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

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👇

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.

Was an honor to host @sama for an open Q&A with our SR007 founders. Grateful to the @OpenAI team for their partnership and continued support of our founders. Excited for all that's ahead 🫡

Excited to announce our Global Founder Sprint for SF Tech Week. The program covers travel sponsorship, 1:1 investor sessions, VIP event access, and more. If you're a founder *outside* the US, apply below! 🌎

Procrastinators, this is your moment. You have until 5pm PT today to submit your event for SF + LA Tech Week. You don't need to have all the details worked out, just fill out the form and update as you go. Link in comments

You have ONE DAY left to submit your events for SF + LA Tech Week. Join so many great companies including, Anthropic, AWS, Cursor, Databricks, ElevenLabs, Lovable, Deel, Gamma, Pinecone, Google, IBM, SAP, Adobe, Canva, Atlassian, Cloudflare, Datadog, Elastic, Vercel, Fireworks, Exa, Okta, PwC, Fenwick, HSBC, Axios, Braintrust, Auth0, Fin, Hyperagent, and so many more! Link to submit event in comments.

There is now an *advantage* to having one foot in your home country, and one foot in Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley has always run on the magic of paying it forward. Everyone here has been helped by someone, at a critical moment - for no reason other than just to be helpful. There’s a special version of this pay-it-forward culture for international founders: “Borderless Founders.” * You can get early customers from large companies at home that give you big proof points early. * You can build an outsized brand at home that can get global attention earlier. * You know the strongest engineers in your home country before the rest of the market catches on. Most of the fastest growing companies have int'l founding teams. Your background is your moat. Our job is to help you widen it. If you’re a Borderless Founder, we’d love to meet you 👇

anyone on this app who would be really passionate about marketing @speedrun to founders? We 1) just got this amazing new office in sf 2) are growing the program 3) all have a lot of fun together. @roseajohnson is hiring someone to do our founder marketing (newsletters, socials, etc) and I'd love to recommend someone who is really excited.

we opened a new office in Jackson Square (woo!) just in time for SF/LA Tech Week that we're hosting coming up If you want to co-host an event, the deadline is this Friday, 8/21 Want to run a panel, dinner, demo night, happy hour, we'll put it on the official calendar and send a ton of traffic and leads your way. submit here: Everyone will be there- Anthropic, AWS, Databricks, ElevenLabs, Deel, Gamma, Google, IBM, SAP, Adobe, Canva, Atlassian, Cloudflare, Datadog, Elastic, Vercel, Cursor,, Fireworks, Exa, Deel, Okta, PwC, Fenwick, HSBC, Axios, Braintrust, Auth0, Fin, Hyperagent, HappyRobot get in before Friday and you're part of the calendar launch in early September — a coordinated push across our 400K email list, the full host network, a16z and speedrun channels, and everywhere else we can reach. this is the single biggest marketing moment we run all year. it trends on X every time. easiest exposure you'll get this fall

SF + LA Tech Week submissions close this Fri Aug 21, 5pm PT. Submit an event proposal now → you'll be included in the Official Calendar launch on Sept 8 (huge marketing push + free distribution across a16z + Tech Week channels!) last year, roughly 80K people attended(!), and going by our early metrics, this year'll be even bigger. formats we're still looking for: - technical events (hackathons, tech talks, demos, etc.) - curated dinners e.g. for c-suite / specific personas - Deep-tech focused events (especially for LA) - creative formats that get people talking Submit here:

Introducing Alpha (A001) - 13 fellows who spent the last 8 weeks building their companies with us in SF. This is our earliest-stage program for students, dropouts, and recent grads with the conviction to run straight into building a startup. Most started Alpha as solo founders, still figuring out what exactly to build. Within 8 weeks, they went all in on building, talking to customers, growing their teams, and even getting their first revenue through the door. Meet our founders ↓

Considering hosting at #LATechWeek#? This Wednesday at 11:30 AM PT, we’ll share advice and what we’ve learned over the past four years. The whole team will be there to cover all the important topics: @KatiaAmeri, @roseajohnson, @TracyMassaro_ and @filgran_ -event topics and formats that work best -how to submit + important deadlines -where and when your event will be promoted - plenty of time for Q&A LA Tech Week: October 12–18 Submissions close August 21. Link to register in comments

we just kicked off speedrun 007 (our biggest cohort yet), and we're excited to share that we're hiring! looking for a marketer to help grow the @speedrun brand. You'll own the campaign for founder applications and help us find even more amazing companies for future cohorts. you'd work with me, @andrewchen, @SamiraBehrouzan, @Chen + the full a16z speedrun team. Application link 👉 - we'd love to meet you!