👋 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! We’re about 6 weeks out from the Ambition Summit, I announced a new speaker last week, and tickets go up in price in less than a month. Apply to join here.
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 🌁
🗓️ August 12: The SF Grind: Founder, Investor, & Operator Mixer. Pacific Heights. 6:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ August 26: The SF Grind: VC Q&A. Mission District. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ September 24: Ambition Summit. Los Angeles.
👋 This Week in SF 👋
🗓️ August 10: World Labs x BITKRAFT World Model Builders Meetup @ Founders, Inc. Marina District. 5:30 - 9 pm.
🗓️ August 11: Claude Code Workshop. Embarcadero. 1 - 5 pm.
🗓️ August 11: San Francisco Data Engineering Meetup with ClickHouse. North Beach. 5:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ August 11: SF Founder Dinner: Summer Edition! North Beach. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ August 11: SF Hardware & Manufacturing Happy Hour. Fort Mason. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ August 12: Frontier Day: Building an AGI-Pilled Company. Dogpatch. 1 - 7 pm.
🗓️ August 12: Deep Tech Startups in the Age of AI by Fifty Years. Berkeley. 5 - 7 pm
🗓️ August 12: The Reserve by Founder Social Club. Civic Center. 5 - 8 pm.
🗓️ August 12: WorkOS Agent Night. Nob Hill. 5 - 10 pm.
🗓️ August 12: How to Build a Regenerative Future for Humanity & Nature. Civic Center. 5:30 - 8 pm.
🗓️ August 12: AI Engineers Tech Talk: August. South Beach. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ August 13: Biopharma Hack Day at AWS. Financial District. 9:30 am - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ August 13: The Persistent Context Sprint Hackathon | Live at MongoDB .Local Build Fest. Mission Rock. 12:30 - 8 pm.
🗓️ August 13: AI for Science Demo Night @ Edison Scientific. Dogpatch. 6:30 - 9 pm.
🗓️ August 14: Community Dinner. Russian Hill. 5 - 7 pm.
🗓️ August 15: Humanoid Sound Bath. Mission District. 11 am - 6 pm.
🗓️ August 15: VCN #50: Own the Stack. Mid-Market. 10 am - 1 pm.
👀 Events Coming Soon 👀
🗓️ August 18: SUPERNOVA 2026. Dogpatch.
🗓️ August 18: SkyRL Meetup. SoMa. 6 - 7:30 pm.
🗓️ August 19: The Reserve by Founder Social Club with HydraDB. Mission District. 6 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ August 20: Mistral Catfe Coworking. Anza Vista. 12 - 3 pm.
🗓️ August 20: Agents are changing the web with Parag Agrawal (founder, Parallel). Embarcadero. 6 - 8 pm.
Reply to this email to submit an event for consideration in the next edition.
What happens when you put 150 ambitious founders, investors, and operators in one room for a full day?
We're about to find out.
On September 24th, Ambition 2026 takes over a private venue in Santa Monica. One day, one room, no filler panels.
This isn't a massive conference you wander through with a lanyard. It's curated, it's capped at 150, and attendees have already signed up from across the US and as far as Australia.
VIP tickets include an intimate dinner the night before with some of the speakers and as many great people as I can talk into showing up.
Top 5 SF Startup Jobs
Forward Deployed Engineer @ Infer
MTS - Founding Designer @ Aside
Founding Recruiting Lead @ SilkChart
Pre-Sales Solutions Engineer @ Blee
👋 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.
The Ambition Podcast is a show 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.
First episodes of Ambition:
Available now on all podcasting platforms including: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, YouTube and more.
Harvey, a developer of AI-native legal and professional services automation platforms, received an undisclosed strategic investment round from Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives and J.P. Morgan’s Growth Equity Partners.
Naïve, a provider of an infrastructure platform for AI agents, raised a $28.5M Series A led by Nexus Venture Partners.
Opal Therapeutics, a provider of a patient-derived organoid platform enabling therapeutic and diagnostic development in women’s gynecological health, received an investment of $1.25M from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Avatar Robotics, a provider of an industrial labor platform, raised a $6.5M Seed round led by AlleyCorp, and a Pre-Seed led by defy.vc.
Sapiom, a provider of a platform that specializes in AI agents management, raised a $35M Series A led by Dragonfly.
WindBorne Systems, a provider of a weather intelligence platform, raised a $37M in Series B led by Khosla Ventures and Galvanize.
Aurelius Systems, a provider of an autonomous directed-energy technology platform, raised a $40M Series A co-led by Draper Associates and KAS Venture Partners.
Expedition Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotechnology platform, raised a $115M Series B led by General Atlantic.
Intelligence, a developer of a crowdsourced benchmarking platform for AI-generated visual design operating as Design Arena, raised a $7.9M Seed round led by Index Ventures.
Convex, a reactive backend platform, raised a $57M Series B led by Insight Partners.
Multiplier, a provider of a technology platform for professional-services firms, raised a $35M Series B led by The General Partnership.
Rivo, a provider of an autonomous cash management platform, raised a $2.7M Seed round backed by South Park Commons, Wisdom Ventures and more.
Buzz Solutions, an AI software company that enables a smart, stable, and resilient energy infrastructure, raised a $20M Series A led by S3 Ventures.
Obsidian Security, a provider of a platform securing non-human identities and AI agents across third-party applications, raised a $85M Series D led by Crescent Cove Advisors.
HappyRobot, a provider of an AI agent platform for enterprise operations, raised a $150M Series C led by Prysm Capital and Eurazeo.
Mariana Minerals, a provider of a software-first, vertically integrated critical minerals platform, raised a $310M Series B led by Khosla Ventures.
Horizon3, a provider of an AI-native proactive security platform, raised a $250M Series E co-led by NightDragon and NEA.
Wayy.ai, a provider of an AI-powered sales platform for solopreneurs and small business owners, raised a $2M Pre-Seed round led by 0 to 1 Ventures.
Fly.io, a provider of a connected cloud infrastructure platform designed for AI agents and applications, raised a $25M Series D co-led by Dell Technologies Capital and Intel Capital.
Featured Location
Empress by Boon. Stunning modern Chinese restaurant inside a restored Chinatown landmark with city views.
Fun Events
See you next week,
Justin