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SF IRL - June 22nd, 2026

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

Author

Jonathan Chang
June 22, 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 #198.

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. 

Build and ship at the Runpod Flash Hack Day!

June 30th, 2026 - Runpod Flash Hack Day

Location: San Francisco

Time: 9am - 8pm

What: Join Runpod on June 30 at the SF Builder’s Collective for an in-person hackathon. Remote-friendly. Learn how to use Runpod Flash to turn Python functions into auto-scaling, serverless GPU endpoints without Docker. Demos, prizes, and mentorship. Register here!

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: 4:30-7pm

What: ​Join Intralink and Norton Rose Fulbright for an exclusive Deep Tech Week networking mixer bringing together AI founders, technology executives, investors, and ecosystem leaders shaping the next wave of applied intelligence.

​Held during Deep Tech Week SF 2026, this gathering is designed for leaders building, funding, adopting, and scaling AI-driven technologies across enterprise, infrastructure, robotics, health, fintech, industrials, defense, and other high-impact sectors.

June 23rd, 2026 - AI Champions Dinner

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-9pm

What: AI is reshaping how the best products are built. Join us for a private dinner with the leaders driving that change.

​Unicorner and Bolt.new are bringing together 20 AI Champions at high-growth companies for a curated, three-course seated dinner. Expect sharp insights, great food, and an honest conversation about where AI fits into product strategy.

​This dinner will be especially relevant to:

  • ​Heads of Product, Design, or Engineering

  • ​(or) Lead/Staff PMs, Designers, or Engineers

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-7:30pm

What: A free, public workshop with no technical background needed
For the last several years, AI systems have advanced at a pace that has stunned the public and even surprised leading experts. These systems are reshaping work, the economy, relationships, and even crime extremely quickly.
This workshop will explore where AI may be in the next 1-5 years and what that means for daily life for all of us. We’ll tackle urgent and important questions like:

  • ​Jobs: Could AI lead to mass unemployment or will it help create entirely new kinds of work?

  • ​Crime: How might AI supercharge scams, hacking, and even crime?

  • ​Companions: Will people form deep emotional bonds or even romantic relationships with AI companions?

  • ​Society: How do top researchers think these trends will shape our future?

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8:30pm

What: ​Tuesday night has options. Ours has a pool table.

​Join Alta Advisors, Stifel, and Sequoia for Deep Tech Underground at SF Deep Tech Week - a spirited happy hour for the builders and backers turning long-horizon bets into reality.

​We're going below ground at one of SF's coolest hidden venues: a Blade Runner-style speakeasy with leather booths, craft cocktails, and a pool table waiting for challengers. Step into a scene from the future and stay for the conversations about how we get there.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 3-5pm

What: ​Curious about what it’s like to work in civic tech? Already work in this space and want to meet others? Join our informal meetup of designers and design-adjacent disciplines.

​People of all levels of government and countries of residence are welcome.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 3-5pm

What: ​Join us for an exclusive event to meet fellow design founders. Afterwards, we can all head over to Config Commons to kick off Config together. Boba is on us!

June 23rd, 2026 - Framer Gallery

Location: San Francisco

Time: 7-10pm

What: ​Framer is taking over the SF MoMA rooftop for one night.

​Join us for an evening with the marketing and design leaders actually shaping the future of the web.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8pm

What: ​Join Browserbase, Harvey, and Reducto at Browserbase HQ in San Francisco for an evening of demos, drinks, and good conversations with some of the people pushing this space forward.

We’ll hear short demos from engineers across the three teams, share a bit about what each company is building, and leave plenty of time to meet other folks in the room.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-9pm

What: ​The way Product, Design, and Engineering collaborate is being fundamentally redefined because AI is now part of the workflow, not just a tool.

​Join us for an intimate, Jeffersonian-style dinner with a curated group of AI product leaders & executives exploring how product teams are evolving their collaboration to build seamless AI products.

June 23rd, 2026 - Mixture of Experts

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8pm

What: ​Come spend some time with other fellow AI builders, meet founders building cool things, and maybe even find your career-making startup!

​Hear from the founders of:
-Sierra
-Intent Lab
-Keenable
-Pascal
-Town
-Watchtower Labs

Location: San Francisco

Time: 7-11pm

What: ​We're launching into the stratosphere. Hosted by Unicorner, it's the bolt.new experience, and it's unlike anything you've been to before.

​From 7-9, join us for an interactive carnival with food, drinks, cotton candy, robots, and more.

​At 9, we're transitioning the evening into a party with a live headliner performance from Cheat Codes, the award-winning DJ trio behind top songs like No Promises.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:15-7:30pm

What: ​If your algorithm is already full of Varun Rana’s viral Instagram skits, now's your chance to see the face behind your favorite tech reels live in person. We’re bringing tech's favorite creator to the stage at Dovetail's happy hour so you can laugh off and unwind after Config day two.

