The Insider's Guide to SF Tech Week 2026: The 37 Best Events, Day by Day

Updated October 5, 2026.

Here's how most people do SF Tech Week. They land on Monday, October 5, open the official calendar, see 1,832 events, and start clicking "apply" on anything with a rooftop. By Wednesday they've been to six happy hours, met forty people whose names they can't remember, and pitched nobody who could write a check. Then they fly home and tell everyone Tech Week was "fine."

Don't do that.

Tech Week isn't a conference. SF Tech Week 2026, part of Tech Week by a16z, runs Monday, October 5 to Sunday, October 11, all over San Francisco. It's 1,832 separate events, official events and side events alike, and the hosts decide who gets in. Nearly all of them are free. But about 88 percent need your application approved before you can walk through the door. Allen Smith, a managing partner at Musa Capital, said it best last month:

Nobody 'attends' Tech Week, you pick your rooms, and the quality of your [week] is decided by which ones.

So that's the whole game. Pick the right rooms. And it turns out the right rooms are a short list.

We went through every listing on the calendar and asked one question. Is anybody in this room going to write a check, or take one? Only 37 made the cut.

If you're a founder or an investor and you only have room for five SF Tech Week events, make it The Pitch LIVE on Monday afternoon (that one's ours), the Fireworks x a16z kickoff on Monday night, MATCH HOUSE on Wednesday, the Claude Founder Salon on Thursday, and the a16z speedrun AI Faire on Friday. The other 32 are below, day by day, with a fork wherever two rooms clash.

The catch... the good rooms fill up fast. So apply today.

The 37 best SF Tech Week 2026 events at a glance

Jump to a day: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

Here's the whole week in one list. Every line links to the write-up below, which is where the real information is: who's in the room, how to get in, and how past editions went. Times are when our route gets you there, which isn't always when the event starts. Where the two differ, the line also gives the event's hours.

1. Mon, 12:00 PM: Zero Day: Physical AI + Security Seed Pitch and Live Demo (SoMa). RSVPs now closed, free.
2. Mon, 3:30 PM: The Pitch LIVE at SF Tech Week (Dogpatch). Sold out. This one's ours.
3. Mon, 7:15 PM: Fireworks x a16z Official Tech Week Kickoff (Mission Bay, runs 6:00 to 10:00 PM). Apply, free.
4. Mon, 7:30 PM, Plan B: The Founders & Funders Showcase (SoMa, runs 6:00 to 9:00 PM). Apply, limited guest list.
5. Tue, 9:30 AM, founder fork: Early-Stage B2B Tech Founders & Funders Breakfast (SoMa). Apply, free.
6. Tue, 9:30 AM, builder fork: Google for Startups: Engineering 10x with Dr. Astro Teller and Google DeepMind (SoMa). Apply, free, referral code.
7. Tue, 12:00 PM: Founder Lunch Club with Fin and Stripe (Dogpatch). Apply, free.
8. Tue, 4:00 PM, founder fork: Meet SF's Early Stage Founders and Investors (Downtown). Apply, free.
9. Tue, 5:00 PM, founder fork: The Brave New World of Startup Fundraising (One Embarcadero Center). Apply, free, limited.
10. Tue, 6:30 PM: AWS x NVIDIA AI Pitch Competition (Downtown). RSVP, free, reviewed.
11. Tue, 5:00 PM, Plan B: SF Pitch Night by the AI Collective (FiDi). Apply, free.
12. Tue, 6:00 PM, Plan B: Founders & Funders VC Reverse Pitch (address on approval). Apply, free.
13. Wed, 9:00 AM, founder fork: Unprompted: Founders Building the Next Thing People Do for Fun (FiDi). Apply, limited.
14. Wed, 10:00 AM, investor fork: Investor Brunch at MATCH HOUSE (Downtown). Invite and approval only.
15. Wed, 12:00 PM: MATCH HOUSE San Francisco (SoMa). Apply, free.
16. Wed, 12:30 PM, international founder fork: Immigrant Founder Pitch (Georgian Innovation Hub). RSVP, from $30.
17. Wed, 6:00 PM: Pre-Seed VC + Founder Mixer (Embarcadero). Apply.
18. Wed, 8:00 PM: Poker After Dark (SoMa). Apply, free.
19. Thu, 8:30 AM, raising fork: The Raise Ready Breakfast (FiDi). Apply, free.
20. Thu, 9:00 AM, B2B fork: CxO Roundtable: How Enterprise Really Buys AI (Jackson Square). Apply.
21. Thu, 11:00 AM: The Search for Durable Advantage in AI (FiDi). Apply.
22. Thu, 1:45 PM: Claude Founder Salon (Rincon Hill). Request to join on Luma.
23. Thu, 5:00 PM: Fenwick x Databricks x a16z Founders & Investors Happy Hour (FiDi, runs 4:00 to 6:00 PM). Apply.
24. Thu, 7:15 PM: Who Will Own the Future? with ARK Invest (FiDi, runs 6:00 to 10:00 PM). Apply.
25. Thu, 6:00 PM, Plan B: Pitch Roast Live (Mission). RSVP, from $20.
26. Fri, 9:00 AM: Pitch or NGMI: 20 Startups, 2 Minutes, One Winner (SoMa). Apply, free.
27. Fri, 12:30 PM: a16z speedrun AI Faire (Jackson Square, runs 10:30 AM to 5:00 PM). Apply, free.
28. Fri, 3:30 PM, investors only: EWOR Demo Day (Jackson Square). Apply.
29. Fri, 5:00 PM, founder fork: Human Performance, Capital & Innovation (The Commonwealth Club). RSVP on Luma, free.
30. Fri, 6:00 PM, investor fork: The Golden Hour: LPs, GPs and Family Offices (Salesforce Tower, runs 5:00 to 9:00 PM). Apply.
31. Fri, 8:00 PM: a16z x Unicorner x Notion: The Official Afterparty (Lower Nob Hill). Apply, 21 and over.
32. Sat, 11:00 AM: Behind the Angel Check: A Fireside Chaat (North Beach). Apply.
33. Sat, 1:20 PM: Frontier in Action: Physical AI Demo Day (SoMa, runs 1:00 to 5:00 PM). Apply.
34. Sat, 5:30 PM: The Robot Contest + Afterparty (Mid-Market). Apply, free.
35. Sun, 9:00 AM, builders: SpeedHacks: The Official speedrun Hackathon (Jackson Square). Apply.
36. Sun, 10:00 AM, builders: Shopping 3.0: The AI Commerce Hackathon with Arcade (Union Square). Apply, now full.
37. Sun, 2:00 PM, everyone else: VC/Founders BBQ (Showplace Square). Waitlist on Luma, free.

Monday, October 5, 2026

Monday is the easy day, and the only one you can't mess up. Everyone has just landed, nobody's hungover yet, and the two rooms that matter are a short walk apart in Dogpatch and Mission Bay. The job today is simple. Find out who else flew in, and end the night on the a16z rooftop. The lunch picks are a warm-up.

12:00 PM: Zero Day: Physical AI + Security Seed Pitch and Live Demo (DG717, 717 Market St, SoMa)

• Who is in the room: Three named investors on the panel and the live-mentoring bench: Kosuke Yusa (GP, DG Incubation), Nikos Liodakis (Partner, Transpose Platform) and Edgar Chiu (Managing Partner, SparkLabs Taiwan). About five founders pitching with live demos.
• Get in: RSVPs are now closed on Partiful. Free. "Closed room, 150 people." The Google Form for pitch applications is closed too. The founders picked to pitch bring a one-pager and a working demo, three minutes on the clock.
• Best for: Physical AI, robotics and security founders. Investors in those sectors.

