👋 I’m Justin. I run The SF Grind, The LA Grind, and scout for Headline. I live in LA but spend a lot of time in San Francisco meeting founders, hosting gatherings, and enjoying the wonderful city.
Last week, I hosted the first couple of events for The SF Grind, a curated founder dinner and startup community coffee meetup, and had so much fun meeting all of you! Thanks to everyone who was able to attend and to Lightfield for sponsoring!
I’m looking for more companies that want to sponsor future events in SF as well as this newsletter. Please reply to this email if interested.
Let’s get to it.
National law firm trusted by founders and high-growth companies
Polsinelli has a strong technology and emerging growth practice supporting founders from formation through fundraising and scale. They work with startups across San Francisco, Los Angeles, and major innovation hubs nationwide.
I’ve personally worked with Ephraim Hintz from their team, and he’s excellent if you ever need a warm intro or trusted guidance on anything legal.
Reply to this email if you want to sponsor this newsletter.
🌁 Upcoming Events We’re Hosting 🌁
🗓️ February 19: Curated Founder Dinner. SF. 6:30 - 9 pm.
🗓️ February 20: Curated Founder Breakfast. SF. 8 - 10 am.
🗓️ February 22: The SF Grind: Curated Female Founder Morning Collective. Marina. 9 - 11 am.
🗓️ March 19: Curated Founder Dinner. SF. 6:30 - 9 pm.
🗓️ March 20: Curated Founder Breakfast. SF. 8 - 10 am.
👋 This Week in SF 👋
🗓️ January 27: Co-working & Lunch. Union Square. 11 am - 2 pm.
🗓️ January 27: AI Benchmark Club. Distrito Financiero. 5 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ January 27: DeepTech & Hardware | Founders x Investors Dinner. Clarendon Heights. 6:30 - 9:30 pm.
🗓️ January 27: Rho x Puzzle: The Founders Table. Cathedral Hill. 6:30 - 9:30 pm.
🗓️ January 27: Voice Mode - The Year of Reliability. Mid-Market. 5 - 9 pm.
🗓️ January 28: Urban Autonomy Summit. Union Square. 3 - 7 pm.
🗓️ January 28: Surreal: You're not just a PM anymore: The Full-Stack Builder Era - Product After AI with Anthropic, LinkedIn, & Luma AI. Stanford. 5 - 8 pm.
🗓️ January 28: Physical Intelligence Summit - Open Registration. Mid-Market. 5 - 9 pm.
🗓️ January 28: 11 x Link Ventures - Builders Dinner. Distrito Financiero. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ January 28: Onchain Data Deep Dives - Open Registration. Mid-Market. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ January 28: Buildkite Localhost. Financial District. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ January 28: Demo Nights: Robin Sloan's Notebook. Oakland. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ January 28: Unicorner Presents: SF Seed+ Founders Dinner. SoMa. 6 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ January 28: Building Fintechs with World-Class Customer Experiences w/ Intercom, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Mercury. Distrito Financiero. 6 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ January 28: Cafe Compute: new year checkpoint 0. El Embarcadero. 7 - 9 pm.
🗓️ January 29: SPC Winter 2026 Demo Faire. South Beach. 3:15 - 5:30 pm.
🗓️ January 29: Agents & APIs SF Developer Meetup. Financial District. 5:30 - 7:30 pm.
🗓️ January 29: Beyond the Front Lines: Defending the Future in the Age of AI. North Beach. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ January 29: DevTools Meetup. Financial District. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ January 29: Atelier After Dark — Fashion, Capital & Culture - Open Registration. Mid-Market. 7 - 10 pm.
🗓️ January 30: Learn to Prompt Hackathon | Lovable x Humanic x Leverage and more. Mid-Market. 12 - 8 pm.
🗓️ January 31: New Founder School AI Hackathon with Fractal for non Technical Founders - Open Registration. Mid-Market. 9 am - 5 pm.
🗓️ January 31: Building future AI news experiences with The Atlantic and Infactory. East Palo Alto. 8:30 am - 6 pm.
🗓️ January 31-February 1: Physical AI Hack 2026. Marina District.
Reply to this email to submit an event for consideration in the next edition
Top 5 SF Startup & VC Firm Jobs
Strategic Software Engineer (Full Stack) @ Turing Labs Inc.
Founding Account Executive @ Middleware
Business Development Associate @ Hunter SF
Founding Design Engineer @ Conductor
Founding Recruiting Lead @ Confido
👋 Hiring? Reply to this email to feature your job in this newsletter.
Other Opportunities
Know a founder or investor in SF who is raising capital or searching for a co-founder? Reply to this email with more details that I could share with the 1,000+ subscribers of this newsletter.
Playad, a provider of an AI creative platform, raised $5.4M in Pre-Seed funding led by BRV Capital Management and Mirae Asset Venture Investment.
Mendra, a biopharmaceutical company developing therapies for rare disease medicines, raised a $82M Series A co-led by OrbiMed, 8VC, and 5AM Ventures.
LiveKit, a developer of a platform for voice, video, and physical AI agents, raised a $100M Series C led by Index Ventures.
Cambio, a provider of an AI-native commercial real estate operations platform, raised a $18M Series A led by Maverick Ventures.
Artie, a provider of a managed real-time data streaming platform, raised $12M in Series A funding in a round led by Dalton Caldwell at Standard Capital.
Railway, a cloud platform for developers, raised a $100M Series B led by TQ Ventures.
Asymmetric Security, an AI incident response services company, raised a $4.2M Pre‑Seed led by Susa Ventures.
XBuild, a provider of an AI platform purpose-built for construction, raised a $19M Series A led by N47.
Ivo, a provider of an AI-powered contract intelligence platform, raised a $55M Series B led by Blackbird.
Emergent, a provider of an AI software creation platform, raised a $70M Series B led by Khosla Ventures and SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
ClickHouse, a provider of real-time analytics, data warehousing, and AI infrastructure solutions, raised a $400M Series D led by Dragoneer Investment Group.
Transition Metal Solutions, a startup supporting copper production from existing mining operations and waste, raised a $6M Seed led by led by Transition Ventures.
Featured Location
Saison. A Michelin-starred restaurant known for wood-fire cooking, ultra-seasonal California ingredients, and an elegant, immersive tasting-menu experience built around precision and restraint.
Fun Events
See you next week,
Justin
P.S. Want to connect? Book a Call.