👋 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! With the long weekend, I started a little side quest… a personal newsletter. I’ll share some behind-the-scenes building this business, thoughts on creating companies and building communities, and more. We’ll see how it evolves over time. Subscribe here.
Ambition Update: We’re less than 4 months away from the 150-person startup summit I’m hosting in Santa Monica on September 24th! Our first 4 speakers are confirmed: Mehul Nariyawala (Matic), Tyler Denk (beehiiv), Dee Murthy (Ghost), and Jessica Chang (Upwards). We’ve got some great attendees signed up already too! Apply to join.
Founder Spotlight: I want to feature amazing SF-based founders in this newsletter. If you’d like to be featured in front of 3,500+ readers of The SF Grind, fill out this form.
Let’s get to it.
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🌁 Upcoming Event We’re Hosting 🌁
🗓️ June 19: SF Startup Community Coffee Meetup. Union Square. 9 - 11 am.
👋 This Week in SF 👋
🗓️ May 25: Make Your Own Financial Agent for Investors. Mid-Market. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ May 26: Codex Community Hackathon. Stonestown. 5 - 7:45 pm.
🗓️ May 26: How to AI Pill Your Company. South Beach. 5 - 8 pm.
🗓️ May 26: Foresight's AI Salon with Isaak Freeman, Capable. Dolores Heights. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ May 26: YOLT: You Only Live Today — Vibe Coding Night For Future Billionaires. Mid-Market. 6:30 - 10 pm.
🗓️ May 27: Mango Maxxing: Tech, kicks, and mango season mixer by Gully Labs & PromptQL. SoMa. 5 -8 pm.
🗓️ May 27: HeyGen’s “Infinitely Me” Pop-Up. Fort Mason.
🗓️ May 27: Bay Area Frontier Research Club #8 | Stanford University (dinner + paper discussion). Stanford. 5:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ May 27: Comedy & Charisma Show. 5:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ May 27: Beyond the Build: Rise of the Product Engineer. Union Square. 6 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ May 27: Hardware Founder Dinner with Rho @ Antler VC. South Beach. 6:30 - 8:30 pm.m
🗓️ May 28: Frontier Residency - Demo Day. Mid-Market. 4 - 7 pm.
🗓️ May 28: AI Salon: Live Networking. 4 - 5:30 pm.
🗓️ May 28: Female Founder Vibe Coding Workshop | Lovable & AI Snack Club. Financial District. 5:30 - 7:30 pm.
🗓️ May 28: Hardware Pitch Night - Physical AI. Dolores Heights. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ May 28: From Overwhelm to Focus: A Workshop for Managing Time, Tasks, and Priorities. Mid-Market. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ May 29: SF Poker Club: Poker Night (NOT for Dummies). Union Square. 6:30 - 11 pm.
🗓️ May 30: Krava x Linq Hackathon: Build Private-by-Default AI Apps. MId-Market. 12 - 7 pm.
🗓️ May 30: Autoresearch Systems Hackathon with Modal, OpenAI, Raindrop & Antler. South Beach. 8 am - 8 pm.
🗓️ May 31: Founders Creative Leadership Quarterly. Palo Alto. 4 - 7 pm.
👀 Events Coming Soon 👀
🗓️ June 5: Immigration for Founders (with Path Law). Mid-Market. 6:30 - 8 pm.
🗓️ June 6: AI Agents + Crypto Buildathon. Mid-Market. 12 - 9 pm.
🗓️ June 7-8: Flip the Script: WWDC Watch Party + Mac Dev Conference on Building, Distributing & Monetizing AI Apps by MacPaw. Hillsborough.
🗓️ June 10: Founder Breakfast. Union Square. 9 - 11 am.
🗓️ June 11: Founder Dinner. Pacific Heights. 6:30 - 8:30 pm.
Reply to this email to submit an event for consideration in the next edition.
Top 5 SF Startup Jobs
Full-Stack Engineer @ Campfire
Product Designer @ Wordware
Founding Applied Scientist @ Terranox AI
Talent Lead @ Agave
Lab & Operations Manager @ Numen
👋 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 3,000+ subscribers of this newsletter.
The Path, a provider of an AI therapy platform designed for creating long-term mental wellness, raised a $14.3M Seed round led by Prime Movers Lab.
Shatterdome Energy, an AI-driven energy trading and intelligence startup, raised a $3.5M Pre-Seed round led by Crucible Capital.
Mercury, a fintech company developing financial operating systems, raised a $200M Series D led by TCV.
Novity, a provider of a predictive maintenance platform for process industries, received a strategic investment of an undisclosed amount from Acario Innovation.
Decart, a developer of real-time video models, world models, and ultra-optimized AI infrastructure, raised a $300M round led by Radical Ventures.
Commure, a provider of an AI platform for healthcare, raised a $70M round led by General Catalyst.
Blank Bio, an applied AI research lab training foundation models for RNA, raised a $7.2M Seed round backed by Define Ventures, Leonis Capita and more.
Clone Labs, an AI startup focused on understanding user intent and context, received an investment of an undisclosed amount from NAVER D2SF.
Vital Signals, a health company that develops solutions to understand, track, and manage blood pressure and hypertension, raised a $15M round led by XYZ Ventures.
Armada, an infrastructure and artificial intelligence company developing an edge computing and satellite-enabled platform, raised a $230M Series B co-led by Overmatch, BlackRock and 8090 Industries.
Leadbay, a provider of a B2B AI prospecting platform, raised a $4.3M Seed round backed by Y Combinator, Rebel Ventures, and more.
Sprouts.ai, a provider of an AI-powered ABM and GTM intelligence platform, raised a $9M Pre-Series A round led by True Global Ventures and Accel.
Roadrunner, an AI-native revenue infrastructure company, raised a $27M Seed round and Series A led by Mamoon Hamid at Kleiner Perkins and Founders Fund.
Hacktron, a cybersecurity startup, raised a $2.9M Pre-Seed round led by Crane Venture Partners.
Featured Location
Kokkari Estatiorio. Warm candlelit Greek taverna energy with fireplaces, wood beams, and one of the best atmospheres in SF for a long dinner.
Fun Events
See you next week,
Justin