Nothing on this route needs you before noon on Monday. So land, drop your bag, walk to Market Street, find a coffee, and answer the emails you ignored on the plane.

Doors open at noon. The panel starts at 12:40. And the host promises "no VC-speak, no hype," which is a bold promise for a VC panel. The demo pitches with live mentoring run from 1:20 to 2:20. Then there's a Japanese sushi tasting at 2:20.

And here's where you have to make a call. The Pitch LIVE opens its doors at 3:30 in Dogpatch. So leave by 2:45. You'll miss some sushi. The pitches are done by then anyway. Take the T Third from Market Street to 20th Street. About 30 minutes door to door, or 15 in a car. That gets you to The Pearl by 3:15.

Track record: First edition, so nobody's been. What you're getting is a corporate VC with a Tokyo checkbook, a room capped at 150, and three investors who take meetings. On a Monday, that's rarer than it sounds.

Plan B if you're not on the Zero Day list: the OnlyExit Investor Founder Mixer, 12:30 to 2:30, no panel and no deck, with 872 on the list. It's run by a Seattle hacker house and reality show, and the address only goes to approved guests.

3:30 PM: The Pitch LIVE at SF Tech Week (The Pearl, 601 19th St, Dogpatch)

• Who is in the room: Three investors on the panel: Eric Bahn of Hustle Fund, Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures and Arielle Zuckerberg of Long Journey Ventures. Three founders pitching them for real money. Then a founder mixer.
• Get in: [Monday, October 5 update] Tickets sold out. They were $25 general admission on the event page. No application. Doors open at 3:30, taping at 4:00, mixer after, out by 7:00. Presented by Engine.
• Best for: Founders who want to watch three real pitches go all the way to a yes or a no, then talk to the people who gave them. Investors who want to see how Eric, Charles and Arielle decide.

For nine years our show has worked the same way. A founder walks into a room with investors, pitches, and walks out with commitments or without them. We record all of it. On Monday we're doing that live in front of you at The Pearl. The three founders on stage were booked weeks ago through the show's normal process. So no, you can't grab the mic. But you can sit ten feet from a seed investor while they decide. Then stay for the mixer, where the whole room is founders and the panel is still there. You won't find it on the official calendar. It's ours, and tickets are on our site. And if you want to pitch on the show someday... apply here.

Track record: We've taped live shows before, but this is our first at Tech Week, so there's no last year to quote. Ask us on Tuesday.

7:15 PM: Fireworks x a16z Official Tech Week Kickoff (rooftop, Mission Bay)

• Who is in the room: "Founders, engineers, investors, and operators." 1,223 on the list.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Free. Runs 6:00 to 10:00 PM. Bring a layer. It's a rooftop in October.
• Best for: Everyone. It's the official opener.

Here's the walk. The Pearl lets out at 7:00. Mission Bay is up Third Street, 10 to 20 minutes on foot depending on where the rooftop is. No cab. You'll arrive around 7:15 with almost three hours of party left. Live music, open air, skyline views. Tracy Massaro, who runs partnerships at a16z, described it on LinkedIn as "Open-air, live music, a few surprises, and a tightly curated room." She's the one approving the list. So take the word curated seriously, and apply now.

Track record: Almost nobody could get in. The 2024 and 2025 kickoffs were invite-only, held in SoMa next to a16z's office on Townsend Street. This is the first year the opener takes applications. Which is why 1,223 people are already on it. For scale, IBM Ventures said its 2025 cocktail event with a16z speedrun "drew more than 1,700 people to the waitlist." The a16z brand does that.

Plan B, 7:30 PM: The Founders & Funders Showcase (Quincy, 555 Bryant St, SoMa)

• Who is in the room: "200+ founders and investors," five selected companies presenting, GPs and LPs. 1,648 on the list.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Free for Musa Labs members. "Limited guest registration" for everyone else. Runs 6:00 to 9:00 PM.
• Best for: Fintech and enterprise founders, underrepresented founders, and the investors who back them.

If the kickoff doesn't approve you, this is the other rooftop. From Dogpatch it's 20 minutes by car, or the T Third from 20th Street to Fourth and Brannan, a block from the door. So you'd land around 7:30. Musa Capital hosts it with Collide Capital and 726 Capital. Collide closed a $95M second fund in April, which means fresh money on the rooftop. Allen Smith of Musa says the firm built seven events for this Tech Week and calls this one the opener. The catch? The page only says the five-company showcase happens "mid-evening," with no set time. So at 7:30 you might walk in on it, or on the "no panels, no pitch lines, just density" part. Which is fine. That's the part you came for anyway.

If you only do one thing today: the kickoff. Apply before you finish reading this.

Back to the full schedule

Tuesday, October 6, 2026

Tuesday is the day you came for if you're raising. Six seed funds throw a cocktail party, Foundersuite's fundraising panel overlaps it, and the AWS x NVIDIA pitch competition, with real credits on the line, follows both. That's also the problem. The good rooms all open Downtown between 4:00 and 6:30, so you'll have to pick. We'll help. The morning is easy, though: breakfast in SoMa, lunch in Dogpatch, and back Downtown by 4:00.

9:30 AM, founder fork: Early-Stage B2B Tech Founders & Funders Breakfast (SoMa)

• Who is in the room: Pre-seed through Series A B2B founders and "investors actively backing or looking to meet early-stage B2B founders." A "curated, balanced mix," per the host.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Free. Runs to 11:30. No plus-ones. "Registration does not guarantee attendance."
• Best for: B2B founders who want investor conversations, not talks.

Forum runs this breakfast in every Tech Week city, and the SF edition fills. Last year's room had 287 on the list. The year before, it closed at capacity. The whole pitch is a balanced room. The host caps the list "to maintain the quality of interactions." Translation: the list is short on purpose.

Track record: The host's own recap from the Toronto edition in May says it all: "we put founders to the test and asked them to distill what they're building into five words. Some crushed it. Some could not get close." Have your five words ready.

9:30 AM, builder fork: Google for Startups: Engineering 10x with Dr. Astro Teller and Google DeepMind (SoMa)

• Who is in the room: Astro Teller, who runs X, Google's moonshot lab, Derek Andersen of Bevy and Startup Grind, Paige Bailey of Google DeepMind, plus founders from Pupper and Surge AI. Early-stage founders, CTOs and builders.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Free. Runs to noon. "Use your referral code from your Google point of contact or partner to ensure that you can get streamlined acceptance."
• Best for: Technical founders. Not a deal room.

We'd take the breakfast. Pick this instead only if you're building something hard and want to hear the Captain of Moonshots talk about it. No investors are named. And read that access line again. A referral code from Google gets you "streamlined acceptance." Everyone else goes to the back of the review pile. So apply early.

Track record: New format this year. Google's 2025 Tech Week event was an evening with Sequoia at The Stadium. This is a two-day hub with an "Expert Lounge to stress-test your architecture with engineers." Day two on Wednesday is with NVIDIA.

12:00 PM: Founder Lunch Club with Fin and Stripe (Dogpatch)

• Who is in the room: 79 on the list. "We're keeping it small by design." No speakers, no agenda.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Free. About two hours, based on the sister editions.
• Best for: Founders who want a quiet table with other founders.

