👋 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 7 weeks out from the Ambition Summit, announced two more speakers last week, and will be announcing another this week! We still have sponsorship opportunities, a limited number of service provider tickets, and other tickets available. Apply to join here.
Let’s get to it.
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Reply to this email if you want to sponsor this newsletter.
🌁 Upcoming Event We’re Hosting 🌁
🗓️ August 5: The SF Grind: SF Startup Community Trivia Night. Pacific Heights. 6:30 - 9 pm.
🗓️ 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 3: Memory Meets Motion: Hackathon. Mid-Market. 8 am - 6 pm.
🗓️ August 4: investor demo day. Embarcadero. 3:30 - 5:30 pm.
🗓️ August 4: Built on Baseten | AI Demo Night. Northern Waterfront. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ August 4: AI & Mobile meet-up by Software Mansion. SoMa. 6:30 - 9:30 pm.
🗓️ August 5: Privy Home: IRL SF. Dogpatch. 11 am - 6 pm.
🗓️ August 5: Demo Night @ WorkOS. Union Square. 5:30 - 8 pm.
🗓️ August 5: Inflection #002 — Health: AI's last problem w/ Omri Drory. South Beach. 5:30 - 8 pm.
🗓️ August 5: Wild AI SF # 1 Hidden Infrastructure of Intelligence. Mid-Market. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ August 5: Gray Area Cultural Incubator Showcase 2026. Dolores Heights. 7 - 10 pm.
🗓️ August 6: AlphaSignal's Pizza Agent Challenge. Embarcadero. 5:30 - 9 pm.
🗓️ Jueves 6: Reimagining Proteins with AI: Antibodies and Beyond. Design District. 5:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ August 6: Open-Source Evening with MiniMax, Moonshot, Baseten & Factory. South Beach. 6 - 11 pm.
🗓️ August 6: 136th SF Hardware Meetup @ Studio 45 | Demo Night. Dolores Heights. 6:30 - 9:30 pm.
🗓️ August 7: Snowflake X Beta Fund Agent & Token Economy Hackathon. Menlo Park. 9 am - 6 pm.
🗓️ August 7: Community Dinner. Pacific Heights. 5 - 7 pm.
👀 Events Coming Soon 👀
🗓️ 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 Hardware & Manufacturing Happy Hour. Fort Mason. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ August 12: Frontier Day: Building an AGI-Pilled Company. Dogpatch. 1 - 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 18: Robotics Builders Waterfront 5K. Fort Mason. 6:30 - 7:30 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
Technical Product Manager @ Carefree
AI/ML Infrastructure Engineer @ Zensors
Growth Intern @ CatchBack Cards
👋 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.
I started the Ambition Podcast a few weeks ago, spending 100+ hours on the project already. It’s 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:
Discern Security, a provider of an AI-native security workspace that improve cybersecurity posture through proactive, agent-driven optimization of security controls, raised a $13M Series A led by Forgepoint Capital.
SoundHealth, a provider of personalized, AI-enabled non-invasive medical and wellness devices for breathing and sleep disorders, raised a $12.25M Series A led by Shangbay Capital.
Smallest.ai, a provider of real-time voice AI infrastructure for enterprises, raised a $13M Series A led by Seligman Ventures.
Vector Legal, an AI-native law firm and legal technology platform for startups, raised a $5.19M Seed round led by Base10 Partners.
Simile, a developer of AI-powered human behavior foundation models and predictive simulation software, raised a $200M Series B led by Greenoaks.
UNIT AI, a provider of a modular, AI-powered platform for end-to-end e-commerce fulfillment and returns, raised a $12M round co-led by Prologis Ventures, Dynamo Ventures, and Ground Up Ventures.
Polar, a provider of an AI browser platform that automates knowledge work, raised a $5.7M Seed round led by Madrona.
Adjuvia Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing therapeutics to treat mitochondrial dysfunction and disease, raised a $8M Seed round led by JLO Ventures.
Centralize, a provider of a relationship intelligence platform for enterprise revenue teams, raised a $19M round led by New Enterprise Associates.
LearnVector Inc., a provider of an AI-native learning platform, received a $100M investment from Coursera.
Weave, a provider of an engineering-intelligence layer service solution, raised a $13.5M Series A led by Standard Capital.
Birdai Labs, a provider of neutral market infrastructure for digital assets, raised a $4M Seed round led by Castle Island Ventures.
Fish Audio, a provider of an AI voice platform for expressive real-time text-to-speech, voice cloning, and voice agents, raised a $52M Seed round led by Coreline Ventures and Capital Today.
Array Labs, a developer of a coordinated fleet of radar satellites, raised a $21M round led by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation.
COR, a provider of an AI-powered project management and profitability platform for agencies and professional services firms, received a $30M investment from FTV Capital.
Antares Labs, a provider of an AI platform for real estate operations, raised a $7.25M Seed round backed by Fifth Wall, Base10 Partners, and more.
Conversica, an enterprise AI software company that builds AI agents for customer conversations, received an investment from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital.
Pilot Protocol, a provider of an internet network platform for AI agents, raised a $4.5M in Seed round led by Version One Ventures.
Enigma, a physical AI company, raised a $71M Seed round led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital.
Abstract Security, a developer of an AI-powered streaming threat detection and composable SIEM platform, raised a $25M Series A extension round co-led by Cheyenne Ventures Management and Atlantic Vantage Point (AVP).
Featured Location
Dalida. A stylish Mediterranean restaurant in the Presidio, known for its bold flavors, elegant design, and views of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Fun Events
See you next week,
Justin