Hi Friends,

🚨 You asked for it. After the madness of GigaParty 1 & 2… we’re back — and this time, we’re literally making history.

On Friday, Sept 26, Temple SF becomes a neon-lit cyberpunk battleground for GIGAPARTY 3: ROBOT KOMBAT ⚡️

🔥 Headliner: The World’s First VR-Controlled Robot Fight
Yes, you read that right. Twitch founder Justin Kan will climb into the REK Arena to face off against UFC fighter Hyder Amil. One winner takes it all!

This is the moment where tech meets fight night — and you’ll be there to see it first.

Alongside the fight:
✨ AI & Robotics panels with top founders + VCs
✨ Startup expo & pitch competitions
✨ Networking with 2,000+ founders, VCs & family offices
✨ DJs, rooftop silent disco, afterparty and more until 2AM!

🎟 Early bird tickets are already moving → Lock in your spot now before prices jump.

Here are some events happening this week:

BECOME A FOUNDERS BAY MEMBER AND ACCESS ALL THE ABOVE FOR FREE WITH THE GIGAPARTY

Not a Founders Bay Member yet? You’re missing out on:

✓ Private Whatsapp Founder & VC Channel
✓ Free Access to All Our Workshops and Recordings
✓ Monthly Investor Breakfasts and Dinners
✓ Weekly Expert Office Hours including with Mariane Bekker, Kristopher Floyd, Legal and CTO

👉 Join Founders Bay today and unlock all-access.

🚀 We’re also thrilled to announce our partnership with Synexis to bring you the Frontier Tech Forum — featuring legendary voices like Tim Draper, Fiona Ma, Gary Fowler, and De Kai.

🎟️ Secure your spot today — or subscribe to VIP for a complimentary ticket: Get Your Ticket Here

If we’re not already connected, I’d love to hear from you—please follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram. Let’s connect!

Want us to sponsor an event or partner together? Contact us here

Wednesday, September 10 - 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

This event invites weary founders to take a break, relax, and enjoy good food, drinks, and great company. 🎉 It’s a chance to connect with fellow entrepreneurs who understand the challenges of building startups and share similar struggles and goals. 🚀 Attendees can meet investors, mentors, and the SF/OAK team, as well as learn from Founder Institute graduates about their journeys. Whether you’re interested in the Fall program or just need a breather, it’s an opportunity to recharge and build meaningful connections. 🤝

Wednesday, September 10 - 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Together, we’ll explore the power of DevSwarm, a new approach that helps teams code smarter and in parallel. You’ll discover how this system accelerates development without sacrificing clarity, quality, or maintainability.

Thursday, September 11 - 10:00 AM - 12:30 PM

​This private breakfast brings together top B2B founders, investors, and enterprise leaders for a curated morning of meaningful conversations, actionable insights, and a chef-prepared meal. We’ll dive into how AI is reshaping enterprise productivity, reimagining GTM motions, and what investors see as the next wave of scalable opportunities.

Saturday, September 13 - 9:00 AM - 6:30 PM

Join a community of mission-driven developers, designers, and dreamers for a one-day build sprint to prototype autonomous AI agents that solve real problems—from devops and debugging to health, productivity, and human connection.

September 18 at 1:00 PM until September 19 at 8:30 PM

Use discount code FBAY20 for 20% off

Two days. One iconic roof.
We’re gathering builders, visionaries and funders at the edge of what’s next.

On September 18–19, Frontier Tech Forum convenes at the iconic Hero City at Draper University in San Mateo - a two-day program at the edge of possibility in the heart of Silicon Valley. This is where Innovation Pioneers in AI, AGI, Robotics, Deep Tech, and Blockchain converge. Boundaries are being redefined through visionary keynotes, sharp technical breakouts, and fast-moving panels that put builders and innovators at the center. If you’re ready to step beyond the hype and into the conversations shaping the future, this is where you belong.

Friday, September 19 - 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

​We’re excited to welcome Ellisha Blechynden, Principal Attorney at Blechynden Legal, as our featured speaker. Ellisha advises early-stage startups and investors on venture financings and deal structuring, and she’ll share actionable insights to help founders approach negotiations strategically.

