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- SF IRL - May 11th, 2026
SF IRL - May 11th, 2026
A curated newsletter showcasing the top tech & startup events in San Francisco
Jonathan Chang
May 11, 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 #194.
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
May 20th, 2026 - O11yCon SF: Observability for AI in Production
Location: San Francisco, CA
Date: May 20th-21st
What: Join developers, practitioners, and technical leaders at O11yCon SF, a two-day, community-driven conference focused on building and operating software in the AI-driven agent era.
Hear from teams at Google, Salesforce, Stripe, and more as they share real-world lessons on observability, reliability, and managing system complexity in production. Expect hands-on sessions, practical insights, meaningful peer exchange, and honest conversations about what's actually working today.
Registration Details: Use discount code O1C26IMLH by May 15th to save on your ticket. Access is limited.
May 21st, 2026 - ElevenLabs: The AI startup operating system: from product to GTM
Location: San Francisco, CA
Time: 3-6pm
What: The rules of building a startup just changed. The founders currently winning rewrote the playbook entirely — we invite you to join us to hear how and why they're succeeding.
AI is changing what it means to build and go to market. Engineering teams run smaller and faster. GTM motions look nothing like the classic playbook. But most advice is still theoretical.
This panel brings together founders and operators actively building AI-native products and GTM at companies like ElevenLabs and Miro for an honest and practical conversation hosted at SVB's office in downtown SF. Stick around after for drinks, food, and conversations worth having.
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
May 12th, 2026 - Women Healing Women: AI x Health | Women in AI
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6-8pm
What: Join Women in AI for an evening at the intersection of two of the most important frontiers in tech: artificial intelligence and women's health.
This panel and networking event brings together founders, investors, and operators who are building the future of femtech and health AI, from diagnostics and clinical tools to consumer wellness and reproductive health. The conversation will explore how AI is transforming women's healthcare, where the biggest gaps and opportunities still exist, and what it takes to build and fund in this space.
May 12th, 2026 - North Beach Food Tour with Listen Labs
Location: San Francisco
Time: 4:30-7:30pm
What: Join us after Day 2 of Research Week for a private North Beach food tour through one of San Francisco’s most iconic neighborhoods.
Expect a relaxed evening with fellow researchers over drinks and tastings from multiple local favorites (enough for dinner): fresh focaccia pizza, handmade pasta, gelato, and more.
May 12th, 2026 - Streaming the Future: Kafka & The Agentic Era
Location: San Francisco
Time: 5:30-8pm
What: Streaming the Future: Kafka & The Agentic Era event is a builder evening in San Francisco exploring what happens when streaming infrastructure meets AI.
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6-9pm
What: Kick off the week with friends from both AI Council (May 12–14) and LangChain Interrupt (May 13–14) at a joint happy hour on May 12.
Join MongoDB and Browserbase at The Detour and enjoy drinks & bites while playing vintage video games and pinball machines.
May 12th, 2026 - AI-pilled teams
Location: San Francisco
Time: 5:30-8pm
What: What happens when your team goes all-in on AI?
The teams shipping fastest in 2026 aren't just using AI tools - they've restructured everything around them. New workflows. New team shapes. New ways of thinking about what humans vs. agents should own.
Join us for an invite-only evening with founders who've gone down this rabbit hole.
May 13th, 2026 - Research Meetup: Agentic Code (SF)
Location: San Francisco
Time: 5:30-7:30pm
What: A gathering for people working at the edges of coding agents.
Join us at Scale SFHQ for lightning talks from agentic coding researchers, food and drinks, and time to connect with others in the field. No agenda beyond the work and the people doing it.
May 13th, 2026 - America's Next Top Model
Location: San Francisco
Time: 5:30-8pm
What: Vercel built AI Gateway so you can stop arguing about which model to use.
On May 13, we're letting the builders decide.
Here's how it works: pick a model, build something live, demo it to the crowd. The audience votes on the best demo. The winners walk the runway.
May 13th, 2026 - Reading Group (+🧋): Code Synthesis for Agentic Decision-Making: Code World Models and Autoharness
Location: San Francisco
Time: 3-5:30pm
What: Join the Snorkel AI Reading Group, a recurring forum to explore the latest frontier developments in AI while building meaningful connections within the community.
