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SF IRL - Sept 15th, 2025

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

Author

Jonathan Chang
September 15, 2025

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 #163.

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!

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

Sept 18th, 2025 - Founder x Investor Padel Night with Brex

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8:30pm

What: Join us for a high-energy evening learning how to play Padel, followed by food, refreshments, and conversation with fellow leaders from the Startup/VC community.

​Whether you're new to the game or a seasoned player 🎾, it’s all about having fun, getting a little competitive, and making meaningful connections off the court.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6:30pm

What: Calling all CFOs and Heads of Finances. Brex x Kintsugi is hosting a supper club for you. Bringing together 12 of the top CFOs and Heads of Finances at the top early stage companies.

October 9 · San Francisco

Growth is messy. AI is moving fast. And most events just add to the noise.

ApolloNEXT is different. Picture 1,000+ founders and operators who've actually scaled through this transition, sharing what's working right now.

Get hands-on with Apollo's AI GTM platform, hear real plays from teams at Anthropic, Glean, and Apollo who went from $10M → $150M ARR in just 4 years.

Plus Corporate Bro (Ross Pomerantz) is hosting, so at least it won't be boring.

October 9 · San Francisco

50 founders. One room. Real conversations.

We're hosting something we've never done before during SF Tech Week.

Picture this: mini-chats with Apollo CEO Tim Zheng and execs who scaled us from $10M → $150M ARR. No stage. No panels. You sitting close enough to ask the questions that actually matter.

  • Frameworks that broke through every revenue ceiling

  • Pivots & mistakes that cost us months (so you don't repeat them)

Growth is messy as hell. AI is moving fast.

We want to be in the trenches with you, trading what's actually working.

For Seed+ to Series A founders in growth mode.

This is how we're building our founder community at Apollo. Here’s how to get your spot:

  • Step 1: Register for ApolloNEXT

  • Step 2: Apply here for the lunch

  • Step 3: Keep an eye on your inbox for updates

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

Sept 17th, 2025 - Harry’s Healthtech Hang

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8pm

What: A happy hour but one where everyone has the intention of helping others, empowering them to achieve their professional and personal goals. You will mingle, enjoy beverages and light bites (read: open bar for beer & wine), pay it forward, and maybe get help in return.  

Sept 18th, 2025 - Camp AI: Product Demos + Founder Insights

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8:30pm

What: Ready to build, scale, and secure your AI apps? Come for the innovation and stay for the summer camp vibes. We’ll kick off with product demos from CircleCI, Traversaal AI, CodeAnt AI, and Acuvity AI. Then, AWS, GitHub and Vercel will do a panel on securing, building, and scaling AI applications. 

Sept 18th, 2025 - Overnight Success: Meter

Location: San Francisco

Time: 4:30-6:30pm

What: Remember when everyone thought software would eat the world? Anil and Sunil Varanasi decided to build the infrastructure that software would run on.

​Now Meter powers the internet infrastructure for hundreds of companies like Brex, Cursor, Reddit, Bridgewater, Strava and others. But back then? They were just two brothers working on something everyone said nobody needed.

​Come hear what actually happened during those years. The real story, not the TechCrunch version.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8pm

What: Join us for an exclusive fireside chat with Reducto CEO (Adit Abraham) and Shepherd founding engineer (Danil Kolesnikov) as they go deep on the complexities of building AI tools on documents in the Insurance space. Moderated by Shepherd's very own early engineer, Gabriel Dalessandro!

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8:30pm

What: Skyfire Presents: Agentic Commerce
Featuring: Akamai, Apify, Consumer Reports, Okta, Visa, Vercel, and more

​Step into the future of commerce where AI agents transact securely and without friction. Agentic Commerce brings together the leaders shaping the infrastructure of AI-powered payments and identity: from the platforms building the next generation of Agents to the companies ensuring every transaction is trusted and every interaction is protected.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8:30pm

What: Join us for a deep dive with Kareem Amin, CEO of Clay, as he shares how they built Claygent—their AI-powered research agent that automates complex data enrichment tasks.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8:30pm

What: This event is organised by Projector Institute ambassadors together with Lighthouse. Projector — online institute for independent education in your profession.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5-8pm

What: ​The Horizon Forum — Powered by Norton Rose Fulbright & Twill 

​Norton Rose Fulbright, a global law firm with 3,000+ lawyers in 50+ cities worldwide — from London and New York to Hong Kong, Sydney, and Johannesburg — is joining forces with Twill, a Silicon Valley community of 10,000+ founders, investors, and executives at the cutting edge of AI.

