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SF IRL - Jan 12th, 2026

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

Author

Jonathan Chang
January 12, 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 #177.

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!

Excited to say SF IRL has partnered with ElevenLabs to give founders 33 million in ElevenLabs credits 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, The Midway

Time (MongoDB.local SF): 8:00am - 6:00pm PST 

Time (Hackathon finals): 3:00 -  4:00pm PST

What: Join the Bay Area’s top leaders and experts at MongoDB.local SF for a day of deep-dives and networking. You’ll master new tech, see the latest from MongoDB and Voyage AI, and build a clear roadmap for success. Be sure to catch the 3:00pm Hackathon Finalist Pitch session, where our top three Agent Orchestration Hackathon Finalist teams take the main stage to showcase their ideas, share their product vision, and compete for the title of this year’s top innovator.

Building the next big thing (but can’t make the event)? Check out how MongoDB for Startups gives you the tools and support to accelerate your growth.

Interested in attending MongoDB.local SF? Use “MDBBuilder” for 50% off tickets. Register Now.

Location: San Francisco, Lightfield

Time: 6-8pm

What: Join Collin Stewart, author of The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers and founder/CEO of Predictable Revenue, and Lightfield for a founding sales masterclass focused on mastering the earliest stages of go-to-market. Collin will share a practical playbook for running discovery the right way, validating real demand, and landing your first paying customers - with clear milestones and benchmarks founders can apply immediately.

Finding your first customers is often the most confusing part of building a startup. This session is designed for founders navigating that messy early phase, where conversations matter more than funnels and learning happens one prospect at a time. You’ll leave with a clearer path from problem–solution fit to your first revenue engine.

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: 9-11:30am

What: ​Join Pamir Ventures for an exclusive CEO & Investor Breakfast. Located high above the Embarcadero at the Norton Rose Fulbright offices, we offer a quiet vantage point to connect before the frenzy of the day begins.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 3:30-5pm

What: South Park Commons is delighted to host Tony Xu, CEO & co-founder of DoorDash as part of our -1 to Now Series!

​​​​​​Event Details

  • ​​​​​​​​3:30pm: Doors Open

  • ​​​​​4:00-5:00pm: Fireside Chat

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-9:30pm

What: Builders, welcome! We’re teaming up with Moonlake AI – a frontier AI lab building reasoning models that can vibe code real-time interactive worlds – for a special evening designed to inspire, connect, and unlock your next creative realm. ​This is a first-ever collab between The AI Collective, Moonlake AI, and a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), and we’re keeping it fresh, simple, and high‑vibe. Expect deep conversations, spontaneous world-building demos, peer energy, and a space where wild ideas become playable.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8:30pm

What: Come meet with old and new friends at the Bits in Bio Reception happening during JPM Healthcare Week in San Francisco.

Jan 13th, 2026 - SF Codex Meetup

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8pm

What: ​Codex SF is a small, high-signal meetup for engineers and founders actively using OpenAI Codex in real codebases.

​This is not an intro talk or a tool overview. The room is filled with people shipping with agentic coding and comparing what actually works: prompt discipline, repo and sandbox hygiene, long-horizon task management, review loops, failure modes, and how Codex is being wired into real toolchains.

Jan 13th, 2026 - Wake up with Turbine

Location: San Francisco

Time: 7-11am

What: Wake up with Turbine: fuel your JPM morning with cold brews, good conversations, and insight into how pharma is leveraging virtual cell technology today.

​We’re taking over Bluestone Lane to bring together biotech leaders, pharma R&D decision makers, and simulation-curious innovators for a morning of learning, networking, and hands-on exploration of our Virtual Lab.

Jan 14th, 2026 - Nucleate JPM'26 Reception

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6:30-11pm

What: ​​🌟 Get ready for an unforgettable evening at San Francisco’s iconic Exploratorium! 🌟

​🎉 We’re thrilled to invite you back to Nucleate’s JPM ’26 Reception, taking place on January 14, 2026. Join us for a night of networking, community, and celebration as we bring together biotech’s brightest minds during JPM Week.

Location: Menlo Park

Time: 5:30-8:30pm

What: ​This fireside chat brings together senior AI and engineering leaders who are actively building, scaling, and maintaining RAG systems inside large enterprises. The conversation will go beyond surface-level architectures and explore the real engineering, systems, and organizational challenges that arise when RAG moves from prototype to production.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-9pm

What: ​We are SO back and I missed you.

​Come show your work and make new 🇨🇦 friends in SF.

​​​​We're gathering to show off for each other with demos and good times. Bring your engineering and founder friends, companies have spawned out of these events.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-9pm

What: ​​Our yearly tradition. Designed for founders in the Healthcare and Bio space by LifeX and friends, we are hosting our annual event around the JPM Health Conference. Come join us for an evening of left-handed drinks and snacks at one of our favorite bars.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8pm

What: ​Join Collin Stewart, author of The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers and founder/CEO of Predictable Revenue, and Lightfield for a founding sales masterclass focused on mastering the earliest stages of go-to-market. Collin will share a practical playbook for running discovery the right way, validating real demand, and landing your first paying customers - with clear milestones and benchmarks founders can apply immediately.

Finding your first customers is often the most confusing part of building a startup. This session is designed for founders navigating that messy early phase, where conversations matter more than funnels and learning happens one prospect at a time. You’ll leave with a clearer path from problem–solution fit to your first revenue engine.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-9pm

What: The AI Agent Blueprint: How to Scale AI in Customer Service

​​AI is transforming customer experience at an unprecedented pace. The AI Agent Blueprint reveals how leaders across customer service, CX, and AI transformation are deploying AI fast, scaling confidently, and achieving measurable business impact.

​​​Join fellow customer leaders in San Francisco on January 15th for an evening of networking, useful takeaways, drinks and bites. We’re bringing together industry leaders who are shaping the future of customer experience with generative AI and cutting-edge strategies.

Jan 15th, 2026 - Stablecoin Speakeasy

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8pm

What: ​Join us for a laid-back evening at the Stablecoin Speakeasy, co-hosted by Bridge and Privy, both Stripe companies.

We’re bringing together some of the best local fintech and stablecoin builders for drinks, light bites, and great conversation. The evening will kick off with brief welcome remarks on why we’re so optimistic about the most exciting stablecoin innovation happening right here in San Francisco.

Jan 15th, 2026 - JPM Healthcare Week Perplexity Happy Hour

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8pm

What: ​An intimate happy hour for professionals, founders, and investors in healthcare and health-tech who are in town for JPM Healthcare week.

Expect:

  • ​Light bites and drinks

  • ​A curated mix of professionals, founders, and investors

  • ​No presentations or pitches, just a place to connect

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-9pm

What: ​Channel your inner Marty Supreme: a happy hour for engineers who like their rallies fast and their response times faster.

​Join us at SPIN SF for ping pong, drinks, and conversation with engineers, AI leaders, and the Baseten team.

​A happy hour for mixing—flex your topspin, debate inference optimizations, or just grab a drink and hang out.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 9:30am-7:30pm

What: ​We’ve stacked real infra and real AI so your hack ships as a product, not a slide — AWS, Anthropic, and Anyscale power the models and compute; Auth0 handles identity; ElevenLabs brings voice; Retool gives you instant control panels; Cline, TinyFish, and Yutori unlock agent-native workflows; Macroscope and Tonic let you observe, test, and safely work with data; Freepik covers visuals; and Senso turns knowledge into intelligence. In one sprint, build agents, copilots, and autonomous systems that actually work end to end.

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