The breakfast ends at 11:30. Dogpatch is 15 to 20 minutes from SoMa by car or the T. That's lunch. From the Google fork, the last panel runs to noon, so you'll walk in around 12:20. The hosts run this in every Tech Week city (Boston had 81 on the list in May). And the point is the opposite of everything else on Tuesday: "eat, chat, chill, share notes, and re-energize before getting back to the Tech Week chaos." Stripe people will be at the table. That's as close to an investor as this lunch gets.

Track record: No prior SF edition, and the hosts don't publish recaps.

If you don't get in: Claude Founder House, Anthropic's three-day base camp at Terra Gallery, 511 Harrison St, runs a "Raising your next round" panel at 1:30 PM with investors from Lightspeed, Sequoia and ICONIQ. But applications closed before we published, so this only works if you already applied. Anthropic is streaming it for everyone else.

4:00 PM, founder fork: Meet SF's Early Stage Founders and Investors (Downtown)

• Who is in the room: Pre-seed and seed founders and the six funds hosting: Bling Capital, Costanoa Ventures, Bullpen Capital, SF1, Defy Partners and NextView Ventures. 397 on the list.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Free. Runs to 7:00 PM.
• Best for: Pre-seed and seed founders who want six funds in one room with a drink in hand.

Back from Dogpatch by 4:00. Six seed funds hosting a cocktail party is the simplest kind of good room. The people with the checkbooks sent the invite, so they'll be there. No panel, no stage. This ran last year too, on the Monday, in Rincon Hill.

Track record: No one wrote up the 2025 edition. Which tells you something about cocktail parties. So the scoop is the host list above. Pick the two funds that match your stage and sector, and find their partners early, before the room fills.

5:00 PM, founder fork: The Brave New World of Startup Fundraising (One Embarcadero Center, 32nd floor)

• Who is in the room: Itamar Novick (Recursive Ventures), Bella Garcia-Camargo (Conviction Partners), Clayton Petty (Gradient VC) and Clayton Bryan (Currents VC). The title promises Hustle Fund too, but those four are the names on the page. 426 on the list.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Free. "SPACE IS LIMITED." Guest list announced before the event. Foundersuite customers get priority.
• Best for: Founders raising seed in the next six months who want to hear how 2026 rounds close, from the people closing them.

This is the other side of the fork. It overlaps the cocktail party, so pick one. The cocktail party is where you meet the funds. This one's where you find out what they're going to ask you. Four investors, one moderator who hosts a podcast about raising money, lite bites, and the Bay out the window.

Track record: The host's number is the scoop: "last year we had over 600+ startups apply for 150 spots." Simen Torp Ruud, a venture analyst at Fundingstack, repeated it on LinkedIn in September: "That's the room we're building again on October 6th." One in four got in! Apply now. And if you use Foundersuite, say so.

6:30 PM: AWS x NVIDIA AI Pitch Competition (Downtown)

• Who is in the room: Six AI startups pitching. Judges from AWS, NVIDIA "and top local VC firms," unnamed. "Founders, investors, and leaders from across the AI/ML, cloud infrastructure, and deep tech ecosystem."
• Get in: RSVP on Partiful. Free. "A confirmed RSVP is required to attend," and the sister listing says RSVPs are reviewed weekly. Founders can still apply to pitch through the form on the page. First prize is up to $125k in AWS credits.
• Best for: Investors who want to see six vetted AI startups in an hour. Founders who want to see what a winning pitch looks like.

Whichever fork you took, leave at 6:15. AWS hasn't posted the address yet, so check the page before you go. If it's more than 15 minutes away, leave earlier. Six startups, rapid-fire, a panel, a deliberation, a winner. The series has run in Vancouver, New York, Austin and at NVIDIA's GTC. And the credits are real: GlüxKind took the $125k top prize in Vancouver in 2025.

Track record: From the GTC edition in March, the Tynapse team wrote that after their pitch "a Pear VC partner who had been on the judging panel came up to us directly" to ask whether the seed round was still open. That's what happens when the judges are investors. Nobody has written up an SF edition, because this is the first one.

Plan B, 5:00 PM: SF Pitch Night by the AI Collective (9Zero, 350 California St, FiDi)

• Who is in the room: Six "institutionally backed" AI startups, meaning they've already raised from a fund, pitching to a VC and operator panel. "Over 250+" expected. 508 on the list.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Free. Runs 5:00 to 9:00 PM. Physical ID required. No plus-ones. The list is enforced.
• Best for: Investors. Pre-seed founders can watch but can't pitch.

If AWS doesn't confirm you, this is the same idea in FiDi with a longer runway. The AI Collective calls it "the largest investor-forward event AI Collective has ever produced." Pitches, moderated investor questions, live voting, then structured networking. Arrive late if you took a fork. The networking runs to 9:00.

Track record: Tim Szalay, founder of ABYA Genomics, on LinkedIn last November: "Some of our most important intros came from people I met randomly at 9pm demo nights. Such as The AI Collective." The AI Collective ran a pitch night at Tech Week last year too, with Startup Grind, and the series runs monthly in SF the rest of the year.

Plan B, 6:00 PM: Founders & Funders VC Reverse Pitch (address on approval)

• Who is in the room: Pre-seed and seed founders who are raising, and the VCs pitching them.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Free. Runs to 8:00 PM. The host says it gets "300+ founder and investor applications per event" and approves "only a fraction."
• Best for: Founders who want investors to explain their thesis, check size and what they look for, out loud, before the founder says a word.

The format flips the room. Eight to ten VCs stand up and pitch the founders. Then everyone walks up and talks. There's a second SF edition on Thursday afternoon. But our Thursday is already full, so take this one. The VCs start pitching at 6:30, so that's the time to beat if you're coming from a fork.

Track record: Brandon Lee, a payments founder in Atlanta, after September's edition there: "I just watched a room full of investors pitch founders instead of the other way around." And: "Format like this works because it removes the awkward power dynamic of a traditional pitch." Kimmy Paluch, a general partner at Beta Boom, from the Boston stage: "Love this format of turning the tables on us VCs."

If you only do one thing today: the Foundersuite panel if you're raising this quarter, the six-fund cocktail party if you're raising next year.

Back to the full schedule

Wednesday, October 7, 2026

Wednesday has 459 events on the calendar, the most of any day, and the trick is to ignore almost all of them. We're sending you to four rooms, and one of them is five hours long. That's MATCH HOUSE, and it's the anchor. The rest of the day is about getting to it with something left in the tank, and getting out of it with names you'll still remember on Thursday.

9:00 AM, founder fork: Unprompted: Founders Building the Next Thing People Do for Fun (FiDi)

• Who is in the room: Vanessa Larco of Premise VC, formerly a partner at NEA, moderating Lucky Zhang (Sekai), Sophia Xing (Plot Party), Coco Chen (Dream Voyage) and Ryan So (Coverstar). 159 on the list.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. "Space is limited." Runs to 11:00. Official listing.
• Best for: Consumer founders. Larco has been saying 2026 is the year of the consumer since January, and this is her panel.

Four consumer founders with real products, a VC who used to write checks at NEA asking the questions, and a law firm buying the coffee. It ends at 11:00, which leaves an hour for the 20-minute walk to Harrison Street and the main event.

Track record: Fenwick ran three panels at Tech Week last year, on AI law, inference and AI for science. This is the first one about fun. New theme, same room style, with named founders and drinks.

