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SF IRL - Feb 19th, 2024

A curated newsletter showcasing the top tech & startup events in San Francisco

Author

Jonathan Chang
February 20, 2024

Hi SF IRL! There's a ton of vibrance and energy coming back into the city and at SF IRL, we are excited to be a part of it. Excited to come with you all with some great events for Issue #74.

If you didn’t know, I’m excited to announce the launch of inreallife.tech. SF IRL is now part of the inreallife.tech family & we’re expanding with LA IRL & NYC IRL to showcase the top tech, startup and venture events in those cities as well and you can subscribe in the link above.

I'm Jonathan, the creator of SF IRL. I've been a Bay Area resident all my life and moved into San Francisco about 3 years ago. My full-time job is at Brex as an XIR where I meet founders and VCs while trying to create a community in the city. My vision for SF IRL is simple. Showcase the best tech + startup events in SF and to connect all of our builders and investors together. We are a growing community having over 5500+ subscribers. As we keep growing, if you enjoy reading these, please share this with your friends so we can hit 6,000 readers. As always, SF IRL is one of my many side projects. If you like to be involved in helping, please shoot me an email!

Events Coming Up 🎉

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I’ve also been hosting a variety of GP/LP dinners for emerging managers in the Bay Area, if you are an emerging GP or an LP that invests in emerging managers, please fill out this form if you’re interested in getting invited to future GP/LP Dinners that I throw in SF.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 8-11pm

What: ​Founders and builders, join us for a night of AI-powered art at a secret SF gallery full of works recently displayed in the Smithsonian!

​Culture and science should be intertwined, so March 13th we're taking over one of the most mesmerizing light, sound, and AI art exhibitions of all time. Come meet fellow technologists while being inspired by giant LED stalactites visualizing generative music played by 44 robotic gongs.

​Hosted by early-stage VC firm SignalFire's Josh Constine and Oana Olteanu, don't miss this unforgettable and extremely Instagrammable evening of creativity, featuring:

​🎶 Live music by opera singer-turned-founder Luba Yudasina, and a DJ set from Teespring co-founder Evan Stites-Clayton

​🎨 Stunning installations including 3D-printed zoetropes, motorized waveforms, and the famous Gamelatron, all built by some of Burning Man's best artists

🚀 Mingling with fellow founders, engineers, and SignalFire's investment team, curated with help from our in-house Beacon AI and our amazing co-hosts including event curator Michelle Fang, Jonathan Chang from SF IRL, and Jimmy Chen aka Spice King Of Zanzibar.

​🍹 Exotic treats, tasty drinks, and giveaways including AirPods and boba gift cards

🔥 All set in an epic brick firehouse that's been converted into a private gallery and symphony hall.

If you heard about SignalFire's sold-out TechCrunch Disrupt After-Party, you know this will be another legendary night at the intersection of art and tech. Register below!

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8:30pm

What: 🌟 Exciting News for AI Founders in San Francisco! 🌟

​We're thrilled to announce the AI Hustle's inaugural Speaker Series: How to launch on Product Hunt 🎤

​Here's what's in store:

​🚀 Hot Topic: Launching on Product Hunt: Hear from your fellow founders who've cracked the Product Hunt code and learn their launch secrets via a panel discussion.

​💬 Networking Blitz: Following up with the event, as usual, connect with fellow founders and VCs, sharing and growing together within the AI space

​📢 We Want to Hear from You! If there are topics you're eager to explore, join our Discord community and let us know. The idea for this Product Hunt-focused event was born from your votes and suggestions, proving that your voice truly shapes our community. 🔊

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8:30pm

What: This is an in-person event! Registration is required to get in. Github will email you a form the day before the event, which you will need to complete for your access pass. Registration will close 2 days before the event.

