Upcoming Founder & VC Events Happening This Week

Upcoming Events & Key Factors That Make a Startup Fundable & The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds

Author

Mariane Bekker
June 16, 2024

Table of Contents

Auction & Gala For Women Founders & VCs [Hosted by Me] (Link)

Thursday June 27, 6pm - 9pm

Join us for a fun evening of celebration and networking. I am hosting a gala to celebrate the incredible women in tech.

Elevate SF: Auction and Gala is an extraordinary evening dedicated to celebrating the achievements of women in the technology and startup sectors. This gala offers a platform for anyone from all walks of life to come together, connect, and inspire each other. Whether you're a founder, a student, an industry veteran, or simply curious about the tech world, you're invited to join us for an unforgettable networking, celebration, and empowerment evening.

Networking events are a great way to meet fellow founders and investors. Here are events happening in San Francisco this week for founders.

🗓️ Monday, Jun 17

👉 AI B2B Investors & Networking (4:00 PM - 6:00 PM)
📍 Palo Alto
💬 We are Open Future Forum. We are leaders, investors, founders and engineers based in the Bay Area CA. Come and Meet Featured investors Featured VC: Nick Mitushin from ABRT.VC

👉 Awesome AI Dev Tools - June (5:00 PM - 8:00 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 You probably already know that AI is changing the world. Come learn about some of the awesome AI dev tools being worked on.

👉 In Person: A Robotics Expert, Investor and CEO walk into a Gen-AI Event (5:00 PM - 8:00 PM)
📍 Palo Alto
💬 Please join us for another event on "Future of the World Post Gen-AI" series. This time we dive deep in Robotics.

🗓️ Tuesday, Jun 18

👉 Bay Area Biotech Forum (8:00 AM - 10:30 AM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Biotech is brimming with ideas. The issue comes in moving new drugs from lab bench to patient bedside as the industry tightens its belt. Our panel will delve into the good, the bad and what’s exciting in the Bay Area biotech ecosystem, and two life sciences leaders will talk one-on-one on the opportunities and challenges within two of the Bay Area’s largest organizations.

👉 Code/Collab/Connect Coworking Day (11:00 AM - 4:00 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Join us for a day of coding, collaboration, and connection at the Code/Collab/Connect Coworking Day hosted by MindsDB.

👉 YogAI (4:00 PM - 6:30 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 We're excited to invite you to a unique gathering that's not about AI, blockchain, or the latest startup trends. Instead, we want to bring the San Francisco Bay Area tech community together around something that brings us all closer - our health and wellness.

👉 Berkeley LLM Meetup (5:30 PM - 8:30 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 The Berkeley LLM Meetup aims to connect Berkeley PhD students, faculty, and alumni with people working in or interested in LLMs (in particular systems supporting LLMs) in industry.

👉 Tech Meets Health: Innovating for a Better Tomorrow in Singapore (5:30 PM - 8:00 PM)
📍 San Mateo
💬 Are you a HealthTech Startup Founder or a HealthTech VC on a mission to revolutionize healthcare or a Professional looking for opportunities in Healthcare? This is your exclusive invitation to unlock the potential of the Singapore public healthcare ecosystem!

👉 Solana Summer: Mingle & Network with the SF Solana Community (5:30 PM - 7:00 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Come join Solayer, Nitro and the Race Capital team, for an evening of food + drink, mingling, networking, & connecting over everything Solana.

👉 AI Safety Meetup w Cloudflare, MLCommons, BreezeML (5:30 PM - 8:30 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 June edition of the monthly academic salon discussing all aspects under the critical topic of AI safety.

👉 The AI Hustle: Happy Hour for Startup Founders & VCs (6:00 PM - 8:00 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Calling all AI founders in San Francisco! Join us for an evening of networking, learning, and fun as we connect with fellow founders, explore fundraising strategies, and discover the latest advancements in AI.