10:00 AM, investor fork: Investor Brunch at MATCH HOUSE (Downtown)

• Who is in the room: "VC, angels, family offices, and LP's." Investors only. 56 on the list, 4 of 60 spots left.
• Get in: Request an invite on Partiful. "Invite and approval only." Runs to noon.
• Best for: Investors who want to meet the other investors before the founders show up.

Founders will be declined, so don't bother. Investors, request now. Four seats won't last long. It ends at noon, right when MATCH HOUSE opens its doors.

12:00 PM: MATCH HOUSE San Francisco (715 Harrison St, SoMa)

• Who is in the room: "Founders, investors, and operators," hand-picked and matched by stage and thesis before the day starts. The host's 2026 season so far: 400+ founders and 200+ investors across four cities.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Free. Runs to 5:00 PM. If you want to enter the AI and HealthTech pitch competition, say so when you register.
• Best for: Founders and investors who'd rather have five pre-matched conversations than fifty random ones.

This is the day's anchor, and it's new to SF. Doors open at noon. Panels at 1:00. At 2:00 two things start at once. The pitch competition takes the stage. And MATCH HOUR begins, where the Boop app pairs you one-on-one with the people you were matched with when you applied. Happy hour at 4:00. The host's line is "Just the right people in the room, matched into conversations that actually go somewhere." And for once, the host has numbers.

Track record: MATCH HOUSE launched in December 2025, so last year doesn't exist, but 2026 does. Austin in March drew 1,400 applications and more than 500 people. New York in June took over the Mr. Purple rooftop with, per Lane Spurlock of PlayHouse Ventures, "400+ founders, VCs, operators." Across the season the host reports 3,600+ applications, about 1,000 attendees checked in, 2,000+ matches made, and "15 of 18 surveyed attendees made a connection they're following up on." Eighteen people is a small survey. Still.

Nikolai Pyke runs Capsignal and went to the New York one. Security gave him the wrong lanyard, so he spent the day wearing "Investor" instead of "Founder." His review: "Turns out that it's a great strategy when you are looking for startups who are raising. A lot of inbound that day." Wear your real lanyard. But note what it tells you about who's in the room.

12:30 PM, international founder fork: Immigrant Founder Pitch (Georgian Innovation Hub, 135 Main St, 8th floor)

• Who is in the room: Four judges who only back immigrant founders: Manan Mehta (Unshackled), Eugene Malobrodsky (One Way), Alexander Zemlyak (Geek Ventures) and Nick Bilogorskiy (Dnipro.VC). 250 seats.
• Get in: RSVP on Partiful. Founder and investor tickets are $30. Runs to 3:00 PM. To pitch, RSVP first, then apply through the form on the page. "Each pitch is strictly 2 minutes."
• Best for: Immigrant founders raising now. This overlaps MATCH HOUSE until 3:00, so you'll trade its first three hours for this room.

Two minutes, four judges, one-way feedback, and follow-up meetings that "can be arranged following the pitch session." That last line is the reason to pick this over the anchor, if you qualify. Four funds that back immigrant founders, in one room, for two and a half hours.

Track record: First time in this format. Alexander Zemlyak of Geek Ventures, on LinkedIn in September: "If you're an immigrant founder raising right now, apply to pitch or come say hi." His colleague Sarah Romanko put it on her own Tech Week list too. Take this fork and you're done at 3:00, with three hours before the mixer. If you got approved for both, walk to Harrison Street for the MATCH HOUSE happy hour at 4:00.

6:00 PM: Pre-Seed VC + Founder Mixer (Embarcadero)

• Who is in the room: "PRE-SEED FOUNDERS (+ aspiring founders)" and VCs. 401 on the list, the biggest Wednesday room on this route.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Runs to 9:00 PM. The host tells you to prepare an elevator pitch.
• Best for: Pre-seed founders. Investors who want volume.

MATCH HOUSE ends at 5:00. The Embarcadero is a 20-minute walk from Harrison Street, so you'll be there around 5:20. Use the 40 minutes before the 6:00 start to write down the names from MATCH HOUSE. This is the loud room. Four hundred people! A pre-seed fund hosting, a bank sponsoring, and everyone's been told to bring a pitch. If you're an investor, you'll be pitched. That's the deal.

Track record: No prior edition, and no recap. Investors who want a quieter room should take the swap: the Slash, Goodwater Capital and Collide Capital happy hour at Slash HQ in SoMa, same hours, 160 on the list, "zero panels," plus-ones welcome. Slash's own copy is the best description of Wednesday we read all week: "By Wednesday of Tech Week you'll have shaken 200 hands and remembered 6 names." And: "Doors close when the ice runs out."

8:00 PM: Poker After Dark (Social Clubhouse, 30 Sheridan St, SoMa)

• Who is in the room: "Top founders, investors, and people you want to meet." 171 on the list. Two floors: a lounge and a separate poker floor, so you don't have to play.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Free. No end time. "We'll be going late."
• Best for: Anyone still standing at 8:00 who wants a smaller room than the mixer.

Leave the mixer at 7:45 and it's a 10-minute ride to SoMa. Here's the twist. When you register, Boardy calls you. Boardy is an AI superconnector that makes phone calls. The call is the door screen. It'll ask what you do and who you want to meet... and then it approves you or it doesn't. Some people will find that odd. We find it honest. At least you know what the list is for.

Track record: Boardy threw the 2025 version at Harlan Records. Teresa Gilman, founder of BrainStack, on LinkedIn ten days later: "Boardy sponsored a super fun night at Harlan Records for SF Tech Week." Her emphasis, not ours.

If you only do one thing today: MATCH HOUSE. Say you want to pitch when you apply, even if you're not sure.

Back to the full schedule

Thursday, October 8, 2026

Thursday is the day to shut up and listen. The best speakers of the week are on stage between 9:00 AM and 4:00 PM, within a 15-minute walk of each other in FiDi and Rincon Hill, and the night ends with Cathie Wood in FiDi too. So the only call you make today is the morning fork, and you can walk the whole day. Say less, write more, and save your pitch for the Salon vote.

8:30 AM, raising fork: The Raise Ready Breakfast (FiDi)

• Who is in the room: "Founders preparing to raise." Ray Wu of Alumni Ventures, Ashley Neville of Carta, Chris McKinnon of Morrison Foerster and Ketaki Rao of Crunchbase, with Gené Teare of Crunchbase moderating.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Free. Runs to 10:00.
• Best for: Founders who want a raise-prep session with breakfast.

A first edition with three vendors and a fund as hosts. So expect a soft sales layer with the eggs. But it's the only morning room on Thursday that's about running a raise, and it ends at 10:00 with an hour to spare in FiDi. Investors can sleep in.

9:00 AM, B2B fork: CxO Roundtable: How Enterprise Really Buys AI (Jackson Square)

• Who is in the room: Nivi Baral, CTO of 2K, and Dr. May Wang, CTO of IoT at Palo Alto Networks, with Macy Mills of speedrun moderating. "Built for early-stage technical founders." 230 on the list.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Runs to 11:30.
• Best for: B2B founders selling into enterprises. Not investors.

We'd take the breakfast if you're raising this quarter. Pick this instead if you sell to CTOs and want two of them to tell you how they buy. It's a roundtable with 230 on the list, so ask early. It overlaps the next event by 30 minutes. Jackson Square to FiDi is a 10-minute walk, so you'll miss the start of the 11:30 founders' panel and nothing else.