Friday, September 26 - 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM

​The Founders Bay Virtual Workshop will focus on why having a strong financial system is key to business success in 2026. It will help business owners and startup founders understand how tracking money, planning budgets, and managing cash flow can make or break a company. The session will show how good financial systems can help you grow faster and avoid big problems.

Friday, October 10 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 PM

FOUNDERSBAY30 (30% off)

Join us for a transformative day exploring the frontiers of human health and lifespan extension. Featuring visionary keynote speakers including Dr. Aubrey de Grey, Dr. Niko Dimitriadis, and world-champion surfer and resilience expert Bianca Valenti—alongside top scientists, entrepreneurs, and wellness leaders shaping the future of longevity.

Don’t miss out on these exciting new offerings! Upgrade your membership today and take your involvement to the next level.

Subscribe To Growth Access and get free tickets to: Founders Bay Virtual Workshop - AI Coding for Velocity-Obsessed Developers: Code in Parallel, Founders Bay Virtual Workshop - From Chaos to Clarity: Internal Comms for Growing Teams, Founders Bay Virtual Workshop - Sustainable Success: How Founders Can Thrive Without Burning Out, Founders Bay Virtual Workshop - Term Sheets Best Practices for Founders, Founders Bay Virtual Workshop: Why a Financial System Will Make or Break Your Business in 2026

Subscribe To VIP Access, get all the workshops above for free and get free tickets to: Founders B2B AI Breakfast @ Cole Frieman & Mallon LLP, Founders Bay Deep Tech & AI Pitch Night - #SFTechWeek, The Future of Robotics: Panel & Happy Hour - #SFTechWeek, Founders & VC Happy Hour - #SFTechWeek

👉 VCC Demo Day (September Edition) Online (3AM-4AM)
📍 Online
💬 Pitch your startup to a room full of VCs and investors from anywhere in the world. A high-energy event designed for founders to showcase bold ideas and connect with potential backers.

👉 STAK VENTURES: Speaker Series - VIP Lunch & Learn (12PM-3PM)
📍 Oakland
💬 A bi-weekly VIP gathering featuring visionary guest speakers shaping innovation. Join for lunch, insights, and connections at Oakland’s iconic 1900 Broadway Tower.

👉 Graph Exchange, Fall 2025 - Agentic AI Memory (4PM-9PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 A mini-conference on Graph-powered AI Agents, GraphRAG, and Knowledge Graphs. Learn from experts and explore the future of AI memory and context engineering.

👉 Qdrant AI Builders @ AWS Loft: Relevant & Diverse Vector Search That Gets Clicks with Neo4j (5PM-8PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Hands-on workshop on tuning vector search for both relevance and diversity. Learn practical techniques to improve discoverability and user engagement.

👉 AI + Econ Salon (6PM-10PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 An evening of drinks and conversations with researchers, collaborators, and friends. A casual salon for ideas at the intersection of AI and economics.

👉 ⚾ Giants Under the Lights: A Night at the Ballpark for AI Founders & Investors (6:45PM-9PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Watch the Giants at Oracle Park in a private suite with food, drinks, and great company. A unique networking event blending baseball, tech, and creativity.

👉 Beta Pre-Acceleration Program｜Cohort 10 Kickoff (3AM-5AM)
📍 Palo Alto
💬 Celebrate the kickoff of an 8-week pre-acceleration program designed to empower founders with knowledge, network, and tools. Connect with entrepreneurs and set your course for startup success.

👉 AI Infra Summit x Magicball, Santa Clara (9AM-8PM)
📍 Santa Clara
💬 Magicball partners with AI Infra Summit, the world’s largest AI infrastructure conference, offering free passes to select founders and engineers. Expect deep technical sessions, keynotes, and unmatched networking with 3,500+ attendees.

👉 Silicon Valley AI, Tech and Healthtech Investing Summit (1PM-7PM)
📍 Mountain View
💬 Startups in AI, tech, biotech, and healthtech meet accredited investors. A platform for funding opportunities and high-impact connections.

👉 Nordic Female Founders Fika (2PM-4PM)
📍 Palo Alto
💬 Nordic women entrepreneurs and investors gather at Nordic Innovation House for coffee, connection, and collaboration. An inspiring afternoon spotlighting women in AI and tech innovation.

👉 localhost SFO: Platform Engineering Meetup w/ ngrok (5PM-7:30PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Explore backend, DevOps, and platform engineering with ngrok in a curated meetup. Limited spots ensure meaningful conversations and insights.

