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  • SF IRL - Feb 23rd, 2026

SF IRL - Feb 23rd, 2026

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

Author

Jonathan Chang
February 23, 2026

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 #183.

I'm Jonathan, the creator of SF IRL. I've been a Bay Area resident all my life and moved into San Francisco about 5 years ago. 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 10000+ subscribers. As we keep growing, if you enjoy reading these, please share this with your friends so we can hit 11,000 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!

Lightfield is an AI-native CRM that remembers everything, then acts on it. It automatically captures and organizes every customer conversation across email, meetings, and notes, creating your team’s collective customer memory. Try Lightfield free today.

Excited to say SF IRL has partnered with ElevenLabs to give founders 33 million in ElevenLabs credits or equivalent to $4k to build voice AI agents.

Check Out the ElevenLabs Startup Grant & use code 11SFIRL723 for expedited review. We believe voice is the most natural way to communicate, and the future of human-AI interaction depends on making those conversations feel real. The ElevenLabs Grants Program exists to give early-stage startups and small teams the tools they need to build the future of AI audio with the best tools available, without cost being a blocker. ElevenLabs is the complete conversational agents platform, so whether a startup is creating an AI tutor, support assistant, or the next generation of voice-powered game characters, the grant will provide them with 12 months and 33 million characters of free access to ElevenLabs' cutting-edge AI audio, equivalent to over 600 hours of audio. 

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8pm

What: Lightfield is hosting our next Founding Sales Masterclass with Mark Roberge, founding CRO of HubSpot, who built one of SaaS’s most iconic revenue engines - scaling sales from 1 to 450 people and driving 6,000%+ growth.

Today, Mark is the bestselling author of The Sales Acceleration Formula and a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, where he teaches the science behind modern go-to-market, and how to build predictable, data-driven revenue engines.

The transition from founder-led sales to a scalable revenue engine is where most startups stall or break. In this masterclass, you’ll get practical insights on scaling your sales org from early traction to repeatable growth - straight from one of the pioneers of modern sales science.

Lightfield is an AI-native CRM that remembers everything, then acts on it. It automatically captures and organizes every customer conversation across email, meetings, and notes, creating your team’s collective customer memory. Try Lightfield free today.

I’ve made a form to connect the best founders raising with my list of VCs. If you are a founder raising your next round and want to potentially be featured to investors in the SF IRL network, please fill out this form.

I’m launching a newsletter that will feature the top founders looking to hire, founders looking for their cofounder, and operators that are looking for their next role. If you are interested in being featured, fill this form here.

You can subscribe to Day Zero here.

Events Coming Up

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-9pm

What: ​We're bringing together 20 seed to Series A founders from our community—founders that we believe have a unicorn trajectory.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-9pm

What: Join us for a formal Lunar New Year Gala bringing together founders, operators, and investors in AI for an evening focused on connection, reflection, and community. This gathering is designed for those actively building or backing companies who value thoughtful conversation and meaningful relationships.

​Rooted in the spirit of Lunar New Year, the night will celebrate renewal, culture, and collective momentum, with space to spotlight founders and builders in a natural, celebratory way. The goal is simple: foster genuine connections and start the year energized by community. Dress to impress!

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5-8pm

What: Making the surreal, real.

​​​​​​​​​​​​Join us for another Surreal in San Francisco, a dinner series held at art galleries.

​​​​​​​​​We'll discuss the opportunities and challenges AI builders are seeing when selling to enterprises.

​Dinner speakers include:

  • ​Harrison Chase (CEO, Langchain)

  • ​Ben Kus (CTO, Box)

  • ​Will Bryk (CEO, Exa AI)

  • ​Janie Lee (VP Product, Abridge)

Location: San Francisco

Time: 4-7pm

What: ​City Science Lab San Francisco invites you to envision the future of Downtown SF. Workshop starts at 5pm.

​Join urban planners, developers, AI researchers, and graduate real estate students for a workshop exploring how downtown can become a place where more people live, work, and flourish. Together we'll discuss bold ideas — from reimagined office towers to new forms of live-work spaces— and explore what it takes to transform underutilized properties into thriving spaces. Bring your visions for the future of SF’s space  and an open mind for downtown transformation.

