👋 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 only a few weeks away from the Ambition Summit and I can’t wait to bring everyone together! This has been in the works for months and now it’s a sprint to the finish line as I finalize everything. I hope you’ll join us!
Let’s get to it.
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🌁 Upcoming Event We’re Hosting 🌁
🗓️ September 24: Ambition Summit. Los Angeles.
👋 This Week in SF 👋
🗓️ September 1: Agentic + AI Night: Multi-Agent Governance and Security. SoMa. 3:30 - 9 pm.
🗓️ September 1: Grok @bot builder demos. SoMa. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ September 1: Wasmer: Beyond Containers. SoMa. 6:30 - 9:30 pm.
🗓️ September 2: Practicing the Art of Becoming: Leadership, Risk & Reinvention in the Age of AI. Mid-Market. 4 - 6 pm.
🗓️ September 2: Deep Tech Startups in the Age of AI by Fifty Years. Mission Bay. 6:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ September 3: Grok Bot build night for women. South Beach. 5 - 9 pm.
🗓️ September 3: AI Philosophy Nights: Metaphors for AI with Amy Kurzweil. Civic Center. 6:30 - 9:30 pm.
🗓️ September 4: Cafe Cowork: Temporal x Corgi. Dogpatch. 9 am - 12 pm.
🗓️ September 4: Fresh Fade Before Demo Day. 2 - 5 pm.
🗓️ September 4: San Francisco Health Tech Happy Hour with HTN & Vinta. Mission District. 5:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ September 4: Dimensional Office Cooling. Mid-Market. 7 - 10 pm.
🗓️ September 5: Spatial Intelligence + Generative 3D Hackathon with Mint, Tripo, World Labs, Convex and Founders Inc. Marina District. 10 am - 8 pm.
🗓️ September 5: BURNING TOKEN, the AI Global hackathon. Mid-Market. 10 am - 9 pm.
🗓️ September 5: AI for the Rest of Us: A workshop for people who feel left behind by AI. Mid-Market. 2 - 5 pm.
👀 Events Coming Soon 👀
🗓️ September 8: Inside the Operating System: A Conversation with Cristina Cordova & Michael Altom. SoMa. 6 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ September 9: Agents in Sales: Fireside Chat with Bobby Morrison (ex-Shopify CRO). Financial District. 6:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ September 10: Llama Lounge 26: The AI Startup Event Series @ Microsoft. Mountain View. 5 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ September 10: Startup Pitch Night. Mid-Market. 6 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ September 10: Private Healthcare AI Networking for Leaders, Founders & Investors - Members +3. Mid-Market. 6:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ September 12: Open Model Hack - Gradient x Google Deepmind. Embarcadero. 9:30 am - 7:30 pm.
🗓️ September 13: AI Filmmaking Masterclass + Hackathon. Financial District. 9 am - 7 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
Brand / Product Designer @ COACH
Product Lead @ Trellis AI
Research Engineer, Multimodal Data @ Eventual
Technical Recruiter @ Metriport
Founding Design Engineer @ Jinba
👋 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.
AusperBio, a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing targeted oligonucleotide therapeutics for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) and other diseases, raised a $120M Series C led by a strategic investor.
CivilGrid, a provider of a civil design platform, raised a $26M Series A led by Spark Capital.
Metriport, a provider of an open-source healthcare data infrastructure platform, raised a $26M round led by Matrix.
TerraBlaster, a developer of agricultural hardware and soil-nutrition sensors, raised a $12.5M Seed round led by Ulu Ventures.
Hermetiq, a software developer tool and continuous integration (CI) automation startup, raised $2.2M Seed round led by Jet Investment.
Arga Labs, an AI training environment and software emulation startup, raised a $10M Seed round led by General Catalyst.
Deep Cogito, a post-training research lab focused on reinforcement learning and self-improvement, raised a $43M Series A led by TQ Ventures.
Mara, a defense technology startup developing automated counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) networks, raised a $7M Pre-Seed round led by Khosla Ventures.
Onos Health, a behavioral health clinical intelligence platform for health plans, raised a $17M Series A led by Costanoa Ventures.
Generalist AI, a physical AI and foundational robotics startup, raised an additional $200M led by 8VC to a total of $600M Series B.
OmicsBank, a provider of a clinical data infrastructure platform connecting fragmented hospital data for drug development and healthcare AI, raised a $2.25M Seed round led by Redesign Health.
Zencore, a provider of an independent Google Cloud consultancy and enterprise AI platform, received an undisclosed amount as investment from Superstep Capital.
Keenable, an independent web search infrastructure for AI, raised a $26MA Seed round led by Accel.
Liner, an AI agent research startup, raised a $36.1M Series C led by LB Investment.
Hike Medical, a provider of a platform automating device-based care from referral to dispense, raised a $22.5M Seed round and Series A led by Max Altman at Saga Ventures.
Natural, a provider of payments infrastructure for AI agents, received a $100M credit facility from Upper90 Capital Management.
Standard Metrics, a provider of an AI-driven portfolio management platform for venture capital and private equity firms, raised a $20M Series B led by 8VC.
Featured Location
Mister Jiu’s. A stylish contemporary Chinese restaurant in a historic Chinatown building, known for its elegant interiors, creative cuisine, and dramatic city views.
Fun Events
See you next week,
Justin