​Known for his spot-on content skewering everything from messy design handoffs to endless alignment meetings, Varun is doing an exclusive, 20-minute stand-up set right down the street from Config. It’s the perfect, high-energy transition from a long day of sessions into a relaxed evening.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-9pm

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.

​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. We'll cover topics such as building evidence of impact, judging opportunities, speaking engagements, publications, community involvement, and other activities that can support an O-1 profile.

June 23rd, 2026 - Built in America

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8:30pm

What: Join Cantos, WestMag, Impulse Labs, and Toyota Ventures for an evening centered around hardware and the builders driving the physical world forward.

​Yes, there will be Impulse stove demos :)

June 24th, 2026 - The Trust Layer: An evening on Agentic Commerce, hosted by Skyfire / Okta / Experian

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8:30pm

What: ​Join us at Okta's San Francisco headquarters for an evening with the operators building one of the most critical layers in the agent economy: the Trust Layer.

​AI agents are starting to transact on behalf of people and businesses but the systems that protect merchants weren't built for this. The missing pieces are verified agent identity, human-to-agent binding, bot and fraud management that accepts agents, and payment credentials that travel with proof of authorization .  The trust layer is now, being rolled out by the world's largest and most innovative companies. Come see it live.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8:00pm

What: ​💸 SF’S #1 TECH SHOWCASE IS BACK – SF PITCH NIGHT RETURNS THIS JUNE! 💸

​Last time, we packed the house with 250+ attendees for SF Pitch Night – and the energy, crowd, and caliber of builders made it one of our most unforgettable nights. Now we’re bringing it back!

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8pm

What: ​How to choose an AI Model | A panel hosted by Baseten | June 25

​Picking the right model is one of the most critical decisions an AI product team makes right now. Learn how Notion and Gamma, two of the most compelling AI-forward companies in tech, have approached these product decisions. You’ll hear from:

  • ​Sarah Sachs: AI Lead at Notion

  • ​Jon Noronha: Co-founder and CPO at Gamma

Location: San Francisco

Time: 7-10pm

What: ​Reducto & Cogent are coming together for a fun night of mahjong, hosted in a speakeasy with free flowing dim sum and drinks! 🀄

​Learn how to play, rotate between tables, or just come to meet new folks in the AI space and enjoy the speakeasy! Beginners welcome.

June 25th, 2026 - CMD

Location: San Francisco

Time: 7-9:30pm

What: ​Mercury presents CMD: An immersive live music set featuring DJ and Mercury customer Zack Fox and creative technologist Mattaniah Aytenfsu — inspired by the experience of orchestrating your finances with Mercury Command.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 3-5:30pm

What: ​Join us for an afternoon of networking and resources for SF startups. You'll walk away with new connections, insights from AWS, and next steps for growing your business. We'll cover:

1. Fast-Tracking Infra: AWS & Tech 42 Direct Access
-Meet the AWS team and learn how to unlock quotas, escalate support, and unlock specialized credits/programs.
-Leveraging Tech 42 to accelerate your engineering timeline without adding headcount.

2. The Reality of the Early-Stage Stack
-Managing the chaos: 3rd-party APIs, fragmented tech, and zero IaC.
-Unit economics: Mapping what your tech/AI stack actually costs against your pricing and margins.
-Handling compliance and security without slowing down feature shipping.

3. The Scaling & Migration Playbook
-When and how to transition off early platforms (Supabase, Vertex) and optimize multi-model AI setups (OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock).
-How AWS and Tech 42 team up to de-risk migrations so you don't lose shipping velocity.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 8:30am

What: ​Build agentic Flutter UI/UX that generate, adapt, and act in real time.

​Flutter SF and Very Good Ventures (VGV) are bringing together Flutter and AI builders in San Francisco for a one-day hackathon focused entirely on Generative UI Gen Kit and Gemini AI.

​Gen UI is the idea that interfaces themselves are dynamically generated, adaptive, and AI-native at runtime, constructed from LLM output in real time, responding to context, user intent, and data.

June 27th, 2026 - YC AI Growth Hackathon

Location: San Francisco

What: ​YC's First-Ever Growth Hackathon

​A 24-hour hackathon for GTM engineers building AI growth tools and workflows. $15,000 in prizes.

June 30th, 2026 - Runpod Flash Hack Day

Location: San Francisco

Time: 9am - 8pm

What: Join Runpod on June 30 at the SF Builder’s Collective for an in-person hackathon. Remote-friendly. Learn how to use Runpod Flash to turn Python functions into auto-scaling, serverless GPU endpoints without Docker. Demos, prizes, and mentorship. Register here!

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