11:00 AM: The Search for Durable Advantage in AI (FiDi)

• Who is in the room: Anu Triveti, Head of AI at Oracle, and Sasa Zdjelar, Chief Security Officer at NVIDIA, with Chenxi Wang of Rain moderating. Before them, at 11:30, a founder panel: Snehal Antani (Horizon3), Keith Stewart (Humanix), Girish Chandrasekar (Straiker) and Aaron Brown (Vecna AI), moderated by Stephanie Cherrin of J.P. Morgan.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Runs to 2:00 PM, with lunch and networking from 12:45. Bring a government-issued photo ID for the front desk.
• Best for: Founders and investors who want the week's best-stocked stage. It skews security and infrastructure, because Rain is a security fund.

The question on the invitation is the one every investor is asking this year: "If the model itself is no longer the moat, what is." Two big-company executives. Four founders who've raised real money. A bank co-host. Three hours. Leave at 1:30, because the Salon is a 15-minute walk south.

Track record: First edition. Rain's September newsletter lists the candidate moats they'll argue about: "proprietary data, workflow ownership, infrastructure, distribution, and trust." Pick yours before you walk in.

1:45 PM: Claude Founder Salon (Terra Gallery, 511 Harrison St, Rincon Hill)

• Who is in the room: Mike Krieger, Head of Anthropic Labs, in conversation with David Rosenthal of Acquired at 2:00. A panel at 3:00. A founder showcase with an audience vote at 4:00. Happy hour at 4:45. The investors Anthropic lists for the House include Lauren Reeder (Sequoia), Sebastian Duesterhoeft (Lightspeed), Murali Joshi and Anu Bharadwaj (ICONIQ) and Sameer Dholakia (Bessemer).
• Get in: Request to join on Luma. Approval required. Founders who want a showcase slot add "a short demo video (2 minutes max, any link works)" when they register. "We'll reach out directly if you're selected to present."
• Best for: Founders building on Claude who want to demo in front of investors. Investors who want to see what's being built on Claude this quarter.

You'll arrive about 1:45 from FiDi, with time to check in before the 2:00 fireside. The afternoon builds to 4:00... when founders demo and the room votes. That's the slot you came for, whether you're on stage or in the seats. One warning. The Founder House itself closed applications before we published, and the Salon Luma page is the only door still open. So request it today.

Track record: No SF Salon last year, just an invite-only Anthropic salon downtown. But the Founder House format toured Europe this year, and the London edition last month drew write-ups. Caroline O'Reilly, who runs engineering at VCola.ai: "Make yourself memorable to VCs with unique insights on your product & team, pitches are now coming in fast & furious." Quin Wills, founder of Ochre Bio, said his favorite comment of the day was that the best moat a company can build is "the trust of their partners, collaborators, customers etc." Same moat question as the morning, different building.

5:00 PM: Fenwick x Databricks x a16z Founders & Investors Happy Hour (FiDi)

• Who is in the room: "Founders, investors, and industry professionals in data and AI." 327 on the list. "No stages, no scripted pitches."
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Runs 4:00 to 6:00 PM.
• Best for: Data and AI founders. Investors in the same.

Leave the Salon after the vote, around 4:45, and walk 15 minutes back north. You'll get an hour in the room, and an hour is enough when the hosts are a16z and Databricks. The New York edition of this happy hour in June listed Lightspeed, NEA, Insight, General Atlantic and SignalFire among the investors. SF names nobody. Expect the same tier.

Track record: No SF edition to quote, so go by the June New York edition above. Fintech founders can swap this for the FinTech Golden Hour on Visa's rooftop over Oracle Park with Fin Capital and J.P. Morgan, 5:00 to 7:00. The catch is building security. Visa needs 48 hours' notice, so the real deadline is Tuesday. And you'd have to leave by 6:45 and take a car to be at ARK in FiDi by 7:15.

7:15 PM: Who Will Own the Future? with ARK Invest (FiDi)

• Who is in the room: Cathie Wood, Andre Iguodala, the four-time NBA champion who co-founded Mastry, and Sarah Pinto, who runs Robinhood Ventures.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Runs 6:00 to 10:00 PM. "Please arrive no later than 7:15 p.m." The talk starts at 7:30, and "late entry may be limited." Smart casual.
• Best for: Anyone who wants to hear Cathie Wood think out loud about AI and scarce assets. Is it a deal room? No. Is it a good room? Yes!

Doors open at 6:00, and Fenwick is a short walk away in FiDi. Just be inside by 7:15, when guests gather for the 7:30 talk. This is the biggest name on the week's calendar. ARK's founder, an NBA champion who's now an investor, and the head of Robinhood's venture arm, on what AI does to markets and why "scarce assets and experiences such as sports may become increasingly valuable."

Track record: ARK didn't do Tech Week last year. On LinkedIn the firm said it "reserved a very limited number of seats for our followers," and to request one you tell them why you want to come and where you follow ARK. So that's the application. Answer it like a person.

Plan B, 6:00 PM: Pitch Roast Live (Mission)

• Who is in the room: Four founders, three comedians, VCs on the panel, and 400 seats, 176 of them open.
• Get in: RSVP on Partiful. From $20. Runs to 9:00 PM. Founders can apply to be roasted through the form on the page.
• Best for: Anyone who didn't get into ARK and wants to laugh at a pitch competition instead of sitting through one.

A Shark Tank and comedy roast crossover. Founders pitch, comedians roast them, VCs weigh in, the audience votes. It's the only Thursday night room on this route with open RSVP and seats still showing. And it's 15 minutes from FiDi by cab, so leave Fenwick at 5:45 to get there around 6:00.

Track record: Jared Lerner pitched Nappr at the New York show in April and won. His review: "Normal pitch competitions: slides, metrics, polite clapping and VCs decide. Pitch Roast Live: get roasted by comedians, the host wears heels, eats habanero peppers and gets a whipped cream pie to the face." And: "10/10 would pitch while chaos unfolds again."

If you only do one thing today: the Salon at 4:00, when the founders demo and the room votes.

Back to the full schedule

Friday, October 9, 2026

Friday is demo day, and it's the investors' day. Twenty founders take the stage at Pitch or NGMI in SoMa in the morning, and dozens demo at the a16z speedrun AI Faire in Jackson Square in the afternoon. Then ten more pitch to investors only at EWOR Demo Day, and the official afterparty closes out the workweek up the hill. If you're a founder, this is where you see what everyone else is building. If you're an investor, this is where you find the deal. Also, the Fleet Week air show flies over the Bay from noon to 4:00, and the Blue Angels headline it. You'll hear them.

9:00 AM: Pitch or NGMI: 20 Startups, 2 Minutes, One Winner (Mind the Bridge Innovation Center, 450 Townsend St, SoMa)

• Who is in the room: Twenty founders applying AI to the physical world: industrial, climate, infrastructure, construction, energy, robotics. Judges are "active venture investors," and the first four named are Sarah Romanko of Geek Ventures, Shashwat Shivam of SE Ventures, Varad Mohod of Zacua Ventures and Hirotaka Mori of ENEOS CVC, with more to be announced. "100+ attendees expected."
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Free. Runs to 11:30. Pitch applications for the 20 founder slots are closed.
• Best for: Physical-world AI founders. Investors who like hardware before lunch.

Twenty pitches at two minutes each is 40 minutes of pitching inside a two-and-a-half-hour morning. So the rest is coffee and judges. The host's own line: "Twenty founders take the stage. Each gets two minutes to demo what they've built, earn investor conviction, and compete for prizes." Prizes unnamed as of this writing.