May 13th, 2026 - Agent Building Day @ Corgi Cafe
Location: San Francisco
Time: 3-8pm
What: Datawizz is taking over Corgi Cafe for an afternoon of hands-on agent building. Drop in any time 3-8pm on Wednesday, May 14th. Bring your laptop, grab a seat, build an agent.
May 13th, 2026 - Databricks @ AI Council26 Networking Event
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6-9pm
What: Databricks, in partnership with AI Council invites you for an evening of connections, conversations, and community during AI Council 2026!
Join us over drinks and appetizers, connect with fellow attendees while meeting the AI Council team (Pete Soderling) and Databricks Startup and Engineering teams. You won’t want to miss out on the fun!
May 13th, 2026 - SF DEMO NIGHT 🚀 (w/ The AI Collective)
Location: San Francisco
Time: 5:30-8:30pm
What: 2026 is already accelerating fast – new breakthroughs, new companies, and a city doubling down on its role as the global center of AI. This May, we’re bringing together the builders shaping what’s next with 8 hand-picked pre-Series A demos you won’t see anywhere else.
Powered by The AI Collective – here's what's to expect:
⚡️ 8 elite curated demos from the Bay's most visionary founders
🎤 Live Q&A – challenge the builders in real time
🧬 Interactive Demo Night App to connect, follow up, and join waitlists instantly
🏆 Live community voting to crown the night’s champions and enshrine them in our Hall of Fame
May 13th, 2026 - SPC Demo Night
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6:30-9pm
What: Come see demos & research from:
Jasper Gilley (Yutori)
Steven Pu (Roro)
Location: San Mateo
Time: 6-9pm
What: Join us for a high-energy evening where founders take the stage, investors share insights, and global tech leaders connect at Silicon Valley UAtech Venture Night.
UAtech Venture Night at Saastr Ai is part of our Global Series of events connecting tech founders and investors across Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia. Each event is a stage in this worldwide journey, spotlighting Ukrainian innovation and amplifying it on the global stage.
May 14th, 2026 - Agents & Bagels: Interrupt'26 + SaaStr Breakfast
Location: San Francisco
Time: 8-9am
What: If you're in the city for SaaStr'26 or Interrupt'26 - the agent conference by LangChain, come join our informal agent builders breakfast with people whose agents are already running in production and breaking in interesting ways.
May 14th, 2026 - Longevity Party @ The Bank
Location: San Francisco
Time: 5-10pm
What: Join us at The Bank, our new exclusive San Francisco social club, for an intimate late-night gathering focused on one question that actually matters:
How do we build a long, happy, healthy life—without sacrificing ambition, pleasure, or style?
May 14th, 2026 - Hello World Launch Party by Anything
Location: San Francisco
Time: 1-5pm
What: We launched a smoothie named Hello World and now we're taking Corgi Cafe into the clouds to celebrate!
May 16th, 2026 - Notion Developer Platform Hackathon
Location: San Francisco
What: Join the Notion team for two days of hands-on building on our new Developer Platform. We're shipping primitives that let you sync any data source into Notion, give your agent any tool, and trigger workflows from anywhere. No servers, no infra. Just a CLI and your ideas.
May 16th, 2026 - Agent Forge AI Hackathon
Location: Sunnyvale
Time: 10am-6pm
What: The era of simple chatbots is over. Real AI applications need to access live data, write their own code, autonomously manage their own state, and run reliably in the cloud.
The Agent Forge AI Hackathon gives you the ultimate stack to ship production-ready AI agents in one day. Assemble a team of one to six people — or go solo — and build, test, and deploy a working AI Agent solution together. We are moving beyond local prototypes. If it doesn't deploy and manage real data, it doesn't count.
May 16th, 2026 - AI Native Developers Meetup | Google I/O Week
Location: Sunnyvale
Time: 2:30-6:30pm
What: Google I/O week brings a dense wave of builders into the Bay Area. We’re creating a space to meet and talk. On May 16, SEAMATE is hosting a meetup at Plug and Play in Sunnyvale for around 500 founders, developers, and builders working on AI-native products, agents, and multimodal tools.
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