Sept 19th, 2025 - 鍛冶屋 // STRIKE WHILE THE IRON IS HØT.Location: San Francisco

Time: 7-11pm

What: ​This exists to kick off our exciting next chapter (TBA) with an epic party for everyone who loves tech, growth, and (actual) fun☻

​​​​37°48′28" N / 122°25′47″ W // VENUE

​We’ve got a grand, industrial venue in the Marina with insane Golden Gate views.

Sept 19th, 2025 - Inside Summit 2025

Location: San Francisco

Time: 11am-5pm

What: A candid, high-signal summit for the next generation of tech builders, investors, and operators. The only summit to bring together an intimate group of movers & shakers with some of the world’s most influential technologists.  Join us in the room.

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 founders-in-residence and portfolio companies

​​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

Sept 23rd, 2025 - Unicorner Presents: SF Seed+ Founders Dinner

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8:30pm

What: ​We're bringing together 20 seed to Series A founders from our community—founders that we believe have a unicorn trajectory.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8pm

What: ​O1 Collective and Uncork Capital are bringing together the European tech community in San Francisco for an evening of conversation and connection.

​Join us for a fireside chat with Sam Chaudhary (Co-Founder & CEO of ClassDojo ) and Ilya Levtov (Co-Founder & CEO of Craft) as they share their journeys of building and scaling companies in the U.S. as European founders. The conversation will dive into the challenges, opportunities, and lessons learned along the way, followed by time to connect with fellow founders and operators over drinks.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8:30pm

What: We’re thrilled to feature Frank “Puf” van Puffelen — longtime DevRel Engineer at Google and now DevRel & Experience Lead at FlutterFlow.

​Puf helped grow Firebase from 100,000 to over 4.5 million active developers, built Google’s flagship events program, and has given 120+ in-person talks around the world. At FlutterFlow, he’s continuing to redefine how devtools connect with their communities.

​He’ll join us for an honest fireside chat about building for and with developers — what scales, what burns out, and what still works in 2025.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5-8:30pm

What: ​Modern reliability engineering is entering a new era. Site Reliability Engineers and observability professionals are under increasing pressure to scale operations, reduce MTTR, and deliver clarity across complex systems. At the Rootly AI Meetup, we’ll explore how AI-driven automation and observability-first practices are reshaping reliability engineering.

Sept 24th, 2025 - Unicorner Presents: Superpower Founder Fireside

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5-7:30pm

What: ​Join us for a fireside chat and deep dive with Max Marchione, founder of Superpower, the all-in-one health tracking platform.

​P.S. Include a good question for Max, and we’ll prioritize your spot. 🦄

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8:30pm

What: ​👾 Old-school pixels. Next-gen brains. 🎯

​Step back into the golden age of gaming and bring AI into the mix.

​Join Lightning AI and Voltage Park for a hands-on evening where you will:

​🎮 Code a retro-style game (think Pong, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Breakout, or Snake) in the Lightning platform, solo or with a team

​🤖 Train an AI agent on Voltage Park GPUs to play (and hopefully master) the game you just built

Location: Palo Alto

Time: 6-8pm

What: ​We’re bringing together female founders, investors, and allies for an evening of candid conversations, meaningful connections, and community building in the heart of Palo Alto.

​This isn’t another panel — it’s a space designed for authentic networking and shared learning. Whether you’re a founder navigating the early stages, an investor seeking to back bold ideas, or simply passionate about supporting women in tech and entrepreneurship, you’ll find your people here.

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