Super excited to unveil Hack Week, a new community-led, builder focused track happening for the first time across SF and LA @Techweek_ ! We’re bringing together 150+ technical events across both cities, including 69 hackathons alongside and tons of product demos, workshops and builder meetups. Events are hosted by Anthropic, Google, Amazon, MongoDB, Mistral, OpenRouter, Datadog, Scale, Exa, Cloudflare, Stanford, Berkeley, USC, and many more. We’ll culminate the week with SpeedHacks, the official Speedrun Hackathon, featuring tracks hosted by speedrun portfolio companies. The winning team will receive a final-round interview for Alpha or Speedrun.

This might be the first major anniversary of 9/11 where watching the footage really feels like an older world. It was a different world. And those of us who came of age in it have an obligation to never forget what happened that day and after. To those with no memory of 9/11, I recommend visiting the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. There were so many witnesses to this horrific crime and so many details we never discuss. Too many victims had to make the unthinkable choice about their last moments. The last time I visited, I stopped on this testimony from a man who witnessed the moment a woman jumped to her death: "She had a business suit on, her hair all askew. This woman stood there for what seemed like minutes and then she held down her skirt and jumped off the ledge. I thought, how human, how modest, to hold down her skirt before she jumped. I couldn't look anymore." The other thing you see at the Memorial is just how many heroes were minted that day. How many men ran into the towers knowing they were running towards their deaths. So many people died in service of their fellow Americans that day, and their courage inspired the many men and women of my generation who decided to enlist and serve the country after watching the towers fall. The legacy of 9/11 is the heroism of our fellow Americans. The courage of so many to lay down their lives for their neighbors. May they rest in peace and may we never forget.

hey all- for folks who are in town (SF) Oct 5-11, we're hosting a ton of events, including at our new offices in Jackson Square. details below. -- the SF/LA Tech Week calendar is LIVE 2,300+ events across the two weeks. more than a 50% increase from last year. some other cool stats: - 1,580 events in SF, 762 in LA - 14 tracks - fundraising, deep tech, AI agents, infra, devtools, hackathons, media, fintech and more - 883 events on fundraising & investing. more than all of LA Tech Week in 2024. - 80+ a16z and portcos hosting: deel, stripe, elevenlabs, pinecone, databricks, carta, fal, exa - spacex, erebor, anthropic, google, aws, ibm, fenwick, hsbc, fireworks, vercel, pwc, fin, adobe, atlassian, cloudflare, hyperagent all showing up congrats @roseajohnson @TracyMassaro_ @KatiaAmeri @filgran_ @johnsonjanellea and the whole Tech Week team for the awesome launch

I co-lead @speedrun alpha w/ @KatiaAmeri - we're opening apps for A002 today. > We invest up to $250k > We focus on dropouts / recent grads > Our thesis: "invest in amazing people" Application link is in the comments. Tag the folks we should be talking to.

BREAKING NEWS: SF and LA Tech Week calendars are LIVE! You can now register for events: 2,300+ event submissions across San Francisco and Los Angeles 📍SF: October 5-11 📍LA: October 12-18 People always ask about the data, so a few stats: -SF once again takes the crown for “biggest tech week ever” with 1,500+ events -1 in 7 SF events is about agentic AI: 213 events in SF and 53 in LA are explicitly about agents (in the title or description). In 2024 there were only about a dozen! -There are 124 hackathons across the two weeks, and the variety is huge: everything from hardware to defense, media/creative, fintech, civic/social good, etc. Everyone is a builder now. - LA, the OG Tech Week (now in its fifth year!), has seriously doubled down on deep tech with 100+ events and lots of El Segundo activity. Last year, Tech Week saw attendees from over 100 countries. It’s going to be a party. See you there! 🥳

STUDENTS + NEW GRADS: We want to invest up to $250K in you! Applications are officially OPEN for speedrun Alpha Cohort 2. After our inaugural cohort this summer, we're excited to bring the fellowship back with two tracks: Founder: Get up to $250K to start your company, plus $1M+ in credits from AI, cloud, and devtool partners and more Talent: Get fast-tracked toward engineering opportunities at breakout startups Both: In-person fellowship in SF with a kickoff retreat, weekly office hours with the speedrun team, coworking at the speedrun office, intimate fireside chats, and one-on-one support We’re looking to take bets on technical students, recent grads, and dropouts who are serious about building. You can be pre-idea, pre-team, or already underway. At this stage, what matters most is that you’ve shown you can ship and are deeply committed to this path. More than 11,000 people applied to our first cohort, and we ultimately selected 11 teams. We’re excited to meet the next group! Apply now: Nominate or tag anyone you think we should consider👇

first time at the gundo bonfire tonight and I’m bullish on LA tech all over again. incredibly impressed by the level of ambition and the number of founders relocating here from the bay, highlight was talking with a founder building cities on the moon​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ 🌘🚀

"I'm fine" means something completely different based on how it's said, but your AI can't understand it. I began a PhD at Stanford two years ago because nobody knew how to make speech models that *actually* understand what people mean. I paused that PhD and started @OrukLabs because we finally figured it out. Now, I'm excited to share that we joined of a16z @speedrun to become the speech understanding layer for every human-{insert technology} interaction. (Oh, and we're also the first ever company to be selected for both alpha and speedrun.) Thank you to my cofounder @Viangren, our amazing team from @Stanford , @UCBerkeley , @Cambridge_Uni (we're hiring!), and the wonderful folks at a16z speedrun: @emilybenn12 @andrewchen @KatiaAmeri @justmazer @ndrewlee @Tocelot @joegarciaisme @filgran_ (among MANY others). We're in San Francisco through Demo Day. If you're building anything that listens to people, we should talk.

Super excited to be part of the first a16z speedrun alpha cohort! Huge thanks to @andrewchen , @KatiaAmeri , @JordanMazer and rest of @speedrun team for the support! More soon on what I'm building!

spent the last 8 weeks in the @speedrun alpha program It was incredible to build alongside some of the smartest people i've ever met. Special shoutouts to @KatiaAmeri @andrewchen @meientc @The_Pangean @joegarciaisme @justmazer for making the program goated. featuring @pmarca

Being part of @speedrun alpha 001 has been one of the most special and rewarding experiences of my life. Would absolutely do it all over again in a heartbeat! @cyberneticphysx would not be where it is today without the incredible team behind @speedrun alpha and the brilliant, creative, awesome people that were in the first ever cohort. Super excited to see where we'll all be a year from now 🚀

Announcing A001 ↓ These founders come from incredibly impressive backgrounds, with just about every door open to them. It’s been the privilege of a lifetime to watch them choose to bet on themselves and build instead. Very, very long on this group!