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SF IRL - July 6th, 2026

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

Author

Jonathan Chang
July 06, 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 #200.

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. 

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: 5-8pm

What: ​PromptQL is launching for all teams on July 8.

The night before, we’re throwing Chaat Maxxing: a launch night party for friends, customers, builders, investors, and anyone curious about the future of work with AI, shared with delicious plates of chaat!

​Imagine live pani puri station, chai, music, and a first look at the newest PromptQL experience.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6:30-10pm

What: ​Can you spot a random street corner in rural Finland from a Google Street View image?

​Prove it at the Reducto x Andera GeoGuessr Olympics!

​⏰ Tuesday, 07/07, 6:30 PM

​Come for a night of competitive fun, food around the world, and surprises along the way.

July 7th, 2026 - HackwithBay 3.0

Location: San Francisco

Time: 9:30-6:30pm

What: ​🎉 HackwithBay 3.0 – 8-Hour Hackathon at AWS Builder Loft, SF 🎉

​Join us for HackwithBay 3.0, an electrifying 8-hour hackathon bringing together the brightest minds in tech, creativity, and innovation — all under one roof at the iconic AWS Builder Loft in San Fransisco!

​🚀 Whether you're a seasoned hacker, a budding coder, a design wizard, or an idea machine, HackwithBay 2.0 is your chance to build, learn, and connect with the most passionate problem-solvers in the city.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-9pm

What: Software used to be a tool you owned. Now it's mostly something that's done to you: apps that harvest your data, platforms that lock you in, feeds designed to monetize the gap between your intentions and your attention. Punk software is the alternative. Software that's loyal to you. Tools you build, own, understand, and can change.

​As Kanjun Qiu, Imbue CEO, puts it: “You don’t have to wait for policymakers anymore, because cheap AI coding means you can now choose, build, and tear down the software in your own life.”

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-9:30pm

What: We're kicking off a new monthly series. The concept is simple: we put a founder who's building something straight out of a sci-fi novel on stage, break down their grand vision, and let a live crowd decide if it actually holds water.

​Our first guest is Will O'Brien, co-founder of Ulysses. They build cheap, autonomous ocean robots. They’re starting off by restoring seagrass meadows (which trap carbon faster than rainforests), but the plan is to tackle any part of the ocean economy that still relies on expensive human crews. They’ve already got real revenue, five generations of vehicles, and they name their robots after sea monsters. The company is literally called Ulysses, so the epic branding writes itself.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 8am-4pm

What: From the Gold Rush to the Summer of Love to the personal computer revolution, San Francisco has always been a city of outsiders, dreamers, and builders who challenged the status quo and charted a new course.

For one day only, we're taking over one of San Francisco’s most iconic homes, which has been home to the Fnnch Museum over the past few months, and turning the Painted Lady into the Pirate Lady. Imagine the inside of Smuggler's Cove or a sunken pirate ship.

July 8th, 2026 - O1 Strategy and Fireside

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8:30pm

What: Thinking about applying for an O-1 visa as a founder, builder, researcher, engineer, or community leader? Join us for an evening focused on understanding the O-1 pathway, building a strong profile, and connecting with others pursuing similar goals.

​Whether you're early in your journey or actively preparing an application, our guest speaker, Karishma Mandal, will share practical strategies for navigating the O-1 process, strengthening your application, and positioning your work for long-term success.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 7-8:30pm

What: ​Join linguist and internet language researcher Adam Aleksic (Etymology Nerd) and "formal" artist and internet theorist, Daniel Keller (who coined the term sloptimist) for a conversation exploring how AI-generated media, algorithmic abundance, and networked culture are transforming the way language, meaning, and taste evolve.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8:30pm

What: A night for founders building on-device and edge AI across mobile, wearables, automotive, and consumer hardware. Live demos from teams putting models on real devices.

​Judges from silicon, OEMs, and frontier labs.

​Come if you're already building it, or if you're trying to figure out whether you should.

July 10th, 2026 - ✦internet archive tour✦

Location: San Francisco

Time: 1pm

What: hey internet friends! join us for a guided public tour of the legendary ✦ internet archive ✦

we’ll learn about the archive’s history and current projects. tour starts at 1 pm at 300 funston ave.

after the tour, there may be ~ice cream~ courtesy of the archive. hang out and meet new people!

July 11th, 2026 - World's Largest Hermes Buildathon | SF 🇺🇸

Location: San Francisco

Time: 10am-6pm

What: ​Join the SF edition of the
World’s Largest Hermes Buildathon.

​Backed by OpenAI, Convex, Cloudflare, ElevenLabs, Linkup, Dodo Payments, & Wispr Flow. Proudly presented by GrowthX.

​This is not a regular buildathon.
You will build, launch, get users, and chase revenue in 8 hours.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 7-9pm

What: Hosted by Women in AI

​Join Women in AI for an intimate, private dinner bringing together senior GTM leaders from enterprise and mid-market B2B companies.

​Connect with CMOs, VPs of Marketing, VPs of Demand Generation, and RevOps leaders over great food and meaningful conversation as we exchange ideas on AI, go-to-market strategy, and the future of revenue growth.

​Applications only. We keep the group small on purpose.

July 17th, 2026 - Loop Engineering Hackathon

Location: San Francisco

Time: 9:30am

What: Calling all engineers, PMs, founders, and hackers to dive into loop engineering. Build self-directing agent loops that plan, act, observe, and self-correct across the full build cycle, from spec to implementation to testing and iteration.

​Test that half-built idea, ship something scrappy-but-real, and meet like-minded people solving hard problems.

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