​Topic: Connecting your unstructured data with Generative LLMs

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6:30-10pm

What: ​Join Light Dao and our community of conscious entrepreneurs and investors for a salon evening filled with connection, deep conversations, and a fireside chat with Ashley Bell and Ruby Yeh, Co-Founder of Light Dao.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8:30pm

What: Designers! It's time. It's your year to shine. GenAI is the hottest topic in the world, and last year the developers were dominating the conversation. Essentially, it was "demo days" - where limited value actually accrued for the users.

​This is where you come in. This is THE YEAR where through your incredible Human Centered Thinking, user empathy, and design methodologies, we will see real use cases start to accrue at the application layer.

​This event is to empower you and get you JAZZED for the incredible advances to the industry that you will drive!

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-9pm

What: Join us for an evening with Marko Sustic from Bugatti-Rimac, as we explore how he leverages AI and Trace.Space to develop next-gen Bugatti hypercars.

What we'll do:

Have the rare opportunity to hear how your dreamcar is made and how AI is leveraged to build complex products faster. We will end the evening with some food and refreshments.

6:00 – 6:30: Welcome / Networking / Registration
6:30 – 7:30: Marko Sustic, HMI Expert, Bugatti-Rimac
7:30 – 7:45: Janis Vavere, CEO, Trace.Space
7:45 – 8:30 Networking

Location: San Francisco

What: Join us at the Celo Foundation San Francisco headquarters for an inspiring, three-day coworking event right before ETHDenver! We want to bring together crypto and blockchain enthusiasts, developers, entrepreneurs, and anyone interested in the future of Consumer Crypto.

Feb 21st, 2024 - AI Demo Night w/ MindsDB

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8pm

What: Come hang out at MindsDB with ~100 builders to see some of the coolest AI applications people are working on in SF. + food, drinks, and a good time 🍕🍻

Location: San Francisco

Time: 10-11am

What: ​Product creators have the opportunity to leverage genUI to create bespoke solutions that are customized for every user.

​Imagine an interface that can adjust to your needs, whether that is on the go, audio-first, higher contrast, sensory adjustment, and many more. 

​This tactical talk will present a deep dive into how to leverage generative UI to truly design for all. These tools will empower users, creators, and developers to push beyond the current constraints of software development and give users more power. 

Generative UI for product inclusion is the use of AI to create user interfaces that are more accessible and inclusive to users of all backgrounds. This can be done by generating UI elements that are tailored to the specific needs of different users, such as those with disabilities, those who speak different languages, and those who are neurodivergent.

Feb 21st, 2024 - AI/UX Demo Night

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8:30pm

What: ​Join in for a fun night of live demos exploring the future of AI product interfaces. Meet other designers, engineers, and creatives interested in AIUX. Dinner/drinks will be served!

​Rough schedule:

​6pm-6:45pm: doors open + dinner/drinks

​6:45pm-7:30pm: demos

​7:30pm-8:30pm: socializing

Feb 21st, 2024 - Robnotix

Location: San Francisco

Time: 7-9pm

What: Welcome to Robnotix!

We are a new club that meets weekly to collaboratively brainstorm, design, and build robots!

We have a solid team forming already, but we are always open to expanding the collective skillset. You don’t have to be in tech to join this club! Other skills we could use are artists, mechanical engineers, writers, videographers, builders, etc.

Think of this as an opportunity to build your portfolio, learn skills from your peers, and meet cool people. While we are committed to the goal of building bots, we are also here to have fun and enjoy the process!

Feb 21st, 2024 - MLOps Community SF Fall & Winter Workshops

Location: San Francisco

Time: 12:30-7pm

What: ​In Part IV of our "Fall & Winter Workshops" series, the MLOps.community is partnering with Qdrant (a high-performance vector database) to organize a half-day hands-on workshop on Feb 21st, 2024 where you'll learn how to optimize your RAG app for production. These workshops are for Software Engineers, AI/ML Engineers, and Product Managers trying to figure out how they productize the GenAI prototypes they've built.

