👋 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! We passed 2,000 subscribers to this newsletter last week which I’m very grateful for! Huge shoutout to Fidelity Private Shares, Mercury, and Chargebee for sponsoring our events last week! These early partners are essential. I’m very grateful for their support and if you ever want to use their products, I’m happy to connect you with the teams there as well.
Let’s get to it.
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🌁 Upcoming Events We’re Hosting 🌁
🗓️ March 19: Startup Community Coffee Meetup. Marina. 8 - 10 am. Sponsored by Aspire.
🗓️ March 19: Curated Founder Dinner. SF. 6:30 - 9 pm. Sponsored by Rho and Fidelity Private Shares.
🗓️ March 20: Curated Founder Breakfast. SF. 8 - 10 am.
⭐️ Featured Upcoming Events ⭐️
🗓️ March 5: Snafu Conference. Oakland. Register with the code SFGRIND for a free ticket.
👋 This Week in SF 👋
🗓️ February 23-24: Nearcon 2026. Marina.
🗓️ February 23: Builders Late Night Café. Mission. 7:30 pm - 12 am.
🗓️ February 24: Surreal Dinner Series: AI in the Enterprise with Langchain, Box, Abridge, & Exa. Dogpatch. 5 - 8 pm.
🗓️ February 24: DevTool AX Demos. SoMa. 5:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ February 24: Rho x Puzzle: The Founders Table. Lower Nob Hill. 6 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ February 24: Women in AI x Gold House Ventures: Lunar New Year Gala. Mid-Market. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ February 24: Vibe Coding Night #14 - Voice over IP. Mid-Market. 6:30 - 11 pm.
🗓️ February 25: Physical AI Meetup - Robots at Home. Mid-Market. 5 - 10 pm.
🗓️ February 25: The Reserve by Founder Social Club. Civic Center. 5 - 8 pm.
🗓️ February 25: Battery & Energy Storage Meetup — Sodium Ion Battery Fundamentals with Benjamin Ruper. Embarcadero. 5:30 - 7 pm.
🗓️ February 25: Lenny’s Newsletter Meetup in San Francisco. South Beach. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ February 25: Whole Earth Redux Publication Release Party. Dolores Heights. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ February 25: Climate Hardware Founder Dinner (Energy, Batteries, + Mobility) with Rho. Mission District. 6:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ February 26: Claude Cowork GTM Workshop. SoMa. 5:30 - 7:30 pm.
🗓️ February 26: Vercel Demo Night: AI Agents. Financial District. 5:30 - 8 pm.
🗓️ February 26: Women Tech Meetup: Who Is Taking Care of You? SoMa. 5:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ February 26: Operators Happy Hour by Chore: The Rise of AI Agents. Mission District. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ February 26: Founders on Fire: SF Hot Wings Edition. Financial District. 6 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ February 26: The Founders Table: Billiards Night. Dolores Heights. 6:30 - 9:30 pm.
🗓️ February 26: Reactive to Predictive Neurology: Neuro Fireside Series. Mid-Market. 7 - 9 pm.
🗓️ February 27: Autonomous Agents Hackathon. SoMa. 9:30 am - 7:30 pm.
🗓️ February 27: Musa Labs Hackathon SF - Enterprise Agents. Mid-Market. 12 - 7 pm.
🗓️ February 27: World Labs Hack [01]: Spatial Intelligence. South Beach. 4:30 - 9:30 pm.
🗓️ February 27: InstaLILY AI SF Office Opening Party — Co-hosted with Google DeepMind. Mission Rock. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ February 27: Orbital After Dark. Mid-Market. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ February 28: Scrappy AI Founders Go (HARD) Hiking. Mill Valley. 8:30 am - 5:30 pm.
🗓️ February 28: Google DeepMind x InstaLILY AI - SF Office Opening Hackathon. Mission Rock. 9 am - 9 pm.
🗓️ February 28: OceanTech Hackathon. Mission District. 9 am - 6 pm.
🗓️ February 28: Vibeclauding for Marketers. Financial District. 11 am - 12:30 pm.
🗓️ February 28: OpenClaw Hackathon with GOAT Network. Mid-Market. 1 - 7 pm.
Reply to this email to submit an event for consideration in the next edition
Top 5 SF Startup & VC Firm Jobs
Sales / GTM Hacker @ Turing Labs Inc.
People Partner @ HappyRobot
Venture Capital Associate - Healthcare @ Alexander Chapman
Product Engineer @ Bunkerhill Health
👋 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 2,000+ subscribers of this newsletter.
Badge, a provider of an operating platform for Apple and Google Wallets, raised a $13.8M Series A round led by TTV Capital and a $3.3M seed round led by QED Investors and Infinity Ventures.
xAI, a developer of frontier artificial intelligence, raised a $3 billion Series E led by HUMAIN.
Kana, a company that deploys agents for marketers and media companies, raised a $15M Seed round led by Mayfield.
Braintrust, a developer of an AI observability and evaluation platform, raised a $80M Series B led by ICONIQ.
Cogent Security, a provider of an AI-native vulnerability management platform, raised a $42M Series A led by Bain Capital Ventures.
Rainfall Health, a provider of an AI-driven compliance and reimbursement platform for hospitals and medical groups, raised a $15M Series A led by Two Bear Capital.
Render, a provider of a cloud for application developers, raised a $100M Series C extension led by Georgian.
Temporal, a provider of an open-source platform for reliable agentic applications, raised a $300M Series D led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Sphinx, a company building browser-native compliance agents for financial institutions, raised a $7.1M Seed round led by Cherry Ventures.
Dataro, a provider of an an AI-driven fundraising intelligence platform, raised a $14.28M Series A led by Blueprint Equity.
Autosana, an agentic QA platform for iOS, Android, and web apps, raised a $3.2M round backed by Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund and more.
Daffodil Health, a provider of an AI-powered platform for U.S. health plan administration and claims processing, raised a $16.3M Series A led by Flare Capital Partners.
Featured Location
Destapas. Authentic Spanish tapas and paella from Madrid natives, relaxed but flavorful. Great wine list and traditional dishes.
Fun Events
See you next week,
Justin
P.S. Want to connect? Book a Call | Twitter | LinkedIn