Track record: Same hosts, different format. Last year's Friday morning was "Bagels & Breakthroughs," a VC panel and brunch that targeted 50 to 75 founders and ended with 188 on the list. Three to one! This year they added a pitch competition and a bigger venue. Apply accordingly.

12:30 PM: a16z speedrun AI Faire (Jackson Square)

• Who is in the room: "Dozens of founders" from the speedrun cohorts demoing live AI tools. The stated audience is "executives and operators looking to adopt new technology at their companies." Plus investors, who last year were assigned the 3:00 to 5:00 window.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Free. Runs 10:30 AM to 5:00 PM. "Entry times will be staggered," and you pick a morning (10:30 to 1:00) or afternoon (2:30 to 5:00) entry window when you apply. Your confirmation email sets when you can walk in.
• Best for: Investors and operators who want to see 30-plus speedrun companies in an afternoon. Founders who want to see the bar.

NGMI ends at 11:30. Jackson Square is a 15-minute ride from Townsend Street, with time for lunch on the way. The Faire is a science fair for AI startups. No stage, no programming... just tables, demos and founders who got into speedrun. Ask for the morning window, and get there before it ends at 1:00. Investors should ask for the morning too. If you get the afternoon, it opens at 2:30, which leaves you 45 minutes before you head to EWOR at 3:15.

Track record: The 2025 Faire was at a16z's office on Townsend, and speedrun's own recap says "over 30 companies from the SR005 cohort had yet another chance to demo their products for buyers from top tech companies."

The August 2026 edition got the best reviews of anything we researched. Pranay Sadani, co-founder of Zorbe, who demoed: "You get sixty seconds to pitch what you built." And to the hosts: "You built the science fair we all wanted to be at." Jennifer Bennett, a startup advisor who walked the floor: "B2B AI solutions are everywhere, especially in SF. Consumer AI? There's still so many untapped opportunities." Fredrick Owino, a product manager at PreMan, which demoed: "customers weren't just curious about the tech, they wanted to know the ROI, and how fast they'd see it." And from the Demo Day that feeds the Faire, Ruben Dominguez of The VC Corner: "There was no breathing space between pitches. When one founder left the stage, another was already walking up."

3:30 PM, investors only: EWOR Demo Day (Jackson Square)

• Who is in the room: Ten EWOR founders pitching. "INVESTORS ONLY," with partners and angels prioritized. 250 seats. Happy hour after.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Approval required. Runs to 5:30 PM.
• Best for: Angels and VCs. Founders stay at the Faire.

Leave the Faire at 3:15. EWOR hasn't posted its address yet, and doors close at 4:00, when the pitches start. EWOR says it accepts about 1 in 1,000 applicants and invests up to $600k per founder on acceptance. Founders who joined this year raised $10M on average, by the host's count. This is its first in-person demo day in the United States. Ten companies, two hours, and a bar.

Track record: Every prior EWOR demo day was on Zoom. The host says those drew firms like Sequoia, a16z, Accel and Lightspeed to the call. In person, with 250 seats, the room will be smaller and the founders closer. HackerNoon called ten founders pitching to several hundred investors "a modest event by San Francisco standards." Modest is good. It means you can actually talk to them.

5:00 PM, founder fork: Human Performance, Capital & Innovation (The Commonwealth Club, 110 The Embarcadero)

• Who is in the room: "Investors, founders, scientists, athletes, and strategic leaders." Greg Horner, founder and managing general partner of Untethered Ventures, and Daniel Kraft, a physician-scientist and the founder of NextMedHealth, are on stage.
• Get in: RSVP on Luma. Free. Runs to 8:00 PM.
• Best for: Founders in sports tech, health and longevity. Anyone who wants a free room with a view after the Faire.

The founders' side of the fork, down the Embarcadero from Jackson Square. Leave the Faire by 4:40 to make the 5:00 start. Topics are venture allocation in sports tech, athlete founders and performance data. BLCK VC co-hosts, and it has trained more than 150 check writers through its Black Venture Institute. So the investor side of this room is real. It ends at 8:00, right when the party starts.

6:00 PM, investor fork: The Golden Hour: LPs, GPs and Family Offices (Salesforce Tower, 46th floor)

• Who is in the room: GPs, fund managers, LPs, family offices and allocators. 170 on the list and 10 spots showing on October 5.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. "Attendance subject to approval." Runs 5:00 to 9:00 PM.
• Best for: Fund managers raising from LPs, and LPs who want to meet them 46 floors up.

EWOR ends at 5:30. Its address isn't posted yet, so give yourself half an hour to reach Salesforce Tower and ride up 46 floors. Call it 6:00. Quick translation. GPs run the funds. LPs are the people and institutions whose money is in them. Family offices are wealthy families with a checkbook and a staff. The host sells secondaries, which is buying shares in late-stage startups from people who want out early, so expect to hear about secondaries. But the room is the point. It's the only place all week where those three groups meet, and it's already nearly full.

8:00 PM: a16z x Unicorner x Notion: The Official Afterparty (Lower Nob Hill)

• Who is in the room: Founders, investors and operators who got approved. DJs from Titanic's End.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. "Spots are extremely limited, and registrations are subject to approval." 21 and over, government ID at the door, no plus-ones. "Cocktail attire highly encouraged."
• Best for: Everyone who made it to Friday.

Ten-minute ride up the hill from either fork. Founders from the Commonwealth Club leave at 7:45 and arrive on time. Investors at the Golden Hour leave at 8:15 and arrive at 8:30. Or stay to the 9:00 close and get there about 9:15. Tracy Massaro of a16z: "we close it out at the a16z x Unicorner x Notion Official Afterparty, on one of my favorite rooftops in SF. Cocktail attire, approved guests only." Pack a jacket that works on a rooftop.

Track record: The 2025 afterparty was on the Wednesday at Temple, the SoMa nightclub, with D.O.D headlining and Bolt and Cerebral Valley co-hosting. This year it moved to Friday, picked up a16z and Notion as hosts, and got the "official" label. It also added a dress code and a no-plus-ones rule. Which tells you which direction the list is going. Apply now.

If you only do one thing today: the Faire. Ask for the early window.

Back to the full schedule

Saturday, October 10, 2026

Saturday is where most people quit, and that's the point. The calendar thins out, the quality goes up, and two of the three rooms below are the only ones of their kind all week. Angels get a morning on how a check actually gets written. Founders get ten working robots in a room with investors at the Frontier in Action demo day. Then the robots fight.

11:00 AM: Behind the Angel Check: A Fireside Chaat (AngelList, 90 Gold St, North Beach)

• Who is in the room: Jaya Gupta, a partner at Foundation Capital, in a fireside with Bhargavi Varma, founder of Brown Girl Angels, moderated by Anika of Get the Check. Angels, would-be angels and founders.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Runs to 1:00 PM. Business casual. RSVP closes the morning of.
• Best for: Anyone who wants to know how an angel goes "from pitch to conviction." Especially new angels.

Chai at 11:00, fireside at 11:45, questions at 12:15, more chai and chaat at 12:30. There's a food pun in there somewhere. The topic is the inside of an angel check: "Balancing your gut with the numbers," and how a Foundation Capital partner decides. Founders are welcome too. The content is how checks get written. Which is useful on both sides of the table.

Track record: Brown Girl Angels runs this chai-and-chaat format in several cities. Rupa Popat, founder of Arāya Ventures, who co-hosted the London edition in June: "Chai, chaat, and an honest conversation about angel investing." And: "Access to knowledge, networks and rooms that look like this is what closes the gap." The London hosts described the room as "Twenty women in one room for the kind of honest conversation about angel investing you rarely get at a bigger event." Expect something close to that size.

