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- SF IRL - Mar 23rd, 2026
SF IRL - Mar 23rd, 2026
A curated newsletter showcasing the top tech & startup events in San Francisco
Jonathan Chang
March 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 #187.
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.
Sponsored
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6-8pm
What: Join Antler and Lightfield for an intimate fireside chat with Lightfield co-founder and CEO Keith Peiris. Keith will share the story behind the company’s pivot from Tome to building an AI-native CRM, lessons from founder-led sales, and how AI is reshaping modern go-to-market. He’ll also discuss what the team learned from rebuilding the product and GTM from scratch in today’s fast-moving AI landscape. If you're building an AI startup today, this is a conversation you won't want to miss.
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.
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6-8pm
What: Founder Skybar Social @HumanX:
Join Intercom, Elevenlabs, Brex, Render, and Newmark for a founder social above the clouds. We're bringing together an intentional group to foster meaningful connections with low ego.
We'll provide drinks, food, and an exceptional environment. You provide the conversations and networks to help each other succeed.
Space is limited, RSVP early. RSVPs are non-transferable. No plus ones.
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
Mar 24th, 2026 - Dive Into the AI Iceberg Meetup (South Bay Edition)
Location: Menlo Park
Time: 5:30-8:00pm
What: Diving into the AI Iceberg explores the hidden layers beneath AI agents—the infrastructure, data, and systems that operate beneath the surface. Join this developer-focused meetup with Neo4j, Temporal, Auth0, and Redpanda as they break down the AI stack—data, identity, workflows, and streaming—everything your AI relies on.
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6:30-8:30pm
What: Come join for this month's hardware dinner at Root VC!
We have 30 spots, family style spread of food, a great venue, and a curated experience.
Our goal is to talk about hardware for data centers + AI infra.
Mar 25th, 2026 - Inside the Investor Mind: How Startups Get Funded
Location: Menlo Park
Time: 4:30-7:30pm
What: Join us for a conversation with Eric Bahn, Partner at Hustle Fund, about how VCs make investment decisions, with a focus on companies that began outside the United States.
Hosted by Venturous Counsel, a uniquely mission-driven law firm that serves as US fractional general counsel to values-aligned and diverse-led startups and investors.
Mar 25th, 2026 - Context is King #2 – Building AI Agents on Real Data
Location: San Francisco
Time: 5:30-9pm
What: Every AI team hits the same wall: your agent works on demos but breaks on real data. The context is wrong, incomplete, or doesn't scale.
The models are good enough. The hard part is everything around them – feeding agents the right context from large, complex data environments so they actually produce reliable results in production.
Mar 25th, 2026 - Networking Event for Young Professionals in San Francisco
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6-8pm
What: Want to build your network? Join us at The Brixton on Weds 3/25, and mingle with like-minded young professionals in the city.
Mar 25th, 2026 - YC AI Founders Night with ImagineAI
Location: San Francisco
Time: 5:30-8:30pm
What: Why Content Is the New Moat in the AI Era
In an era where AI is compressing product differentiation rapidly, the companies that win are building mindshare.
Consider this: Cursor spends significantly less on user acquisition than Windsurf for the same results. The difference lies in the presence. When people already trust your name, every dollar works harder.
Content is now the primary channel through which companies build trust at scale. High quality content turns cold audiences into believers before a single sales conversation happens. And silence? Silence has a cost. Every day you're not showing up, a competitor is claiming the narrative and getting ahead.
Join a panel with two YC founders from ImagineAI (YC F25) who are helping teams turn content into a compounding growth engine
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6-8:30pm
What: Agentic AI is pushing developer tools into a new era where systems don’t just assist, but reason, adapt, and act within real engineering workflows. Moving from demos to reliable production requires more than clever prompts. It requires the right infrastructure for agentic workloads.
Mar 26th, 2026 - Canadians in SF Demo Night
Location: San Francisco
Time: 7-9pm
What: There's a heat warning in SF. What a time to be away from Canada.
Come through to Gumloop's new SF HQ for a night of live demos, poutine, and good people. We're bringing together Canadians doing cool stuff in the Bay.
Mar 26th, 2026 - Factory x Profound Engineering Happy Hour
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6:30-8:30pm
What: Engineering happy hour at Factory HQ with Factory and Profound: drinks, good people, no agenda.
Space is limited, RSVP.
Mar 27th, 2026 - Deep Agents Hackathon - RSAC 2026
Location: San Francisco
Time: 9:30am-7:30pm
What: 🚀 Build agents that plan, reason, and execute across complex multi-step tasks autonomously. Think research agents that go 10 layers deep, customer-support systems that actually resolve issues, data pipelines that run themselves, and copilots that take action, not just suggestions.
Mar 28th, 2026 - AI for Good: Future of Education with OpenClaw
Location: San Francisco
Time: 9:30am-1:30pm
What: Why can't anyone speedrun Quantum Computing modules in hours?
Come explore how to build something meaningful with like-minded people for this open source build.
Our goal is explore what's possible with the latest in machine learning for different education experiences.
The status quo is bleak (outdated, debt, and limited access), and we want to help fix that.
Mar 30th, 2026 - AI Startup Pitch Night with Qlay, Startup Intros, and Wan
Location: San Francisco
Time: 5-8pm
What: Join us AI Startup Pitch Night with Qlay, Startup Intros, and Wan, an exciting gathering in San Francisco that connects leading startup founders, investors, and industry experts!
Mar 31st, 2026 - -1 to Replit with Amjad & Haya
Location: San Francisco
Time: 3:30-5:00pm
What: South Park Commons is delighted to host Amjad Masad & Haya Odeh as part of our -1 to Now Series!
Event Details
3:30pm: Doors Open
4:00-5:00pm: Fireside Chat
Mar 31st, 2026 - afore portfolio spring showcase
Location: San Francisco
Time: 5-9pm
What: friends of afore - we're delighted to invite you to get a first look at some afore's portfolio companies and founders-in-residence
many of these founders may raise in the next six months, not all will be raising now, but we wanted to let them share what they're working on and meet some friends of afore
you can rsvp above for the showcase, happy hour, both, virtual attendance, or just to get the list of companies presenting
schedule:
5-7pm pt: presentations
7-9pm pt: happy hour
Apr 1st, 2026 - SF Coffee Club | Early Stage B2B Tech Founders & Funders
Location: San Francisco
Time: 10am-1pm
What: Calling all early-stage B2B founders and funders!
👋 Hi! We’re Dave Coen, Sruthi Sivanandan and Deirdre Clute from the Forum Ventures team. We're hosting a casual, no-pressure meetup designed to bring together founders & investors in the Bay Area over coffee.
Whether you're based in SF or just visiting, it’s an excellent opportunity to connect with fellow founders, AI enthusiasts and VCs in a relaxed and welcoming setting.
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