👉 AI Agent SF Meetup #6 - Agents in the Workplace (5PM-8:30PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 A growing community for AI Agent developers, researchers, and builders to share insights and projects. Join talks, demos, and networking focused on agents in real-world applications.

👉 Daytona AI Builders - SF, September '25 @GitHub (5:30PM-8:30PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 A dynamic gathering for AI enthusiasts to connect, share ideas, and explore the latest advancements. Ideal for builders, researchers, and anyone passionate about shaping AI’s future.

👉 MCP After Hours: AI Dev Tools and Talks (5:30PM-7:30PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Live demos, panels, and community connections for AI developers and MCP pioneers. A hands-on evening to explore cutting-edge dev tools and APIs.

👉 Deploying agents and MCPs in production with TypeScript (6PM-8PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 An intimate 15-person workshop on moving MCPs and LLM agents from demos to production. Learn practical workflows with TypeScript and Effect for scalable, reliable systems.

👉 Into the Cluster: The Fabric of AI’s Next Leap (6:30PM-9:30PM)
📍 Santa Clara
💬 EcoSync Foundation convenes experts to accelerate POCs, speed up MVPs, and connect leaders in AI applications. A gathering at the heart of AI’s next big leap.

👉 Counter VI by Counterpart Ventures, part of CVC Week (8AM-10PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Counterpart Ventures’ flagship event brings together the world’s largest gathering of corporate VCs. A full day of programming as part of CVC Week, featuring global investors and industry leaders.

👉 Five types of AI Agents you can build in Airtable (10AM-11AM)
📍 Online
💬 Airtable’s Alex McDonnell shares how to design, chain, and customize AI agents directly inside Airtable apps. Learn practical use cases for automating workflows with precision and context.

👉 Founders Bay Virtual Workshop - AI Coding for Velocity-Obsessed Developers: Code in Parallel (11AM-12PM) [HOSTED BY ME]
📍 Online
💬 A hands-on workshop for developers to unlock efficiency with AI-driven parallel coding. Learn practical workflows and tools to accelerate shipping without sacrificing quality.

👉 n8n Starter Sessions: San Francisco (4PM-9:30PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Learn n8n fundamentals, build your first AI-powered agent, and leave with working automations. Includes swag, licenses, and networking over food and drinks.

👉 Save the Date: Running with Your Brand (4PM-6PM)
📍 Palo Alto
💬 J.P. Morgan hosts a conversation at the intersection of sports, business, and entrepreneurship. Featuring powerhouse women leaders with Stanford Athletics, Rebel Girls, and Uplift Sports.

👉 Pitch Night With TheAgentic (5PM-9PM)
📍 Sunnyvale
💬 Ten founders pitch innovative AI agent startups developed through the Launchpad program. Expect groundbreaking solutions across finance, biotech, cybersecurity, and more.

👉 Founders & Funders Happy Hour! (5PM-8:30AM) [HOSTED BY ME]
📍 San Francisco
💬 A casual happy hour for founders to relax, connect, and share experiences. Meet mentors, investors, and fellow entrepreneurs in a supportive community setting.

👉 Real time Video and GenAI Workshop with VideoDB (5:30PM-8:30PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 A workshop on building real-time multimodal video apps using VideoDB’s AI pipelines. Includes demos, hands-on practice, and networking with video and AI innovators.

👉 MCP Connect with Alpic @Datadog (5:30PM-8:30PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 A meetup for developers and researchers building with the Model Context Protocol. Share tools, best practices, and ideas for advancing agentic AI workflows.

👉 Founders You Should Know Startup Showcase (5:30PM-9PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Ten founders pitch their startups to showcase why you should join their teams. An invite-only event for community members.

👉 MCP Night SF ~ w/ Cloudflare & Jam.dev (6PM-8PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 A night of MCP demos hosted at Cloudflare, featuring cutting-edge projects and flows. Connect with ~100 builders experimenting with the protocol.

👉 Intercom x Chemistry: Fireside Chat w/ Des and Ethan (6PM-8:30PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Intercom’s Des Traynor and Chemistry’s Ethan Kurzweil discuss building AI products and industry shifts. A candid fireside chat on lessons, insights, and what’s ahead in AI.

