👋 I’m Justin. I run The SF Grind, The LA Grind, host the Ambition Podcast and the Ambition Summit, 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 was insane, hosting the very first Ambition Summit in Santa Monica with 100+ founders, investors, and operators. I can’t wait to view all of the photos and videos from the amazing Irina Logra, but I shared a few of them here if you haven’t seen. I’ve got a recap post coming soon for you and we already have Ambition 2027 on the calendar!
Thank you. Huge thanks to DLA Piper and Citizens Private Bank, our headline sponsors for the Ambition Summit. I couldn’t have hosted the event without them. Thank you as well to Venice Inc., Bailey Glasser, Ardas, Tax Hack, and Agora for supporting.
Pacific Heights Golf Club. I recently heard about this new club on Twitter and had to share it because I love seeing people bring new IRL concepts to life. The founder, Charlie, already sold out 200 founding memberships and it’ll be fun to see this come to life.
Let’s get to it.
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👋 This Week in SF 👋
🗓️ September 28: ThinkingAI Agentic Growth Summit 2026. Mountain View. 12 - 4 pm.
🗓️ September 28: Above the Fog: Founders × Investors Rooftop Mixer. South Beach. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ September 29: Kevin Hartz: What Great Founders See Before Everyone Else. Marina District. 3:30 - 5:30 pm.
🗓️ September 29: Grok Bot x Notion for Product Builders night (SF). SoMa. 5 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ September 30: Cache Me Outside: A Rooftop Party at the AI Conference. South Beach. 5 - 8 pm.
🗓️ September 30: How AI Models Learn to Do Real Work. Belden Place. 5:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ September 30: Making Bets | Labs Unit. South Beach. 6 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ September 30: Founders Open: Zero Prime x Rho. Burlingame. 6:30 - 9:30 pm.
🗓️ September 30: Physical AI Hardware Founder Dinner with Rho @ Studio 45. Dolores Heights. 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ October 1: Runtime by Modal. Dogpatch. 8:30 am - 6:30 pm.
🗓️ October 1: Ramp Design Night SF: Craft. Mission Dolores. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ October 2: Real-Time Video Agents Hack - SF. Belden Place. 9 am - 7 pm.
🗓️ October 2: Assembling 2026 | AI Summit. SoMa. 10 am - 6 pm.
🗓️ October 2: SF Summer Friday Ice Cream Social. 5. - 7 pm.
🗓️ October 3: Supabase Select 2026 Hackathon. Dogpatch. 9 am - 5 pm.
👀 Events Coming Soon 👀
🗓️ October 5: Demo Night @ WorkOS. Belden Place. 5:30 - 8 pm.
🗓️ October 5: Automate Your SF Tech Week with n8n. Mid-Market. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ October 6: The SOLO Founder Club. Dogpatch. 4 - 7 pm.
🗓️ October 6: Women in AI Consumer Tech Showcase (SF Tech Week!). Mid-Market. 4 - 7 pm.
🗓️ October 7: Open Source AI Stack: Models, Inference, and Agent Harness. Financial District. 5:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ October 7: Retail + CPG Tech Walk #SFTechWeek edition ☕🚶. Embarcadero. 8:30 - 10 am.
🗓️ October 7: Agentic Zero: The Agentic AI & Finance Summit #SFTechWeek. Nob Hill. 9 am - 5 pm.
🗓️ October 9: SF Tech Week Agent Day. Menlo Park. 12 - 6 pm.
Reply to this email to submit an event for consideration in the next edition.
Top 5 SF Startup Jobs
Product Designer @ Usul
Solutions Engineer @ Mach9
Product Lead @ Trellis AI
Software Engineer @ Medplum
Founding Product Designer @ Moritz
👋 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.
Solcoa Industries, a rare earth metals producer, raised a $45M round led by Bain Capital Ventures.
Trebellar, a company building AI-native decision making for corporate real estate management, raised a $18M Series A led by Blossom Capital.
Ando, a provider of an agent-native team messaging platform, raised a $20M Seed round led by Accel, Index Ventures, and Emergence Capital.
PicoJool, a provider of optical connectivity solutions for AI infrastructure, raised a $27.5M Series A led by Socratic Partners.
ByteAsk, an artificial intelligence infrastructure and autonomous software engineering startup, raised a $1M Pre-Seed round co-led by Y Combinator and Entrepreneur First.
Prime Minute, a provider of a disaster response and public resilience platform, raised a $15M Pre-Seed round led by Eclipse.
Rejuvenation Technologies, a provider of targeted mRNA therapies designed to extend telomeres, received an undisclosed amount as investment from Jetstream Venture Fund.
Sol, a provider of a proactive AI platform that supports email commitments, raised a $4M round backed by General Catalyst, Nexus Venture Partners and more.
Pilgrim, a biotechnology and defense technology startup, raised a $25M Seed round led by Buckley Ventures.
Ema, a provider of an AI platform for agentic AI employees, raised a $77M Series B led by Creaegis.
Mojave Energy Systems, a developer of humidity-first climate systems, raised a $19M Series B led by new investor Fairtree Elevant Ventures.
Fearn, a provider of an AI-native patent prosecution platform for startups, raised a $5.5M round backed by Kindred Ventures, a16z Speedrun and more.
Soteris, a provider of an AI platform for the P&C insurance industry, raised a +$8M Seed round led by Spider Capital.
Numeral, a provider of an AI-powered sales tax compliance platform, raised a $100M in Series C led by Insight Partners.
Snorkel AI, a provider of an AI data platform and agentic data factory, raised a $350M in Series C co-led by Insight Partners and S32.
Firecrawl, a provider of a web data API and retrieval platform for AI agents, raised $75M in Series B led by Smash Capital.
Sela, a provider of a voice AI platform for mortgage sales, raised a $21M Seed and Series A led by Costanoa.
Teal Health, a provider of an FDA-authorized self-collection device for at-home HPV cervical cancer screening, raised a $22M Series A led by .406 Ventures.
Atum, a provider of an open payments network platform for global money movement, raised a $13.5M round backed by Variant, PayPal Ventures.
Feldera, a provider of an incremental view maintenance engine for enterprises, raised a $15.4M Series A led by Inovia Capital.
Eubrics, a provider of an AI-native revenue acceleration platform, raised an undisclosed amount led by super{set}.
Angle Health, an AI-native healthcare benefits platform provider, raised a $200M Series C and a $400M tender offer led by Vitruvian Partners.
Arcee AI, a open-source artificial intelligence and foundation model development startup, raised a +$150M Series B co-led by Vista Equity Partners, Cambium Capital, and Emergence Capital.
Featured Location
Hilda and Jesse. A playful, colorful restaurant in North Beach, known for creative seasonal dishes, inventive brunches, and a quirky, welcoming atmosphere.
Fun Events
See you next week,
Justin