🗓️ Wednesday, Jun 19

👉 Founders and Entrepreneurs Weekly Mixer (5:00 PM - 5:00 PM)
📍 Redwood City
💬 So, join us every Wednesday at The Hub, Redwood City for a chance to socialize with other startup founders & entrepreneurs. It's loosely hosted but "Founder Institute" members will attend regularly. The event is unrestricted (other than those 21 & over!) and there will be no requirement to join any organization. We plan to add presentations and round table discussions to the format for some of the mixers, but the basic format is a meet and greet opportunity.

👉 Silicon Valley Ai Startup Pitch Night (5:00 PM - 7:00 PM)
📍 Palo Alto
💬 Join Ai Founders & VCs in Palo Alto for our exclusive Ai Pitch extravaganza! Last event we had: 100+ startups registered, 20+ investors, 8-10 Startup Pitches.

👉 Tech & Business Networking San Francisco (6:00 PM - 9:00 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Meet and network with Tech & Business Professionals and Startup Founders. Pitch to the audience with your project and seize your chance to dive into the world of business, technology, and venture capital.

👉 RAG WARS - Advancing AI: Enhancing LLMs and RAG for Improved Performance & Reliability (6:00 PM - 9:00 PM)
📍 Palo Alto
💬 Join Us for a Dynamic Event (Food will be served 6-7 pm)! This meetup explores advanced techniques to enhance the utility and reliability of Large Language Models (LLMs) across diverse applications.

👉 AI in Filecoin Use Cases (6:30 PM - 8:30 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Join us for an exciting exploration into the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and the decentralized storage network, Filecoin. This event brings together innovators, developers, and industry leaders to discuss and demonstrate how decentralized data storage, management, and retrieval on the network will facilitate open source AI.

🗓️ Thursday, Jun 20

👉 Queering Entrepreneurship (1:00 PM - 5:00 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Join us in San Francisco on June 20th for the 5th Annual StartOut Equity Summit! Delve into crucial conversations surrounding intersectionality within the queer community, address the systemic inequities faced by LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs, and celebrate the achievements of StartOut entrepreneurs.

👉 Crest Collective Summit (3:30 PM - 7:00 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Join us for the Crest Collective Summit, an exclusive gathering designed for founders, investors, and industry partners exploring the transformative potential of Fractional CxOs for startups looking to raise Series A. We will discuss the latest trends and opportunities in the fractional executive and funding space.

👉 Startup Pitch & Networking (4:00 PM - 7:00 PM)
📍 Palo Alto
💬 Meet and get acquainted with Startup Founders, Business Professionals and Investors. Pitch to the audience with your project and seize your chance to dive into the world of business, technology, and venture capital.

👉 Own Your Reputation & Attract Opportunities: Women in Tech Workshop and Networking (5:30 PM - 8:00 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Join a curated group of powerhouse women for this hands-on workshop and networking event. Whether you want to grow your personal brand and be recognized in your industry, get promoted within your organization, or never have to worry about cold-applying again, this workshop is for you.

👉 National Security Tech Thursdays Hosted by Shield Capital (5:30 PM - 8:00 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Come join the growing community of entrepreneurs, investors, and government professionals interested in discussing the nexus of tech and national security here in SF!

👉 Women Tech Meetup w/Fidelity Private Shares (5:30 PM - 8:00 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 San Francisco!! Calling all female founders—pre-seed, seed, and Series A—to join our next Women in Tech Meetup w/Fidelity Private Shares on June 20th 💥

👉 Inkle x Brex: Fundraising, Finance & Mixer (6:00 PM - 8:00 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Founders, join us to discuss fundraising & finance and for a mixer, in downtown San Francisco!

👉 Extending Your Data Platform (6:00 PM - 8:00 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 This meetup is for engineers passionate about the various ways they can extend their Data Platform, including Enterprise and AI use cases. Whether you're a developer, a product manager, or simply a data enthusiast, come to network and hear insights from the teams behind Airbyte, Teradata, and Vectara.

👉 Conscious AI Meetup (6:00 PM - 9:30 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 We would like to welcome you to the next installment of the Salon of the California Institute of Machine Consciousness!

🗓️ Friday, Jun 21

👉 Bootstrappers Breakfast for San Francisco Startups (9:00 AM - 10:30 AM)
📍 San Jose
💬 At a Bootstrappers Breakfast® we have serious conversations about growing a business based on internal cashflow and organic profit: this is for founders who are actively bootstrapping a startup.