Location: San Leandro

Time: 5:30-7:30pm

What: Level up your AI skills and bring them straight into your work. In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn how to use modern LLM tools effectively, along with three practical AI workflows you can set up in minutes and immediately apply—across teams, projects, or your own company:

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-7:30pm

What: ​AI & Longevity — Exceptional Masterclass

​🚨Limited capacity: Alex is going to talk about AI foundation models in longevity, including a presentation of https://insilico.com/mmai. 👉Priority for AI researchers & professionals (OpenAI, XAI, Anthropic, Meta, and AI research labs). 🔎

​We are excited to host an extraordinary evening with Alex Zhavoronkov, Founder & CEO of Insilico Medicine — one of the most influential leaders in AI-driven biotech and longevity science.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8pm

What: AI product leaders: if you’re building an AI company or product and wrestling with pricing, we made this evening just for you. This intimate event is for AI founders and leaders who are grappling with the fast-moving field of AI product monetization.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5-8pm

What: ​Flourish Ventures is hosting a LatAm-focused networking event in San Francisco alongside our portfolio companies—Mexico-based MoradaUno and global payments network Borderless—and we’d love to see you there.✨

​Join us for an invite-only evening bringing together the Flourish LatAm team, global investment and operating partners, and a small group of founders and investors from across the Bay Area and Latin America. The goal is simple: to build stronger bridges between LatAm and the U.S., and to create space for honest, off-the-record conversations among people building and backing companies across borders.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-7:30pm

What: ​​Looking to supercharge your go-to-market operations with agentic workflows, but not sure what's possible or where to start?

​Join WorkOS, Anthropic, and GTM leaders from across the AI ecosystem for a hands-on introductory workshop to Claude Cowork, specifically designed for GTM teams.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8pm

What: ​Operators Happy Hour by Chore: The Rise of AI Agents – Claude, Automation, and the New Ops Frontier Edition

​Every month, the best startup operators in the world gather.

​We’re not the ones in the spotlight. We’re in the background. We keep companies running.

​Whether you’re a Chief of Staff, Head of Ops, COO, VC platform lead, or just the go-to person for getting things done—this is YOUR CREW.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 4:30-9:30pm

What: ​World Labs is a frontier AI research and product company building foundational world models that can perceive, generate, reason, and interact with the 3D world. Marble is our generative 3D world model and API for creating, editing, and exporting persistent 3D worlds from text, images, or video.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 9:30am-7:30pm

What: ​We've brought together serious firepower: AWS, Modulate, OpenAI, Tavily, Yutori , Numeric and Neo4j backing you with integrations, APIs, and inspiration. Your ideas won't just stay ideas. You'll build them into working agents and real products.

​🚀 In just one day, teams will prototype AI copilots, autonomous research agents, customer-support brains, real-time data explorers, and creative design systems. The kind of tools real companies ship.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8pm

What: Lightfield is hosting our next Founding Sales Masterclass with Mark Roberge, founding CRO of HubSpot, who built one of SaaS’s most iconic revenue engines - scaling sales from 1 to 450 people and driving 6,000%+ growth.

Today, Mark is the bestselling author of The Sales Acceleration Formula and a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, where he teaches the science behind modern go-to-market, and how to build predictable, data-driven revenue engines.

The transition from founder-led sales to a scalable revenue engine is where most startups stall or break. In this masterclass, you’ll get practical insights on scaling your sales org from early traction to repeatable growth - straight from one of the pioneers of modern sales science.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 9:30-4pm

What: ​Join the Stripe founder community for a day of hands-on building and coworking with the Stripe team. Whether you’re looking for a chance to connect with other founders, 1:1 guidance from the Stripe team, or just a change of scenery, we’d love to have you join. 

​Build Days are coworking days with Stripe designed specifically for founders, whether you’re already building on Stripe or just getting started. Plus, get lunch, coffee, and swag on us. 

​Don't miss the morning as we kick off with an intimate fireside chat featuring Zach Lloyd, CEO of Warp.dev. Warp is an agentic development environment that empowers developers to ship better software more quickly. Previously the principal engineer at Google, cofounder and CTO at SelfMade, and the interim CTO at TIME, Zach will walk us through his founding journey to Warp. Join us in the room to hear his practical advice on how to build and scale a company in the AI era.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 4:30-6:30pm

What: Join us for a LinkedIn hosted panel discussion with product builders and industry leaders on how trust is designed, built, and scaled in real-world products. From identity and verification to credibility signals and emerging standards, speakers will share practical lessons on building trust early, evolving it as products grow, and doing so without slowing development or creating friction for users.

Location: Fremont

Time: 5:30-8:30pm

What: ​In celebration of Women’s Month, From Idea to Impact: Women in AI Panel & Pitch Night—hosted by The AI Collective in partnership with Innovate Bay, bringing together women founders, builders, and leaders shaping the future of artificial intelligence. 

Location: San Francisco

Time: 10am-4pm

What: Our Journey: Built on three successful series and 500+ attendees, the Funded Female Founders Summit brings together venture-backed women founders, VCs, and LPs for high-signal conversations on the founder and capital journey.

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