly with heavier fonts,’ they don’t know what that means,” founder Laura Schack told TechCrunch.

Just feet away, Karen Levy, TechCrunch’s deputy managing editor, was getting an escape key tattooed on her upper arm.

Prior to founding Tattd, Shaq led operations for two startups: WearAway, a fashion rental company acquired by Grin, and Lemonsqueeze, a marketplace expansion platform acquired by Knotel. But Shaq was always interested in the arts. She studied art history at New York University, and her body is decorated with an array of tattoos — in Disrupt, she gets a California postage stamp from her elbow.

“There are a number of people who have tried to enter the tattoo industry without tattoos, and they have all failed,” Shaq said. Although you can’t judge a founder by his appearance, she says his lack of tattoos reflects his lack of interest, investment or experience in the industry.

“I’m very passionate about this industry, I have a lot of tattoos, and I’m here to support artists to build their businesses in a way where both the client and the artist are taken care of,” she said. There are nine hundred artists on Tattd, and the platform partners with a third party to help them find health care and financial advisors.

About 30 people got tattoos throughout the three days of TechCrunch Disrupt, Schack said.

There was a TechCrunch logo on the flash sheet, but (unfortunately) no one inked their love for our brand onto their bodies.