• SF IRL
  • Posts
  • SF IRL - Oct 20th, 2025

SF IRL - Oct 20th, 2025

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

Author

Jonathan Chang
October 20, 2025

In partnership with

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 #168.

I'm Jonathan, the creator of SF IRL. I've been a Bay Area resident all my life and moved into San Francisco about 4 years ago. My full-time job is at Brex where I meet founders and VCs while trying to create a community in the city. 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 9000+ subscribers. As we keep growing, if you enjoy reading these, please share this with your friends so we can hit 10,000 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!

Founders need better information

Get a single daily brief that filters the noise and delivers the signals founders actually use.

All the best stories — curated by a founder who reads everything so you don't have to.

And it’s totally free. We pay to subscribe, you get the good stuff.

Day ZeroMeeting the top folks in tech, find your next cofounder, and your next role

Triumph is building the future of skill-based gaming and real money competition for a new generation. They are backed by General Catalyst, Goodwater Capital, and Drive by DraftKings, and have partnerships with iconic gaming brands like Doodle Jump.

Engineers at Triumph are tackling some of the hardest technical challenges in real-time multiplayer gaming and real money applications today. Problem areas include: real-time multiplayer game infrastructure at scale, low-latency game servers across global regions, skill-based matchmaking and rating systems, fraud detection and prevention in real money environments, payment processing and financial compliance systems, anti-cheat and game integrity systems, identity verification and KYC/AML compliance, responsible gaming controls and player protection, mobile-first architecture and optimization, and designing engaging competitive gaming experiences that balance fairness with entertainment.

Technical Roles Triumph Is Hiring For

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: 6-8pm

What: ​Floodgate is building an ambitious community that celebrates the joy of building. We are focused on bringing together builders, scientists, leaders, and creators who are making products of all kinds, as well as industry leaders and practitioners to provide advice and a seasoned perspective.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 2-3pm

What: ​​​Join us for a fireside chat with Jean-Denis Greze, former CTO at Plaid and now founder of Town AI. He will share lessons from scaling Plaid’s engineering org, how to make smart build vs. buy decisions, and what it takes to lead with a true engineering-first mindset in early stage entrepreneur journey. He’ll also give a peek into his newest venture, Town AI — automating small business tax prep with AI.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-9pm

What: ​A landmark event awaits you in San Francisco on October 22, 2025 as four Pixar Alumni, who worked on beloved films ranging from The Incredibles to Cars to Wall-E and beyond, gather to speak about the future of filmmaking with AI and Generative Video tools.

Oct 22nd, 2025 - 📊 AI BENCHMARK CLUB

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-7:30pm

What: ​​tl;dr Come join us for technical talks focusing on AI benchmarks. We're a group of AI engineers, researchers, and academics.

​Get ready for three incredible speakers / industry leaders:

Oct 23rd, 2025 - Beta University Q4 Startup Demo & Showcase

Location: Palo Alto

Time: 6-8:30pm

What: Join us for an evening of innovation and inspiration as standout founders from the Beta U community take the stage to demo what they’ve built — and what’s coming next.

​Whether you're an investor, builder, or curious supporter, this is your chance to connect with the people shaping the future — one product at a time.

Location: Pleasanton

Time: 5-8pm

What: ​This Halloween, we’re pulling back the curtain on artificial intelligence. Join the AI Collective for a Halloween-themed evening where we cut through the myths and expose the realities of large language models.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 11:30am-2pm

What: Join us for a hands-on technical workshop and Brazilian churrasco experience at Fogo de Chão.

​Discover how the world's largest AI inference workloads run at lightning speed on NVIDIA Dynamo, a distributed system for model serving.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6:30-10pm

What: We’re keeping the night going after Ship AI. Come hang out with other builders, grab a drink, and talk (or don’t talk) shop. No agenda. Just good people, good food, good music, and a chance to catch up.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 8:30-11am

What: ​Join us for an breakfast of French croissants and coffee with founders and investors exploring one of the most defining topics in early-stage growth: founder-led sales.

Oct 24th, 2025 - $5000 De-Vibed Hackathon

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6:30pm

What: De-vibe Hackathon - How to vibe code without AI slop.

​​Attention hackers, builders and founders!

​Do you like Hackathons where you generate lost of AI slop code that makes a cool demo but breaks every time you try to add a new feature?

​If so, you're in the wrong place.

​Come to the De-vibed Hackathon and prove that it's possible to build real software with AI coding.

Oct 25th, 2025 - Threading Ads in AI

Location: San Francisco

Time: 3-5pm

What: ​Thrad is bringing together marketers, founders, and builders in San Francisco to share successful advertising tactics, explore how AI is transforming marketing and showcase how brands can best leverage AI.

Oct 25th, 2025 - RL IRL

Location: San Francisco

Time: 10:30am-5pm

What: RL IRL is a one-day forum for researchers & engineers to learn more about the future of reinforcement learning, and how reinforcement learning is applied in production today.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 7pm-12am

What: ​The Most Talked-About After-Party at TechCrunch Disrupt is Back

​Come have some fun alongside other top founders, investors, and builders.

​Last year, our Disrupt Penthouse After-Party drew over 3,000 registrations, but we could only accommodate a fraction of attendees. This year, we’re leveling up and going poolside 🌴💦.
New venue. Bigger capacity. Even better vibes.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8pm

What: ​The last 3 years saw massive AI adoption for text-based applications. Its adoption in gaming, video, and VR has been limited by lower quality outputs and a lack of industry specific applications. That's rapidly changing. 

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-7:30pm

What: Come talk in a small group about AI and Manufacturing!

What We'll Explore:

​- How AI is becoming the ultimate manufacturing wingman, translating "make this work better" into actual functioning code and capabilities

​- Why legacy systems aren't the enemy—they're the foundation for American manufacturing's AI-powered comeback

​- Real stories from the trenches: where rubber meets road in AI-assisted industrial automation

​- How to build advanced systems that rely on data when data is sparse and siloed

SF IRL is Sponsored By