👋 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.
Happy Monday! I’m very excited to be working with Fidelity Private Shares and Chargebee on a couple of founder events coming up soon. More on those below.
RJR Partners is now the go-to U.S. recruiting partner for The SF Grind and The LA Grind so if you’re looking to build your team and want to work with an amazing team, check them out. I’m very excited about this partnership and you’ll be learning more about them in the months to come!
Let’s get to it.
Hiring for your startup?
RJR Partners are experts in helping startups scale their teams with high quality hires and they’re the go-to U.S. recruiting partner for The SF Grind and The LA Grind.
They specialize in startup talent acquisition from entry-level to C-suite, with a 5% candidate fall-off rate and 5-to-1 submission-to-placement ratio.
Their team of tech industry veterans sources directly through personal networks, so you only interview candidates who are genuinely well-suited for your roles. Contingency and retained search options available.
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. Sponsored by Fidelity Private Shares, an all-in-one equity management platform that helps you maintain a clean cap table, an organized data room, and a clear equity story. Book a demo here.
🗓️ February 20: Curated Founder Breakfast. SF. 8 - 10 am. Sponsored by Fidelity Private Shares and Chargebee, a billing and monetization platform that helps fast-growing SaaS and AI companies automate billing, adapt pricing with agility, and scale their revenue operations seamlessly.
🗓️ February 22: The SF Grind: Curated Female Founder Morning Collective. Marina. 9 - 11 am. Sponsored by Chargebee.
🗓️ March 19: Curated Founder Dinner. SF. 6:30 - 9 pm.
🗓️ March 20: Curated Founder Breakfast. SF. 8 - 10 am.
👋 This Week in SF 👋
🗓️ February 2: ML from Scratch - Foundation & Supervised Learning. Mid-Market. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ February 2: Conversation Café — Playful Sincerity Events. Mid-Market. 7 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ February 3: AI for Science Series: SF. Dogpatch. 5:30 - 8 pm.
🗓️ February 3: Cloudflare IRL. Mission District. 5:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ February 3: Frontier Tower Droid Builders Club. Mid-Market. 6 - 7:30 pm.
🗓️ February 4: Founder & Investor Happy Hour with ImagineArt. Civic Center. 5 - 8 pm.
🗓️ February 4: OpenClaw SF Show & Tell. Mid-Market. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ February 4: Flying Car Racing, Robot Battles and More: How New Sports Media is Having a Love Affair with Deeptech. Mid-Market. 7 - 9 pm.
🗓️ February 5: Startup Super Bowl: Pitch Night. Mission District. 5 - 8 pm.
🗓️ February 5: The AI Transition: Navigating Emotions. Mid-Market. 6 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ February 5: Dust x Anthropic: It's called having Skills. SoMa. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ February 6: Matcha & Momentum. SoMa. 9 - 10:30 am.
🗓️ February 6: Continual Learning Hackathon. Financial District. 9:30 am - 7:30 pm.
🗓️ February 6: Agentic AI Summit. Palo Alto. 12 - 5 pm.
🗓️ February 6: AI Executive Dinner. Los Altos. 7 - 9:30 pm.
🗓️ February 6: AI Researcher Poker Night. Nob Hill. 7 - 11 pm.
🗓️ February 7: Constructive Debates: Playful Sincerity Events. Mid-Market. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ February 7: Vibe Coding Nights #11: Design & Interaction. Mid-Market. 6:30 - 11 pm.
🗓️ February 8: Alien.org Hackathon: Vibecode Mini Apps for the human era. Mid-Market. 10 am - 8 pm.
🗓️ February 8: Founder Super Bowl Party. 2:30 - 9:30 pm.
👀 Coming Soon 👀
🗓️ March 5: Snafu Conference. Oakland. Register with the code SFGRIND for a free ticket.
Reply to this email to submit an event for consideration in the next edition
Top 5 SF Startup & VC Firm Jobs
Software Engineer @ Quill
Startups Ambassador @ Brex
Senior Software Engineer @ Webflow
Investment Analyst @ 137 Ventures
Investment Associate @ Slow Ventures
👋 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 1,500+ subscribers of this newsletter.
Decagon, a company which specializes in conversational AI agents for concierge customer experiences, raised a $250M Series D led by Coatue Management and Index Ventures.
Mesh Security, a company delivering a cybersecurity mesh architecture (CSMA) platform, raised a $12M Series A led by Lobby Capital.
PaleBlueDot AI, a provider of an AI compute platform, raised a $150M Series B led by B Capital.
Genspark, a technology company building agentic AI solutions, raised a $300M Series B backed by Emergence Capital Partners, LG and others.
Emobi, an EV charging company, raised a $3.4M Seed round led by Florida Funders.
Cellares, an Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO), raised a $257M Series D led by BlackRock and Eclipse.
Eliyan Corporation, a company which specializes in connectivity products and technology for AI and computing systems, raised $50M backed by Samsung Catalyst Fund, Intel Capital and others.
Risotto, a provider of an autonomous AI ITSM agentic platform, raised a $10M Seed round led by Bonfire Ventures.
Fulcrum, a provider of an AI platform for insurance brokerages, raised a $25M combined Seed round and Series A led by CRV.
TRexBio, a clinical-stage biotechnology company, raised $50M backed by Janus Henderson Investors, Balyasny Asset Management L.P. and more.
Midship, a provider of an AI-native platform automating Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) testing and internal audit workflows, raised a $4.15M Seed round led by Costanoa Ventures.
Mesh, a provider of a crypto payments network, raised a $75M Series C led by Dragonfly Capital.
Antheia, a biosynthesis company delivering pharmaceutical manufacturing, raised a $24M Series C led by ATHOS KG and America’s Frontier Fund.
Fiddler AI, a provider of an enterprise AI observability and security platform, raised a $30M Series C led by RPS Ventures.
Ricursive Intelligence, an AI Lab focused on building self-improving systems, starting with chip design, raised a $300M Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Zocks, a provider of a privacy-first AI platform for financial advisors, raised a $45M Series B co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and QED Investors.
Upwind Security, a provider of a cloud security platform, raised a $250M Series B led by Bessemer Venture Partners.
Listen Labs, a provider of an AI-first customer research platform, raised a $69M Series B led by Ribbit Capital.
Tradespace, a provider of an AI native IP platform, raised a $15M Series A led by AVP.
Superstate, a tokenized securities infrastructure company, raised a $82.5M Series B co-led by Bain Capital Crypto and Distributed Global.
Inferact, a developer of a high-performance AI inference engine, raised a $150M Seed round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Baseten, an AI inference company supporting AI applications, raised a $300M round led by IVP, CapitalG, and NVIDIA.
Featured Location
Quince. Three-Michelin-starred fine dining with luxurious French-inspired cuisine and beautifully curated tasting menus.
Fun Events
See you next week,
Justin
P.S. Want to connect? Book a Call | Twitter | LinkedIn