1:20 PM: Frontier in Action: Physical AI Demo Day (560 4th St, SoMa)

• Who is in the room: Ten startups demoing working hardware across humanoid and mobile robotics, world models, embodied agents and field autonomy. A VC panel at 1:55. "VCs, CVCs, and angels" invited by name. 174 on the list.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Runs 1:00 to 5:00 PM. No ticket price on the page.
• Best for: Robotics founders and the investors who fund hardware.

Leave AngelList at 1:00. North Beach to SoMa is a short ride. The first 40 minutes are open networking, so arriving at 1:20 loses nothing. Keynote at 1:40, VC panel at 1:55, ten showcases from 2:35 to 4:15, reception until 5:00. Nobody else on the Saturday calendar puts ten founders with working robots in front of a room that invites angels and CVCs (corporate venture arms) by name. And 500 Global is co-hosting.

Track record: First edition, from a coalition of small physical-AI communities. The startup list isn't published yet. Women-led and mixed-equity teams have an alternative in the same slot. Astia's Blue Angels watch party runs 2:00 to 5:00 on a Russian Hill rooftop, hosted by Astia's CEO Sharon Vosmek with Osborne Clarke and Lowenstein Sandler. 89 of 100 spots taken. Astia ran it in 2024 with 69 going. The air show runs noon to 4:00. The Blue Angels headline.

5:30 PM: The Robot Contest + Afterparty (Frontier Tower, 995 Market St, Mid-Market)

• Who is in the room: Founders putting robots on stage. Judges: Bryce Neil (Y Combinator W26), Tony Y. Chan (Stanford Robotics Center advisor and investor), Dhruv Didi (Frontier Tower's robotics floor), Anto Patrex (CosmicBrain AI) and Adam Chambers (Strike Capital). 415 on the list.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Free. "Capacity is limited." Doors open at 5:30, contest 6:00, dinner 7:00, "dance with the robots" 7:30 to 9:00.
• Best for: Anyone who went to the demo day and wants to see what the robots do after hours.

Leave the reception at 5:00. Fourth Street to Sixth and Market is a short ride. $3,500 in prizes, split between a jury prize and an audience prize. So your vote counts. Frontier Tower is the 16-floor "vertical village" for frontier-tech founders. Last October its basement hosted... humanoid robot boxing. So yeah, this is the building for it.

Track record: First edition from Daidai, so the venue's history is the scoop. The SF Examiner described last year's robot fight there this way: "one landed a punch and sent the other toppling to the mat to the roar of a crowd." Expect a crowd.

If you only do one thing today: the demo day. Stay for the reception.

Back to the full schedule

Sunday, October 11, 2026

Sunday splits by what you do with your hands. If you code, there's a hackathon with a guaranteed investor interview at the end of it. If you don't, there's a BBQ where nobody is allowed to pitch you. It's the last day, so pick the one that fits and don't try to do both.

9:00 AM, builders: SpeedHacks: The Official speedrun Hackathon (Jackson Square)

• Who is in the room: Technical builders, 12 hours, teams formed on the spot if you come alone. Finalists demo to speedrun investors and portfolio companies.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Runs to 9:00 PM.
• Best for: Builders who want the most direct funding path on the whole calendar.

Here's the prize, in the host's words: "The winning team will earn a guaranteed interview with the speedrun + Alpha investment team." speedrun writes checks up to $1M. Alpha goes up to $250k. A guaranteed interview is not a check. But it's the shortest line from a Sunday to a term sheet we found in 1,832 listings. The brief: "build something that removes a meaningful bottleneck in how people work, learn, or access services."

10:00 AM, builders: Shopping 3.0: The AI Commerce Hackathon with Arcade (Union Square)

• Who is in the room: Judges Kirsten Green of Forerunner, Mariam Naficy, founder of Minted and CEO of Arcade, and Ash Herr of TIAT. "Developers, designers, and artists all welcome." 139 approved for 100 spots.
• Get in: Apply on Partiful. Full as of October 5, with no waitlist, but the page still takes applications. Runs to 6:00 PM. $10,000 first prize, $5,000 second.
• Best for: Consumer and commerce builders. It fully overlaps SpeedHacks, so pick one.

The other hackathon. Shorter day, cash prizes, and Kirsten Green judging. If you build for consumers, that's the better room. You ship on Arcade's product-generation APIs, available outside the company for the first time. Done by 6:00.

2:00 PM, everyone else: VC/Founders BBQ (Showplace Square)

• Who is in the room: Founders who live here, founders in town for the week, and "investors from VC funds." 45 going.
• Get in: Join the waitlist on Luma. Free. Full as of October 5. Runs to 6:00 PM.
• Best for: Anyone whose week was all asks.

The host's copy is the reason it's here: "If you're visiting, your week is probably full of meetings with an ask attached. This is the one without. If you're an investor, nobody is going to pitch you." BBQ provided, no agenda. And it's already full with a waitlist, which means it's real. Join the waitlist now. Approval-gated events over-approve, then the no-shows clear it. One conflict, though. The last Fleet Week air show runs noon to 4:00 over the Bay, headlined by the Blue Angels, so it overlaps the BBQ by two hours. Marina Green to Showplace Square is about 30 minutes by car, longer in show traffic. Pick one.

Track record: No prior edition we could find.

If the waitlist doesn't clear: the International Reception at the European Startup Embassy in Mission Bay runs 6:00 to 9:00, free, approval required, 29 going. No investors named. Food, drinks, and a room full of people who also flew in.

If you only do one thing today: the BBQ, if the waitlist clears. If you're still on the waitlist at 9:00 AM and you can code, take SpeedHacks instead. It starts five hours before the BBQ.

Back to the full schedule

How to actually get into SF Tech Week events

You don't buy a Tech Week pass, because there isn't one. Each event has its own page, almost always on Partiful or Luma, and most of them make you apply and wait for the host to say yes. The mechanics are simple, and most people skip them.

• Apply now. Hosts review in batches, and the biggest rooms close their lists days before the event. Monday's kickoff already has more than a thousand people on it, and the Wednesday investor brunch had four seats left when we checked.
• Finish your profile. Partiful and Luma show the host your name, your photo, your company and whatever link you add. That's the whole application. A founder with a one-line description and a live website gets approved. A blank avatar with no company does not.
• Say who you are in the note. Most Apply pages have a question or two. Answer them like a person: what you're building, what stage, what you want from the room. Investors should say the fund and the check size. ARK asks you outright why you want to come.
• Waitlists clear. Approval-gated events over-approve and then see no-shows. If you're waitlisted on something you care about, keep it and check the morning of.
• Book your meetings now. The one thing every Tech Week veteran says is the same: the events are the excuse, the meetings are the point. Message the investors you want to meet before the week starts and suggest a room you'll both be in. This route gives you the rooms.
• Know the distances. FiDi, Jackson Square and the Embarcadero are all within a 20-minute walk of each other. SoMa is bigger than it looks. Some of its rooms on this route are 40 minutes from Jackson Square on foot. Dogpatch and Mission Bay are next to each other. The Marina and the Mission are a ride. We built the days around that.
• "Featured" on the official calendar means the organizers picked it, not that it's bigger. Seventy-one of the 1,832 listings carry the flag. Several rooms on this route do. Some of our best picks don't.