👉 Pitch Day! (4:30 PM - 8:00 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 We will have a relaxed and casual Pitch Day and a panel of speakers discussing challenges of founders as seed and pre-seed on June 21st!

👉 Gen AI Builders East Bay Happy Hour (5:00 PM - 8:00 PM)
📍 Pleasanton
💬 null

🗓️ Saturday, Jun 22

👉 Useless Fun AI Build-A-Thon (9:00 AM - 6:00 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 Developers are kinesthetic learners. We grow our skills by creating. Come build silly projects together, purely because they give you joy. Forget "solutions." Forget saving the world. Welcome to the Useless Fun AI Build-A-Thon. Sponsored by Haystack/deepset.ai, Cloudflare, and New Relic.

👉 UC Berkeley AI Hackathon (9:00 AM - 6:00 PM)
📍 Berkeley
💬 Over 1,000 hackers from around the world will come together to revolutionize the AI landscape. Join us for 36 hours of hacking and more than $100,000 in prizes.

👉 Founders Running Club :: Easy 5-10km Run + Talks (9:30 AM - 11:30 AM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 We run 5K and 10K with a few pace groups available, or you can choose your own pace and cover custom distance. The most important thing is that we start together and finish at the café. We run at conversational pace, chat along the way, and then we grab coffee together and continue networking.

👉 ai in motion - lab automation 24hr hardware hack (9:30 AM - 2:00 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 We're bringing together the best of the bay area ai, hardware, and bio communities to explore solving challenges in lab automation.

👉 AI21 Jamba Hackathon (11:00 AM - 8:00 PM)
📍 Hillsborough
💬 Join us on June 22nd and lead the future of AI innovation with the unmatched power and efficiency of Jamba. Get ready to hack, innovate, and push the boundaries of what’s possible in AI!

🗓️ Sunday, Jun 23

👉 Ai Salon: Trustworthy AI Futures #2 (2:00 PM - 5:00 PM)
📍 San Francisco
💬 AI is a great experiment of immense impact. We must steward its creation and application such that it benefits us all. Day by day we will create that future.

Are you looking for an accountant for your startup?

Founders Bay partnered with MontPac to offer you discounted Accounting Services starting at $40/hour.

MontPac, founded in 2006 is a full-scope accounting, financial management, and business process outsourcing service provider to startups.

MontPac management has the combined experience of over 50 years in accounting, financial management and business process outsourcing (BPO) services with its operating center strategically located in the Philippines, home to highly qualified and skilled accountants.

If you’re interested, book time with them and let them know that Founders Bay referred you

Key Factors That Make a Startup Fundable

By Mariane Bekker

Here are the main factors that investors are looking for to determine whether to invest in your startup. While the specific criteria may vary depending on the investor and industry, several key elements consistently play an inportant role in making a startup fundable.

1. Traction

Demonstrating early traction is important for investors. It shows that your product or service is gaining interest and adoption in the market. This can be measured by metrics such as user growth, engagement, customer acquisition, or revenue.

2. Team

Investors pay close attention to the team behind the startup. They look for a strong, capable, and committed team with relevant expertise, a track record of success, and the ability to execute the business plan effectively.

3. Market Opportunity

Investors are interested in startups that target a large and growing market with significant potential. They want to see a clear understanding of the market dynamics, a unique value proposition, and a competitive advantage.

4. Unique Value Proposition

Having a clear and compelling value proposition that differentiates your startup from competitors is crucial. Investors want to see that your product or service solves a significant problem or meets a critical need in a way that stands out in the market.

5. Scalability

Investors are interested in startups with the potential for rapid and scalable growth. They want to see a business model that can scale efficiently and capture a substantial market share.

6. Revenue and Monetization Strategy

While revenue is not always a prerequisite for early-stage startups, having a clear monetization strategy and a path to profitability is important. It demonstrates that your business has a viable revenue model and a plan for sustainable growth.

7. Competitive Advantage

Investors look for startups with a competitive advantage that gives them an edge in the market. This can be through intellectual property, unique technology, strategic partnerships, or other factors that create barriers to entry for potential competitors.