​​This will be a half-day event with two sessions:

Feb 21st, 2024 - Cleantech Open Kickoff

Location: Fremont

Time: 5-7pm

What: Join Cleantech Open (CTO) as we share the information about this year's upcoming 2024 Accelerator Program! At CTO we are the world's oldest and largest Clean Technology Startup Accelerator. We've had ~2,000 early stage startups successfully graduate our program since 2006. This time of year, we're looking for ambitious and innovative entrepreneurs that are trying to solve some of the world's greatest problems who are looking to grow their business to the next level using our proven curriculum.

Feb 22nd, 2024 - Shape the Future of Digital Marketing

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8pm

What: Join us for an exciting evening of exploring the dynamic intersection of Marketing and AI at our upcoming event powered by AdsGency AI (Techstars '23), a groundbreaking technology company that is making waves in the industry.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8pm

What: ​Join us for an inspiring VC Unleashed Black History Month Happy Hour in San Francisco on February 22nd! Raise a glass as we celebrate the incredible achievements of Black entrepreneurs, investors, and changemakers who are shaping the future. All are welcome including allies!

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8pm

What: Schematic Ventures is excited to host our next manufacturing startup showcase! During the event, the founders of San Francisco's top manufacturing startups will answer questions about their companies and the complexities of building and operating in the space.

Feb 22nd, 2024 - WebDev Communtiy Meetup

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6pm

What: Join Figma and StackBlitz for food, drinks, and swag at our community meetup! 

Location: Palo Alto

Time: 5:30-8pm

What: AI pitch night featuring

Chris McCann, GP at Race Capital

Jinlin Wang, GP at Foothill Ventures

Jason Nyeh, CoFounder Lamarka

Jing Kuang, Founding Partner at Y+ Ventures

Dana Oshiro, General Partner at Heavybit

Feb 22nd, 2024 - SF Tech Speed Networking

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8:30pm

What: We are excited to announce we are hosting a facilitated networking event. Come join us for wine, small bites and network with Bay Area Women In Tech professionals in San Francisco. Our last event was SOLD OUT. If you don't have a ticket purchased in advance, you will not be able to go through the door.

Feb 22nd, 2024 - Olo Launch Party

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-9pm

What: Welcome to the Olo app launch party in San Francisco

As our special guest, you'll be among the first to explore the new Olo app. The event brings together humane tech and wellness enthusiasts for an evening dedicated to innovative wellness.

The highlight is an immersive sound journey through which you have a chance to completely let go of the external world and dive in into your inner self.

Following this, we'll introduce the latest Olo app version, delve into our recording adventures, discuss the future of wellness, and enjoy organic snacks and mocktails.

Feb 22nd, 2024 - AI Founders Connect by Plug & Play

Location: Sunnyvale

Time: 5pm

What: Connecting AI Startups with Leading Venture Investing Experts in Silicon Valley

Feb 22nd, 2024 - Computer Vision Showcase

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-9pm

What: Calling all computer vision architects, tinkerers, and trailblazers!

​Ready to unleash the power of your creations and share your hard-won insights? We're hosting a unique showcase event designed to celebrate the real-world applications of cutting-edge computer vision. Forget pitch decks and polished presentations – this is all about live demos and raw, unfiltered learning.

​Dumplings and drinks provided by Leap Labs. Shout out MindsDB for allowing us to host this event in your incredible AI collective!

Location: San Carlos

Time: 6-9pm

What: ​🍺 What   3rd Peninsula Climate Happy Hour
🕕 When  Thur 2/22, 6-9pm (+monthly)
📍 Where  Molly Os, San Carlos (teen/train friendly)

​All climate fixers, domains are welcomed!
Socialize, Eat, Drink, Partner.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 12-7pm

What: ​We're excited to host the second annual Latent Space demo day 🚀

​Enough chatting with PDFs. Let's see some Science Fiction-level AI.

​This year's theme is Final Frontiers: who are the teams and people pushing the boundaries of AI? We will have three broad topics, each of them has a research / startup competition with special judges. Feel free to apply to participate in any of them, and we will pick 3-5 for each category!

