👋 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 finishing today’s edition from a cabin just outside of Nashville. It’s the perfect place for a founder retreat, which I hope to host here in the future. I have to get the 2027 summit planned first, but the last founder retreat I hosted in 2024 in Santa Barbara was so much fun that I’d love to bring it back. More to come.
Investors: LA-based Chisos Capital just launched the Chisos Golf Fund, a $25M fund backing professional golfers. Chisos founder Will Stringer announced the fund at The Masters. Chisos has deployed 110+ investments across founders, athletes, and creators. If you invest in sports, alternative assets, or athlete ventures, learn more at chisosgolf.com.
Let’s get to it.
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🌁 Upcoming Events We’re Hosting 🌁
🗓️ April 30: Curated Seed+ Founders Dinner. SF. 6:30 - 9 pm. Sponsored by Sprinto and Highland Academy.
🗓️ May 1: The SF Grind: SF Startup Community Coffee Meetup. Union Square. 9 - 11 am.
🗓️ May 21: Curated Seed+ Founders Dinner. SF. 6:30 - 9 pm.
🗓️ May 22: Curated Seed+ Founders Breakfast. SF. 9 - 11 am.
👋 This Week in SF 👋
🗓️ April 13: Frontier Tower AI Paper Reading Club - Week 11 - GLM-5: from Vibe Coding to Agentic Engineering. Mid-Market. 5 - 6 pm.
🗓️ April 13: Hire or Get Hired - AI Matching Your Next Role. Union Square. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ April 14: Small Models Club Dinner by distil labs. SF. 5:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ April 14: Ships & Sips: SF Engineering Happy Hour. Mission Bay. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ April 14: The 60-Second Showdown | $50K+ Pitch Competition in services. Financial District. 8 - 11:30 pm.
🗓️ April 15: -1 to Longshot Space with Nato Saichek. South Beach. 4:30 - 6 pm.
🗓️ April 15: Lights-Out Lab Premiere. Mid-Market. 6 - 7:30 pm.
🗓️ April 15: Growth & GTM Community Meetup. Mid-Market. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ April 16: ClawCamp: Get Started & Up-level Your OpenClaw Personal Agent Superpowers. Oakland. 9 am - 6 pm.
🗓️ April 16: AVs & the City: DRIVE AI Demo Day. Richmond. 12 - 4:30 pm.
🗓️ April 16: The Agentic Enterprise Platform — ThinkingAI Launch with MiniMax. Mountain View. 12 - 2 pm.
🗓️ April 16: Slides Down: AI Founders Party by DigitalOcean & Zendesk. South Beach. 5 - 9 pm.
🗓️ April 16: V11 x Link Ventures: Robotics & RW Training Data Dinner. Financial District. 6:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ April 17: The ArtTech Playground: From Idea to Impact. Financial District. 5 - 9 pm.
🗓️ April 18: SF Climate Week 2026 Official Welcome Day. SoMa. 12 - 3 pm.
🗓️ April 18: Sunset Rooftop in SF / ATS x FH Funraiser. Mid-Market. 5:30 - 7:30 pm.
🗓️ April 19: Climate Stakeholder Gathering: Morning Run. Embarcadero. 7 - 9 am.
👀 Events Coming Soon 👀
🗓️ April 20: SF Climate Week 2026: Founders, Investors & LP Happy Hour. Mid-Market. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ April 22: Cost of Compute - SFCW Dinner. North Beach. 7 - 9 pm.
🗓️ April 23: Zero to Unicorn: Shef Founder Fireside. SF. 5 - 7 pm.
🗓️ April 26: Climate Stakeholder Gathering: Networking Mixer. Union Square. 5:30 - 9 pm.
🗓️ April 29: AI Champions Dinner. SF. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ April 30: Unicorner Presents: SF Seed+ Founders Dinner. SF. 6 - 9 pm.
Reply to this email to submit an event for consideration in the next edition
Top 5 SF Startup Jobs
Founding Product Designer @ Parrot
Recruiter (US & Canada) @ Infisical
People Partner @ HappyRobot
Senior Product Designer @ Retell AI
Founding Engineer (Ruby) @ Finta
👋 Hiring? Reply to this email to feature your job in this newsletter.
Other Opportunities
April 16 - $100K AI Startup Pitch-Off @ Chargebee Beelieve
Chargebee, in partnership with The Founder Initiative, is hosting a live pitch competition at their annual conference at Fort Mason, San Francisco. 10 pre-Series A AI founders pitch to a panel of enterprise buyers - CXOs & VPs from Gong, Superhuman, Cribl, Okta, and others - get feedback from real buyers, and compete for a $100K cash prize.
Even if you're not pitching, it's worth being in the room. Applications to pitch close April 3, and registration includes a full pass to the Beelieve conference on April 15-16. Apply or register.
A friend of mine is raising a $500K strategic round for their logistics intelligence platform for ecommerce brands. $500K ARR, 4x YoY growth. If you invest in ecommerce or logistics infrastructure, reply to this email, and I'll send more details.
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 3,000 subscribers of this newsletter.
Plume, a geospatial data startup focused on infrastructure development, raised a $3.9M round led by AENU.
Elorian, an AI research and product lab focused on advancing visual reasoning for AI, raised a $55M Seed round co-led by Striker Ventures, Menlo Ventures and Altimeter.
AfterQuery, an applied data solutions research lab, raised a $30M Series A led by Altos Ventures.
Luminai, a provider of an AI-native enterprise automation platform purpose-built for healthcare operations, raised a $38M Series B led by Peak XV Partners.
Rork, a provider of an AI platform designed to build and launch mobile apps for the App Store using natural language, raised a $15M Seed round led by Left Lane Capital.
Pipe, a fintech that provides embedded solutions for small businesses, raised a $16M round led by Fin Capital and MaC Venture Capital.
Aria Networks, a networking company, raised a $125M round backed by Sutter Hill Ventures, Atreides Management.
Pomo, a provider of an agentic marketing intelligence platform built for mid-market, raised a $4.5M in Seed round led by Kindred Ventures.
Latent, a provider of an AI platform for medication access, raised a $80M Series A led by Spark Capital and Transformation Capital.
TeraWatt Technology Inc., a company developing lithium-ion batteries, raised an undisclosed amount in Series C backed by Khosla Ventures, Temasek and more.
Endovascular Engineering, Inc., a commercial-stage medical technology company, raised a $80M Series C led by Gilde Healthcare and Norwest.
NeuBird AI, a provider of agentic AI for production operations, raised a $19.3M round led by Xora Innovation.
Noon, an AI design startup, raised a $44M Seed round backed by Chemistry, First Round Capital.
Miravoice, an agentic AI startup that enables automated phone surveys and interviews, raised a $6.3M Seed round led by Unusual Ventures.
Featured Location
Tosca Café. A historic Italian restaurant and bar known for its cozy, cinematic dining room. The menu blends Italian comfort dishes with California ingredients, alongside classic cocktails and its signature boozy “cappuccino.”
Fun Events
See you next week,
Justin