Remember, different investors may prioritize these factors differently, and the specific requirements may vary based on the stage of the startup. It's essential to understand your target investors and tailor your pitch to address their specific criteria.

The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds

After a few slow weeks, funding activity picked up slightly with some notable big deals. Leading the week was an autonomous driving startup—an industry some had considered stagnant. AI, biotech, space tech, and cybersecurity also saw substantial raises, hinting at a potential summer resurgence.

  1. Cruise, $850M, Autonomous Cars

    • Sector: Autonomous Cars

    • Funding: $850M

    • Details: San Francisco-based Cruise secured $850 million in funding from General Motors. Despite past challenges, including halting its self-driving taxi program, Cruise is restarting its driving programs in Phoenix, Dallas, and Houston. Founded in 2013, Cruise has raised more than $10 billion.

  2. AlphaSense, $650M, Artificial Intelligence

    • Sector: Artificial Intelligence

    • Funding: $650M

    • Details: New York-based AlphaSense raised $650 million in a round co-led by Viking Global Investors and BDT & MSD Partners. The AI-driven market intelligence platform also acquired Tegus for $930 million. Founded in 2011, AlphaSense has now raised $1.4 billion.

  3. Santa Ana Bio, $125M, Biotech

    • Sector: Biotech

    • Funding: $125M

    • Details: Santa Ana Bio, based in Alameda, California, raised a $125 million Series B led by GV. The startup focuses on developing therapies for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Founded in 2021, it has raised $168 million.

  4. Alzheon, $100M, Biotech

    • Sector: Biotech

    • Funding: $100M

    • Details: Framingham, Massachusetts-based Alzheon secured $100 million in Series E funding led by Alerce Medical Technology Partners. The company is developing treatments for Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative disorders. Founded in 2013, Alzheon has raised $237 million.

  5. Apex, $95M, Space Tech

    • Sector: Space Tech

    • Funding: $95M

    • Details: Los Angeles-based Apex raised $95 million in a Series B led by XYZ Venture Capital and CRV. The startup focuses on mass-producing satellite buses. Founded in 2022, Apex has raised $122 million.

  6. Cyberhaven, $88M, Cybersecurity

    • Sector: Cybersecurity

    • Funding: $88M

    • Details: San Jose-based Cyberhaven raised $88 million in a Series C round led by Adams Street Partners and Khosla Ventures. The data detection and response platform saw a 200% growth in new bookings last year. Founded in 2016, Cyberhaven has raised $137 million.

  7. InduPro, $85M, Biotech

    • Sector: Biotech

    • Funding: $85M

    • Details: Seattle-based InduPro closed an $85 million Series A co-led by The Column Group and Vida Ventures. The startup develops therapeutics for cancer and autoimmune diseases. Founded in 2022, this is its first announced round.

  8. Enveda Biosciences, $50M, Biotech

    • Sector: Biotech

    • Funding: $50M

    • Details: Boulder-based Enveda Biosciences raised $50 million. The company uses AI to engineer medicines from plants and includes Microsoft as a new investor. Founded in 2019, Enveda has raised $230 million.

  9. Canary Technologies, $50M, Hospitality

    • Sector: Hospitality

    • Funding: $50M

    • Details: San Francisco-based Canary Technologies secured a $50 million Series C led by Insight Partners. The management platform for hotels has raised nearly $100 million. Founded in 2017.

  10. Posh AI, $45M, Artificial Intelligence

    • Sector: Artificial Intelligence

    • Funding: $45M

    • Details: Boston-based Posh AI raised $45 million in a round led by Curql. The conversational AI platform serves the banking industry. Founded in 2018, Posh AI has raised $73 million.

Source: Crunchbase 

CEO, Founders Bay

Hi! I'm Mariane Bekker, a tech executive with over a decade of experience building high-performing engineering teams at leading startups such as New Relic and Mindbody. I've led engineering through 5 acquisitions and 1 IPO. 

I recently founded Founders Bay, a venture studio for early-stage founders with a mission of empowering women founders to grow their startups. Learn more: www.foundersbay.com