👉 Draper VC x Berkeley Founders AMA (6PM-8PM)
📍 Berkeley
💬 An AMA with Draper VC focused on student founders and AI investment trends. Learn pitching tips, funding insights, and how to balance startups with school.

👉 LangChain Presents: How To Build An Agent (6PM-8:30PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 LangChain shares their framework for building practical AI agents. Meet fellow builders and learn step-by-step strategies for success.

👉 Rare Diseases & AI Dinner (6:30PM-9:30PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 A curated dinner exploring how AI transforms rare disease detection, treatment, and research. Hosted in the Mission for founders, researchers, and innovators in healthtech.

👉 Founders + Investors Social w/ Precursor Ventures (3AM-5AM)
📍 Palo Alto
💬 A casual evening to connect, mingle, and unwind with fellow founders and investors. Hosted by Beta University and Precursor Ventures, supporting early-stage founders.

👉 IRL in SF ~ Women in Healthtech x The Council: Angel Investing in Healthtech (9AM-11AM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 A morning coffee session exploring angel investing in healthtech. Ideal for operators and professionals interested in backing innovative healthcare companies.

👉 AI x Crypto Expo 2025 [Frontier Tech] (9AM-6PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 A 10-day expo featuring 50+ speakers, founders, and investors at the intersection of AI, blockchain, XR, and frontier tech. Includes hackathons, summits, and networking across multiple Bay Area venues.

👉 Founders B2B AI Breakfast @ Cole Frieman & Mallon LLP (10AM-12:30PM) [HOSTED BY ME]
📍 San Francisco
💬 A private breakfast for B2B founders, investors, and enterprise leaders. Expect curated conversations, insights on AI in productivity, and a chef-prepared meal.

👉 Demo Day - Casa Toscana (4PM-7PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 An afternoon of startup pitches, keynote insights, and a VIP panel. Concludes with an Italian aperitivo for networking and shared perspectives.

👉 AI@Work (4:30PM-7PM)
📍 Pleasanton
💬 A community event focused on real-world AI use cases and ROI. Every demo highlights genuine in-production examples with measurable outcomes.

👉 Llama Lounge 19: The AI Startup Event Series at SAP Palo Alto (5PM-9PM)
📍 Palo Alto
💬 An AI startup showcase featuring lightning talks, pitches, and demos. Brings together founders, investors, and industry leaders for connection and learning.

👉 AI Infra Night with AWS, Exostellar, Unsloth, and Baseten (5PM-8:30PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Learn how to scale AI workloads with AWS, Baseten, Exostellar, and Unsloth. A technical session on optimization, managed inference, and fine-tuning.

👉 Scaling AI Agents: Mastering Costs, ROI & Pricing, hosted with Lightspeed Ventures (5:30PM-9PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Official launch of Paid, the infrastructure powering the AI agent economy. Hosted with Lightspeed Ventures, focused on cost, ROI, and pricing strategies.

👉 Building frontier AI products with Fin x Cognition x Harvey x Perplexity (5:30PM-8:30PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 A deep dive into building frontier AI products, featuring Fin AI, Cognition, Harvey, and Perplexity. Speakers share lessons from model training to real-world integration.

👉 San Francisco Bootstrappers Breakfast Startups at CityGroup Center (In Person) (7AM-8:30AM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 A breakfast gathering for startup founders to share experiences, challenges, and lessons learned. Designed for entrepreneurs who are bootstrapping their businesses.

👉 AI Vibe Coding Summit: Engineers, PMs, Designers (12PM-5:30PM)
📍 Palo Alto
💬 A summit to explore how AI is transforming product, design, engineering, and GTM. Get hands-on with tools and strategies for real-world applications.

👉 After Hours AI World Society Circle SFO Chapter (5PM-8:30PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 An evening of AI-driven conversations, cocktails, and networking. Connect with innovators, founders, and investors.

👉 Ai Developer Camp—featuring Bill Tai, Legendary Investor (5PM-6PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Explore the Gray Whale Platform, a new foundational AI for iterative experimentation and UI/UX interactions. Learn how it accelerates scientific discovery and real-time applications.

👉 GGW Sharks. AI Founders & Investors. (5:30PM-8:30PM)
📍 Palo Alto
💬 A high-energy startup pitch event where AI founders showcase to top-tier investors. Includes open-mic pitching, live feedback, and networking opportunities.