Location: San Francisco

Time: 9am-4pm

What: Join us for co-working with AI builders & founders in SF! ​​This will be a great opportunity to work alongside others building in AI and get feedback from your peers. ​Space is limited, please make sure you fill out the questionnaire mindfully so we can approve RSVP's accordingly.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6:30-9pm

What: ​Look, we get it – you're just a scrappy builder who wants to get things done. And, like the rest of us, you've had your fair share of disappointments. Let's cut the crap - it's not always sunshine and rainbows.

​We've actually decided to cut the crap so hard... we're making an event out of it! This event is to trauma-bond and swap stories over the following:

  1. ​Broken dreams: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Let's talk about our dreams that we never realized!

  2. ​Loose ends: tell us about that side project you've never finished!

  3. ​Horror stories: you know that one co-worker who was suuuuuch a pain in the ass? Of course you do. Someone specific just popped into your head. Me too. Let's talk about them!

​We are giving preferential treatment to scrappy builders - full-stack engineers, product engineers, no-code builders, founders - you get it. The ones with big dreams, many projects, and much trauma.

Feb 23rd, 2024 - The Intersection of AI & Literature

Location: Menlo Park

Time: 6-7:30pm

What: Join us for an unusual night at Feldman's Books. We'll be in conversation with Chase Brignac, Chief Engineer and CEO of Chat OpenSource about what Artificial General Intelligence will actually look like. Then, we are joined by author M. Pentz, who collaborated with ChatGPT in composing Choose: Will A.I. Take Over the World? a choose-your-own-adventure exploration of the ethical and existential future of A.I.. M. Pentz is a visionary author, artist, and entrepreneur, whose multifaceted career spans across the realms of technology, fashion, and social impact. As a founder and designer, they have demonstrated a profound commitment to innovation, sustainability, and positive change.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 9:30am

What: We're bringing together the best of the Bay Area AI, hardware, and bio communities to explore solving challenges in lab automation.

​Everyone joining will be expected to demo something by end of the weekend.

​We'll have some hardware, robots, and labware (parts list coming soon). You can also bring your own.

​We welcome all skill levels and can support 100+ builders.

​**You must be able to stay through demo on sunday to participate.

Feb 24th, 2024 - Hardcore Hackathon

Location: San Francisco

Time: 11:30am-9pm

What: Calling all CUDA, C/C++, Rust, Assembly, systems, networking, & low-level hackers! This hackathon will be a more intimate & high talent density gathering than our usual events, exclusive to systems-level hackers. No LLM wrappers, web apps, or theoretical research this time ;) Build the next: - distributed training framework - blazing fast vector similarity search - neural net quantization algorithm - or anything else low-level & preferably AI-relevant!

Feb 25th, 2024 - Bluesky AI Hackathon

Location: San Francisco

Time: 9am

What: Last week, Bluesky opened its doors, and now, it has ~5M users! In celebration of Bluesky’s public launch, we’re hosting a hackathon at the YC office in SF judged by Bluesky CEO Jay Graber and several Bluesky engineers. Social medias like Twitter and Reddit have a long history of benefiting from 3rd party devs then shutting them out. Bluesky is built on a protocol that makes its data available to everyone, so you don’t need to worry about APIs shutting down or being rate-limited. Everyone has access, forever. Things you can build on Bluesky’s open APIs: - LLM-powered recommendation engine - AI bot detection to label spam - Social graph community detection algorithm - Deep learning for post image classification

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5-7pm

What: ​​​Join Brent Murri (M13) and Karine Hsu (Slope) for an evening of stimulating conversation about the latest breakthroughs in AI technology and how they are transforming the way we work, create, and build.

​This gathering will feature drinks and lite bites among like-minded individuals who share a passion for AI. Come prepared to eat good food, have good drinks, and meet some new friends.

Feb 27th, 2024 - Reconfiy GenAI Demo Night

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-7:30pm

What: Join us for an exciting evening of Generative AI demos in San Francisco at Wilson Sonsini!