The best SF Tech Week 2026 events for angels and VCs

Most Tech Week rooms are built to get founders in front of you. A few are built for you. The best of them are the Investor Brunch and MATCH HOUSE on Wednesday, and the speedrun AI Faire, EWOR Demo Day and The Golden Hour on Friday. Here's the whole week, in order.

• Monday: Zero Day at DG717 says "and VCs" on the door and seats 150, but RSVPs are now closed. Then The Pitch LIVE, where you can watch Eric Bahn, Charles Hudson and Arielle Zuckerberg decide on three founders in real time, and meet the founders after. Then the kickoff.
• Tuesday: The six-fund cocktail party is your peers hosting. The AWS and NVIDIA competition and the AI Collective pitch night are six vetted startups each. They overlap, and neither page posts a pitch time, so pick one.
• Wednesday: The investor brunch is investors only, and MATCH HOUSE pre-matches you with founders by thesis before you arrive. It's the one Wednesday room where the matching happens before you walk in. The Slash happy hour in the evening is the quieter swap.
• Thursday: The Salon's 4:00 showcase is founders building on Claude, voted on by the room. The Fenwick and Databricks happy hour after is data and AI investors talking to each other.
• Friday: This is your day. The Faire is 30-plus speedrun companies demoing, and last year investors got the 3:00 to 5:00 window. This year the afternoon window opens at 2:30. EWOR is ten pre-vetted founders for investors only, and its doors close at 4:00. So ask the Faire for the morning window when you apply. The Golden Hour is the one LP and family-office room all week.
• Saturday: The Fireside Chaat is a Foundation Capital partner on how she decides. The demo day is ten hardware startups and a VC panel. The Robot Contest splits $3,500 between a jury prize and an audience prize, and the audience votes live.
• Sunday: The BBQ promises "nobody is going to pitch you." Go anyway. That's where the good founders are by Sunday.

One thing we've noticed in nine years of watching investors in our pitch room. The ones who find the deals show up early and talk to the founders before anything goes live. Everybody gets the stage. The hour before it is where the handshakes happen, at least from where we sit.

Frequently asked questions about SF Tech Week 2026

What is SF Tech Week?

SF Tech Week is a week of separate startup events all over San Francisco. It's the San Francisco edition of Tech Week by a16z (that's the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz). Founders, funds and companies host their own breakfasts, panels, demo days, parties and hackathons, each with its own Partiful or Luma page, and list them on the official calendar at tech-week.com/calendar/sf. The 2026 edition runs Monday, October 5 to Sunday, October 11, with 1,832 events as of October 2.

When is SF Tech Week 2026?

Monday, October 5 through Sunday, October 11, 2026. Events start Monday morning, and the last official events, including the SpeedHacks hackathon, are on Sunday. Wednesday is the busiest day, with 459 listings.

What are the best SF Tech Week 2026 events?

For founders and investors, the five we'd build a trip around are The Pitch LIVE on Monday afternoon (that one's ours), the Fireworks and a16z kickoff on Monday night, MATCH HOUSE on Wednesday, the Claude Founder Salon on Thursday, and the a16z speedrun AI Faire on Friday. Founders raising a round should add one side of Tuesday's fork. The Meet SF's Early Stage Founders and Investors cocktail party is where you meet the funds. The Foundersuite fundraising panel is where you hear what they'll ask. Investors sourcing deals should add Pitch or NGMI and EWOR Demo Day on Friday. EWOR's doors close at 4:00, so ask the Faire for the morning window. All 37 are in the list at the top of this guide, day by day.

What is the SF Tech Week 2026 schedule?

Monday, October 5 through Sunday, October 11, 2026. The pattern repeats every day: breakfasts and panels in the morning, demos and pitch competitions in the afternoon, mixers and parties from about 6:00 PM. Wednesday is the peak with 459 listings, and the weekend thins out to hackathons, demo days and a BBQ. There's no master schedule beyond the official calendar, which is why we built the 37-event route above with a fork wherever two rooms clash and a leave time wherever one runs long.

How do I attend SF Tech Week 2026?

There's no central ticket or badge. Every event has its own registration page on Partiful or Luma, linked from the official calendar, and you apply or RSVP one event at a time. About 88 percent need the host's approval, so fill in your profile before you apply, and expect some hosts to check ID at the door. Start with the 37 on this route. Apply today to every one that fits you, founder or investor, and treat each fork as a pick-one.

What events are happening at SF Tech Week 2026?

1,832 of them, from breakfasts to hackathons. The ones on this route are the rooms where investors are hosting or judging and founders are pitching or demoing: the Fireworks and a16z kickoff, The Pitch LIVE, the Forum Ventures breakfast, the Foundersuite fundraising panel, the AWS and NVIDIA pitch competition, MATCH HOUSE, the Immigrant Founder Pitch, the Claude Founder Salon, the ARK Invest fireside, Pitch or NGMI, the a16z speedrun AI Faire, EWOR Demo Day, the official afterparty, the physical AI demo day, the Robot Contest and the SpeedHacks hackathon, among others. The full calendar is at tech-week.com/calendar/sf.

Is SF Tech Week free?

Mostly. Nearly all of the 1,832 events are free to attend, but about 88 percent require the host to approve your application first. A handful sell tickets. Of the 37 on this route, only three do: The Pitch LIVE at $25, the Immigrant Founder Pitch from $30 and Pitch Roast Live from $20. On this route, the only free SF Tech Week event with no approval step at all is Human Performance, Capital & Innovation on Friday.

How many events are at SF Tech Week 2026?

The official calendar listed 1,832 events as of October 2, 2026. About 1,600 require host approval, 227 are open RSVP, and 71 carry the organizers' "Featured" flag.

How do I get into invite-only SF Tech Week events?

You usually can't, and you don't need to. Hundreds of the approval-gated events approve most real founders and investors who apply with a complete profile. The truly invite-only ones, like cohort dinners and portfolio-only nights, aren't on this list for that reason. Apply early, finish your profile, answer the host's questions, and keep your waitlist spots.

What are the best SF Tech Week 2026 parties?

The Fireworks and a16z official kickoff on Monday night, on a rooftop in Mission Bay. Poker After Dark on Wednesday night. The Fenwick, Databricks and a16z happy hour on Thursday. The Robot Contest afterparty on Saturday, with dinner and dancing with robots. And the a16z, Unicorner and Notion official afterparty on Friday night, which is the hardest list of the week to get on. All five are on the route with how to get in.

Which day of SF Tech Week is best?

Wednesday has the most events, but Tuesday and Thursday have the best rooms for founders and investors on this route. If you can only fly in for two days, make them Monday night through Wednesday. If you're an investor, make one of them Friday.

Is SF Tech Week worth it?

Yes, if you go in with a plan. Book your meetings before you land, then pick the rooms where those people will be. If you wander between panels and happy hours, you'll fly home and tell everyone Tech Week was "fine." This guide exists so that doesn't happen.

Can I pitch at The Pitch LIVE?

Not at this one. The three founders on stage are booked in advance through the show's normal process. If you want to pitch on The Pitch, apply here. Anyone can buy a ticket to watch and stay for the founder mixer.

Where can I see the whole SF Tech Week calendar?

The official calendar is at tech-week.com/calendar/sf. Filter by day and by "Featured," then come back here for the route.

That's the week. We'll be at The Pearl on Monday afternoon with three founders, three investors and, hopefully, a room full of you. Come say hi! Tickets are here, and the rest of our live pitch events are on the events page.

We'll update this page every morning of Tech Week as lists close and waitlists clear. Check the date at the top. See you Monday, in the PITCH ROOM.