👋 I’m Justin. I run The SF Grind, The LA Grind, host the Ambition Podcast, 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! Last week, I announced the latest speaker for the Ambition Summit: Arteen Arabshahi, General Partner at Fika Ventures. He invests in "pre-Series A" B2B and B2B2C software and AI companies. He was with Fika at its inception, but left for an operator role as SVP of Strategy at Route during its hypergrowth phase, before returning in 2023.
Arteen joins a great speaker lineup and I’m excited to announce more speakers in the next few weeks! Stay tuned.
Let’s get to it.
Have you double-checked that your patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and license agreements are truly secure? A quick mistake can cost millions later.
HPL Law’s IP Check-Up makes sure:
Ownership is in your current company’s name
Every assignment is signed and recorded with the right agency
Renewal and maintenance fees are paid on time and calendared for the future
You have one clean dashboard that shows what you own, the correct numbers, where the evidence lives, and who is on the hook for updates
Skip the guesswork. Know exactly where your creative assets stand before your next fundraise, product launch, or M&A convo.
Need a pro to walk you through it?
Email Anooj Patel at [email protected] today and protect what you have in mind.
Reply to this email if you want to sponsor this newsletter.
🌁 Upcoming Event We’re Hosting 🌁
🗓️ July 15: The SF Grind: Founder, Investor, & Operator Mixer. Marina District. 6:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ July 23: The SF Grind: VC Q&A. Mission District. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ July 28: The SF Grind: SF Startup Community Coffee Meetup. Financial District. 9 - 11 am.
🗓️ August 5: The SF Grind: SF Startup Community Trivia Night. Pacific Heights. 6:30 - 9 pm.
👋 This Week in SF 👋
🗓️ July 13-17: Sports World Cup Hackathon. Pacific Heights. 6:30 - 9 pm.
🗓️ July 14: Rethinking Token Economics: A Conversation with Deedy Das (Menlo Ventures) & Shashank Goyal (OpenRouter). Financial District. 5:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ July 14: THE SF DATABASE MEETUP. SoMa. 5:30 - 8 pm.
🗓️ July 14: Rippling x Corgi Founder Live Pitch Night ft Redpoint Ventures & Battery Ventures. Union Square. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ July 14: Healthcare Dinner — Comma Capital × Sierra Ventures × Rho. Ashbury Heights. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ July 14: Show & Tell: AI for GTM @Notion with Baseten, Cognition and Samsara. Union Square. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ July 15: Claude Code & Coffee @ Corgi Cafe. Union Square. 1 - 4 pm.
🗓️ July 15: Battle of the Paddles: AI Builders Edition. SoMa. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ July 16: Design Meetup x Google Sunnyvale, CA: At Scale. Sunnyvale. 5:30 - 8 pm.
🗓️ July 16: ElevenLabs x Sauna Hack Night. Marina District. 5:30 - 9:30 pm.
🗓️ July 16: Culture Slop w/ Andrew McClintock, Jason Yuan, Maritza Lerman Yoes. Union Square. 7 - 8 pm.
🗓️ July 17: Loop Engineering Hackathon. SoMa. 9:30 am - 7:30 pm.
🗓️ July 17: alumni fireside chat & community dinner. Pacific Heights. 5 - 7 pm.
🗓️ July 18: AI Valley x Pet Zen Dog-a-thon. Presidio. 9 am - 9 pm.
👀 Events Coming Soon 👀
🗓️ July 22: Dwarkesh Unplugged, presented by WorkOS. Civic Center. 5 - 7:30 pm.
🗓️ July 23: July Tech Rooftop Mixer. South Beach. 5:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ July 24: community dinner: GTM. Pacific Heights. 6 - 7 pm.
🗓️ July 29: Hardware Founder Dinner with Rho @ Gigascale Capital | Energy and Infrastructure. Rincon Point. 6:30 - 8:30 pm.
Reply to this email to submit an event for consideration in the next edition.
Top 5 SF Startup Jobs
Senior Research AI Engineer @ ZeroRFI
Product Engineer, New Products @ Y Combinator
Founding Designer @ Finta
Founding Sales @ Gauge
Software engineer, Fullstack @ Aviator
👋 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 4,000+ subscribers of this newsletter.
Ambition is a podcast about the world's most ambitious people from history, and the lessons you can take from their lives and use in your own work and life.
Each episode is deeply researched, built around the definitive biography of one person (or in some cases, two), with dozens of hours spent reading, synthesizing, and pulling out what actually matters: what they built, how they thought, the struggles they overcame, and the tactics, strategies, and principles underneath it all.
Available now on all podcasting platforms including:
Piq Energy, a provider of an agentic grid planning platform, raised a $5M Seed round led by Active Impact Investments.
Prime Intellect, a developer of an open-source decentralized AI training and reinforcement learning infrastructure platform, raised a $130M Series A led by Radical Ventures.
Ollama, a provider of a developer platform for open models, raised a $65M Series B led by Theory Ventures.
Hostie, a provider of AI-powered virtual concierge services for restaurants, raised a $12M Series A led by Obvious Ventures.
Hakimo, a provider of an AI-powered physical security platform, raised a $12M round led by Zigg Capital.
Arkenstone Defense, a company developing an operating system for government contracting and compliance, raised a $35M Seed round led by J2 Ventures.
Super.com, a provider of a savings app service, raised a $65M Series D led by TPG.
Agave, a provider of an AI platform for construction financials, raised a $15M in Series A led by Accel.
Katalyze AI, a provider of an agentic operating system for pharmaceutical companies, raised a $10.5M Seed round led by Bonfire Ventures.
Bespoke Labs, a provider of an AI agent training platform, raised a $40M in a Series A led by Wing VC and a Seed round led by 8VC.
Featured Location
La Mar. An upscale Peruvian restaurant on the Embarcadero, known for its fresh seafood, ceviche, cocktails, and waterfront views.
Fun Events
See you next week,
Justin