Generative AI is truly changing our lives and the way we work, and opening up new use cases and opportunities.

See how startups are leveraging LLMs from OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Google, Mistral, Meta, and more like Bard, ChatGPT, Claude, Command, Llama 2, Gemini - to create compelling new applications and solutions.

This is a great opportunity to see the latest applications of Generative AI from bay area startups.

Join fellow Gen AI enthusiasts as we learn from and share with each other.

Location: Berkeley

Time: 4-6pm

What: Joining us for a fireside chat is the author of 'The Fast Founder: Startup to exit in 36 month', Eric Lam of Recast Ventures. He shares insights from 20 years of entrepreneurship and successful exits.

As always, come out to connect with like-minded founders and funders in a relaxed setting.

Feb 27th, 2024 - EdgeM8 Mixer

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8pm

What: Join the latest conversations on AI with industry leaders, investors, founders, and enthusiasts.

Pick your sticker as an Investor, Founder, Hiring manager, Infrastructure provider, or AI-curious; and get ready to mix and mingle.

Feb 28th, 2024 - YPOSF February Happy Hour

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8pm

What: We are thrilled to invite you to our second Networking event of 2024 with San Francisco's famous Square Pie Guys Pizza! Join us for an engaging evening at YPOSF's February Happy Hour and Networking Event, hosted at Square Pie Guys (Ghirardelli Square). This is a great opportunity to mingle, unwind, and connect with like minded young professionals.

📍 Location & Time Details:

  • Venue: Square Pie Guys, 845 Beach St, San Francisco

  • Date: Wednesday, February 28

  • Time: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Feb 28th, 2024 - AI + Hardware Job Fair

Location: San Francisco

Time: 4-9pm

What: ​We've noticed a gap between the Hardware and AI communities, so we wanted to bring them together at the studio.

​Join top companies from across the Bay Area that are hiring full time for different roles. Hear from different teams on what they are looking for to hire across AI and Hardware.

  1. ​If you can make this in person, and are looking for a role, please RSVP to this event.

  2. ​If you are a company hiring and can be here in person, send us an email.

​If you cannot be in person, please check this out out. We'll have a virtual option on 03/02.

Feb 29th, 2024 - Thursday Nights in AI - sxyx

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6:30-8:30pm

What: Join us for a fireside chat with swyx the Host of Latent Space Podcast & Founder of AI Engineer. About swyx: Swyx has helped Developer Tools cross the chasm at AWS, Two Sigma, and three devtool unicorns - Netlify, Temporal, and most recently as Airbyte.He has started and run communities for hundreds of thousands of developers, like Svelte Society, /r/reactjs, and the React TypeScript Cheatsheet. His blog (https://www.swyx.io/ideas) covers Tech, Careers, and Indie Hacking, and his nontechnical writing was published in the Coding Career Handbook for Junior to Senior developers.

Feb 29th, 2024 - AGI Builders Meetup SF

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8pm

What: 👋 We're thrilled to invite you to the first AGI Builders meetup on the leap day of 2024, February 29th.

​❤️ It's a gathering where AI builders, researchers and enthusiasts share ideas, inspire peers and transform the future.

​💡 Participants can expect engaging tech talks covering the latest challenges and advancements in AI.

Feb 29th, 2024 - 112th Hardware Meetup

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6:30-9:30pm

What: Join us at Lumafield for our next speaker style meetup! This event is a unique opportunity to delve into the intersection of AI and mental wellness from different founder perspectives.

​We'll have food and drink and there will be a chance for an open mic. All demos are welcome.

Feb 29th, 2024 - VC, Founder, Engineer & Design Networking

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6:30-8:30pm

What: ​Join us for an electrifying evening on February 29th from 6:30pm to 8:30pm! We're thrilled to present "Networking | VC + Founder + Engineer + Designer" - an event that promises excitement, innovation, and connections galore.


​Prepare to mingle with some of the brightest minds and warmest souls in San Francisco! Genuine individuals coming together over captivating conversations.

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