👉 🔥 SF AI Vibe Coding Hackathon (9AM-6:30PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 A one-day hackathon to prototype autonomous AI agents. Build tools that solve real-world problems from devops to health.

👉 Hackathon: Build Your AI Teammate with CodeRabbit & Cline (9AM-5PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 A weekend hackathon to create AI agents that automate workflows and integrate real-world tools. Teams of up to four compete with demos and GitHub repos.

👉 Redwood Research Red Teaming Hackathon (10AM-5PM)
📍 Berkeley
💬 A capture-the-flag hackathon focused on exposing hidden motives in LLMs. Teams test and defend models against nefarious objectives.

👉 Hologram Hackathon (10:30AM-9:30PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 A 16-floor San Francisco tower transforms into a vertical village for frontier tech and creative arts. Featuring AI, robotics, biotech, and immersive community building.

👉 Agents × Infra: The Next AI Stack (1PM-5PM)
📍 Los Altos
💬 A private roundtable on the convergence of AI infrastructure and AI agents. Leaders discuss how infra is enabling and evolving with agent breakthroughs.

👉 Think Swift, Build More: Empowering Agents with RL Toolkits and Infrastructure (2PM-5PM)
📍 San Jose
💬 A technical session hosted by verl, SGLang, Zilliz, and Creao AI on reinforcement learning and infrastructure. Learn about frameworks, training, and billion-scale AI search.

👉 Harrisburg University Hybrid-Virtual Vibe Coding Hackathon with n8n (2PM-7:30PM)
📍 New York
💬 A hybrid hackathon for rapid website and app building—no coding required. Join virtually or in-person to prototype in hours.

Starting a company is exciting—but it can also feel overwhelming. At our recent Founders Bay Virtual Workshop, founders got a practical roadmap for navigating the first steps of forming a business and raising capital with confidence.

Our speakers, Jessica North and Jason Schneiderman, Partners at Perkins Coie LLP, brought their deep experience guiding startups through legal and financial complexity. They shared hard-won insights on how to set up your company right, protect ownership, and avoid the pitfalls that can derail fundraising.

Their message was clear: a solid foundation today makes fundraising and growth far easier tomorrow.

💡 Key Takeaways:

🔹 Delaware C-Corp is Still King
Fast, predictable, and investor-friendly—Delaware C-corps remain the gold standard. Other structures (LLCs, S-corps) often create complications for venture investors.

🔹 Formation Documents Matter
Your certificate of incorporation, bylaws, and organizational resolutions aren’t just paperwork—they’re the backbone of governance, bank accounts, and fundraising. Sloppy or missing documents create costly delays during due diligence.

🔹 Set Ownership & Vesting Early
Founder shares should be issued at formation, with vesting schedules (typically four years with a one-year cliff). This prevents deadlock and protects against a co-founder walking away with too much equity too soon. And don’t forget to file your 83(b) election within 30 days—a must for avoiding painful tax issues.

🔹 Protect Your IP from Day One
Investors will check that everyone who touched your business signed an IP assignment and confidentiality agreement. Without clean IP ownership, deals can fall apart.

🔹 Employment & Equity Must Be Done Right
Use share numbers (not vague “percentages”) when granting equity. Options must be issued at fair market value, with proper board approval and 409A valuations to avoid tax problems.

🔹 Fundraising Tools: SAFEs vs. Notes
SAFEs have become the go-to for pre-seed funding: no interest, no maturity date, and simpler to manage than convertible notes. But founders must understand valuation caps, discounts, and the difference between pre-money and post-money terms to avoid accidental over-dilution.

🔹 Keep It Clean for Investors
From cap tables to NDAs, clean records build investor trust. Even small lapses (like back-dated options or unclear IP ownership) can stall or sink a financing.

💬 “Formation is about protecting your idea and setting the stage for growth. Fundraising is about building trust with investors through clarity and preparation.” – Jessica North, Perkins Coie LLP

Founders left this session with a toolkit for starting strong: the right structure, clean ownership, protected IP, and a smarter approach to raising capital.

Stay tuned for our next Founders Bay workshop—designed to help you launch, fund, and scale with confidence.

View the entire workshop video here: