SF Circuit — Sep

Before you land

Follow the Luma calendars for AGI House, Founders Inc, and Cerebral Valley

These publish hackathons and mixers 2–4 weeks out, not months — nothing to RSVP yet, but follow now so instances surface as the trip nears. All three cluster hard around DevDay week specifically.

Subscribe to Bay Area Founders Club and GarysGuide

Weekly aggregators covering everything not on this list — job fairs, one-off dinners, last-minute mixers. Check both every Monday you're in town.

Apply to founderdinner.ai

Curated, application-based AI-founder dinner series. Selective, but "pre-idea and building" is a fine reason to apply — apply early, decisions take time. Re-checked 2026-08-04: site still describes dinners only, no public cohort dates or application deadline posted — apply anyway, nothing has changed to wait for.

Check joinodf.com for ODF28 dates and apply

On Deck's idea-stage founder sprint is targeting Q3 2026 in SF, with interviews also in Q3 and a ~36-hour decision turnaround (confirmed via admissions.joinodf.com, re-checked 2026-08-04) — of everything on this page, it's the one program actually built for exactly your stage. Exact calendar dates still unconfirmed; apply regardless of whether it lands inside this window.

Watch luma.com/sftw for the Tech Week event list

Still not published as of 2026-08-04 (page reads "This calendar is launching soon. Follow to be notified") — no change from the last research pass. It typically populates 3–6 weeks out. Re-check in late August/early September and start RSVPing the moment it's live; the best small dinners fill first.

The circuit, week by week

Sep 1–9 · Settle in

No anchor event. Use it to get a place, join Shack15 or a similar coworking space, and start showing up to whatever recurring meetup fires first — you want to not be a stranger by the time September's density hits.

Sep 10 · YC Summer Demo Day

YC Summer 2026 Demo Day

Confirmed

The densest accredited-investor room of early September. The pitch room itself is closed to non-batch founders — but alumni and investors host a wave of satellite mixers the same week.

Access: closed room, open satellite mixersCost: —

Skip trying to get into the demo day itself — work the satellite mixer circuit instead, it's free and where pre-idea founders actually belong right now.

Sep 15–17 · Dreamforce

Dreamforce 2026

Confirmed

Not AI- or founder-specific, but it's the "everyone in enterprise tech is in town" week. The unofficial party circuit around Moscone runs all three nights regardless of whether you're badged.

Access: paid ($500–$2,000+)Satellite parties: free/RSVP

Don't buy the badge. Work the after-parties — same buildings, same people, no ticket required.

Sep 23–24 · Meta Connect

Meta Connect 2026

Confirmed

Menlo Park keynote, more product spectacle than networking floor. Low priority for you directly — worth only a glance if a partner mixer lands nearby that week.

Access: registration; keynote streams free

Sep 25–28 · Build days

No confirmed event. Lock in any DevDay-week hacker house RSVPs now — they need lead time and won't be visible on Luma until closer in. Bank one-on-one coffees before the week gets loud.

Sep 29 – Oct 1 · DevDay week

OpenAI DevDay 2026

Fort Mason Center · Tue Sep 29 · one flagship day, not a week-long conference

You already have the invite — the badge itself matters less than the 48 hours around it. OpenAI's own satellite program is running in Bangalore, Tokyo, Paris, and six other cities, not SF, so there's no official local overflow track. The real density is unofficial: AGI House, Founders Inc, and Cerebral Valley all cluster hackathons and sponsor parties around this exact date.

$650

Accepted-attendee fee

Berkeley SkyDeck Batch 22 Demo Day

Confirmed — Sep 30

Same-week add-on the day after DevDay. AI/climate-heavy cohort, open registration — good way to meet accelerator-backed founders and their investors while still in DevDay mode.

Access: open registration

Oct 2 · Founders Bay breakfast

Founders Bay private breakfast

Confirmed

Curated B2B founder/investor/enterprise-leader breakfast — a good template for the kind of small, high-signal morning event this circuit runs on. Subscribe to Founders Bay's newsletter for the RSVP.

Oct 5–11 · SF Tech Week

SF Tech Week 2026

Confirmed

The single best week on this page for your actual goal. Decentralized and a16z-organized — hundreds of independently hosted pitch nights, founder dinners, and investor panels, most free or cheap to RSVP. Built specifically for founder-investor density at low barrier to entry.

Access: open, event-by-event RSVPCost: mostly free

Highest value-per-dollar week of the trip. Clear your calendar for it before anything else on this page.

Oct 13–17 · TechCrunch Disrupt

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 + Startup Battlefield

Confirmed

Paid conference and expo at Moscone West, including Startup Battlefield (200 pre-Series A companies, $100K prize, direct investor access). Worth tracking as a milestone for later — not something to enter pre-idea.

Access: paid ticketEarly-bird: up to $680 off

Disrupt side events

Confirmed window · Oct 10–17

Independently hosted breakfasts, VC office hours, and founder dinners running the same decentralized model as Tech Week. Often more valuable than the paid conference floor — less crowded, mostly free.

Access: open, individually organized

Skip the Disrupt badge unless a specific session matters to you. The side-event list (published on TechCrunch's site closer to the date) is where the actual conversations happen.

Oct 19–27 · Follow-up window

No confirmed anchor. This is the week to close the loop on everyone you met during DevDay week and Tech Week — the follow-up coffee matters more than the mixer that produced the intro.

Oct 28–29 · GitHub Universe

GitHub Universe 2026

Confirmed

Fort Mason again. More builder/engineer-focused than investor-focused — strong pool of technical people if you're pressure-testing product ideas or scouting a technical co-founder.

Access: paid in-person / free virtual

The free virtual stream covers the keynotes. Only pay for in-person if the hallway track is the point for you.

Nov 2–8 · Quiet week

No confirmed anchor found. Good buffer before the final push — and before people start going quiet for the holidays.

Nov 9–15 · Final week

AI Engineer Code Summit

Confirmed · Nov 11–13

The highest-signal AI-product room on this entire page — and invite-only. Worth angling for through any AGI House / Cerebral Valley connection made earlier in the trip; not an open application.

Access: invite-only

Plug and Play Silicon Valley Summit

Confirmed · Nov 15–17

Starts the day you fly home. Realistically only day one is reachable, and only if your flight is in the evening — flag it as a maybe, not a plan.

Join now, not later

No fixed 2026 dates — these are standing communities that publish events on rolling 2–4 week windows. Follow them the day you land so instances surface automatically.

AGI House SF

Luma / operations@agihouse.ai

Twin Peaks hacker house, up to 5 events a week. Lovable and Perplexity reportedly trace back to its hackathons. Spikes hard around DevDay.

Founders, Inc.

luma.com/fdotinc

Fort Mason SF Lab — same building complex as DevDay and GitHub Universe. Geographic overlap makes it an easy add-on those weeks.

Cerebral Valley

cerebralvalley.ai/events

80,000+ builder network, frequent SF hackathons. Good for pressure-testing product ideas hands-on rather than just talking about them.

Shack15

Membership; some events guest-open

Ferry Building coworking space with a founder/investor/scientist cross-section. Frequent low-key touchpoints between the big weeks.

AI Tinkerers SF

sf.aitinkerers.org

Hands-on builder demos rather than sales pitches — closer to real validation conversation than a mixer.

Also worth a look before you commit to dates

South Park Commons — fall fellowship applications already closed (Aug 2), but SPC runs occasional public fireside chats worth attending even unaffiliated.
500 Global Demo Day — happens annually in SF; 2026 SF date still not posted as of 2026-08-04 (500.co/events shows no event calendar publicly). Check back closer to the trip.
StrictlyVC — the spring 2026 SF edition already ran (Apr 30, techcrunch.com/events/strictlyvc-san-francisco-2026); no fall SF edition has been announced as of 2026-08-04 — the only fall date found is a StrictlyVC New York event (Sep 10), not SF. Check techcrunch.com/events periodically for a fall SF add.

Where to stay (~10.5 weeks, budget-first)

Top pick

Foundry Coliving — Mission District

$1,990–$2,190/mo + $1,000 deposit → roughly $5,000–$5,500 for the full Sep 1–Nov 15 stretch. Furnished private room, utilities/wifi, weekly cleaning, shared kitchen, weekly community dinners, and a monthly demo-day ticket included.

This is the one option built for exactly your situation: a founder house, not just a room. Mission is on BART (16th/24th St) — a direct line to SoMa and a short ride to Fort Mason. Apply at foundry.today; a ~100-person waitlist has been reported, so apply now, not in August.

Option	Monthly	~10.5-week total	Note
Foundry Coliving (Mission)	$1,990–2,190	~$5,000–5,500	Founder house, built-in network, best fit
June Homes (citywide)	from $1,250	~$3,125+	Cheapest confirmed coliving room; not founder-specific
SpareRoom listings	$1,150–2,650	~$2,900–6,600	Real live listings; verify identity before paying anything
908 Coliving (Russian Hill)	$1,050–3,300	~$2,600–8,200	Shared room at the low end; near Fort Mason/Ferry Building
HI Hostel, Fort Mason (dorm bed)	~$950–1,300	~$2,300–3,200	Steps from the DevDay venue; dorm-only, no privacy for calls
Craigslist / FB Marketplace room	$900–1,800	~$2,250–4,500	Cheapest if it works out; highest scam risk — never wire money unseen
Oakland (cross-bay) private room	~$1,300–1,700	~$3,250–4,250	Direct BART to SoMa/Mission; last trains cut off late-night networking

Skip these

AGI House live-in — reported $2,000–$10,000/mo with no public booking path. Treat it as an event venue to attend, not somewhere to live.
Landing — prices out at $2,600–6,000/mo because it's full-apartment, not room-only. Only makes sense if splitting a unit with someone.
HubHaus / Common — both defunct, don't bother checking.

Neighborhood call: Mission beats SoMa on cost while staying on BART, and it's already where the founder-coliving scene clusters — proximity to people matters more here than proximity to any single venue. If the budget still doesn't work, Oakland is the real fallback, at the cost of missing the tail end of late-night mixers once BART stops running.

The meeting engine — 150 in 45 days

Sprint window: Sep 15 – Oct 29 (45 days), the stretch covering Dreamforce through GitHub Universe — the densest 45 days inside your full Sep 1–Nov 15 stay. Reality check first: most "AI founder Discords" people namedrop turn out to be Slack, cohort-gated, or don't actually exist as open communities. Below is what's actually real, plus the levers that will move the needle more than Discord will.

Discords that are actually real

Latent Space

discord.gg/xJJMRaWCRt · confirmed on latent.space

The single best-verified AI-engineer Discord — active channels on agents/evals/RAG, weekly paper club, real in-person SF meetups. Post a "landing in SF, here to trade notes" intro the day you join.

MLH (Major League Hacking)

discord.com/invite/mlh · ~91.7k members

Large, active, has Bay Area hackathon channels. Lower AI-specificity than Latent Space, but real volume of builders to meet in person at hackathons.

Skip / don't rely on

LangChain community — it's Slack, not Discord.
Cerebral Valley, AGI House, Founders Inc — no public Discord or member directory for any of the three; they're application-gated IRL networks. Engage via their events, not chat.
Buildspace — Discord exists but is cohort-gated, not open-join.
AI Tinkerers, "All Things YC" — real communities, but no invite link could be verified live; go through sf.aitinkerers.org for meetup RSVPs instead of chasing a Discord link.
No event-specific Discord exists for DevDay, SF Tech Week, Disrupt, GitHub Universe, or Dreamforce — don't waste time hunting for one.

The real lever: sourcing actual people

Lu.ma public guest lists

Confirmed real feature

Hosts can (and often do) make "who's coming" public — name, LinkedIn/X, bio. Browse SF AI event pages before the date and DM attendees directly. This is the single highest-leverage tactic on this page.

YC founder + startup directories

ycombinator.com/founders · ycombinator.com/companies

Official, searchable, real people. Filter recent AI batches, then reach out referencing their specific company.

Product Hunt (AI category)

producthunt.com

Every launch surfaces a real maker profile. Good source of people actively shipping right now, not just fundraising.

Speed-networking events

Search "speed networking" on Lu.ma for SF dates

Confirmed real, recurring format in SF — rotating 7–8 min 1:1s. Highest-throughput single tactic for hitting a volume target on any one night.

Named shortlist — who to actually target

Real people, sourced from live public search on 2026-08-04 — not invented, not generic. Every entry traces to a YC company page, Product Hunt listing, Hacker News launch thread, or TechCrunch funding story. None have been contacted yet; run them through the templates below and log outcomes in the tracker.

YC Summer 2026 batch — in SF now, Demo Day Sep 10

Pulkit Gupta & Agnay Srivastava

Tsenta · ycombinator.com/companies/tsenta

AI agent that finds and auto-applies to jobs. YC S26, SF, two-person team — exactly the pre-idea/early-building stage worth trading notes with.

Arman Kumaraswamy & Joseph Semrai

The Context Company (Context.dev) · ycombinator.com/companies/the-context-company · linkedin.com/in/armankumaraswamy

API that turns any website into structured data for AI agents. YC S26, SF. Kumaraswamy previously cut failure rates 82% on Mintlify's public-facing AI agent.

Philip Meng, Elijah Renner & Ishan Ramrakhiani

Shepherd · ycombinator.com/companies/shepherd-3

Shared "work memory" layer for AI agents and teams. YC S26, SF.

Tien Chu & Tymek Staniszewski

LATO · ycombinator.com/companies/lato

Agent-native research and simulation platform built for investors. YC S26, SF — useful if your circuit overlaps with VCs evaluating agent tooling themselves.

Prateek Jannu & Nitish Kovuru

Coasty · news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48922706 (Launch HN)

API for computer-use/browser agents. YC S26, SF, launched publicly on Hacker News.

Product Hunt

Ahmed Aly ("zachdotai") & Ibrahim Abdu

Fabraix · producthunt.com/products/nyx-4 · ycombinator.com/companies/fabraix · x.com/zachdotai

Red-teaming AI agents that find security holes in customer-facing AI before users do. YC-backed, active launch presence on both Product Hunt and X.

Seed-funded, TechCrunch-verified

Ilan Zerbib

Sapiom · techcrunch.com, Feb 2026

Financial layer letting AI agents buy their own software/tools/compute. $15M seed led by Accel, with Anthropic and Coinbase Ventures participating. Ex-Shopify director of engineering (payments).

Ryan Williams

Ellis AI · techcrunch.com, Jul 2026

AI agents automating private-credit-manager workflows. $10M seed (First Round, 645 Ventures, Thrive, Khosla). Repeat founder — previously built Cadre.

The math

150 meetings over 45 days averages 3.3/day — realistic as a sustained average, not as a flat daily quota. Front-load the five conference weeks, use quiet weeks for follow-up. Targets below total ~180 attempted to net ~150 actual after normal no-shows/cancellations.

Window	Days	Daily target	Target	Primary lever
Sep 15–20 (Dreamforce)	6	4/day	24	Satellite parties + Latent Space intro post
Sep 21–27 (build week)	7	2/day	14	Cold outreach off YC directory
Sep 28–Oct 1 (DevDay week)	4	6/day	24	Hacker houses + Lu.ma guest lists
Oct 2–4 (bridge)	3	3/day	9	Scheduled follow-up coffees
Oct 5–11 (SF Tech Week)	7	6/day	42	Lu.ma guest lists + speed networking
Oct 12–18 (Disrupt)	7	5/day	35	Side events + Battlefield floor
Oct 19–25 (follow-up)	7	2/day	14	Quality 1:1s from contacts made so far
Oct 26–29 (GitHub Universe)	4	4/day	16	Technical crowd + intro asks

45-day total attempted~178

Message templates

Cold DM off a Lu.ma guest list

Hey [Name] — saw you're on the list for [Event] on [date]. I'm in SF this fall talking to people building in AI before I lock in my own next thing. Would love 15 min for a coffee before/after if you're around — happy to work around your schedule.

Cold DM off the YC directory

Hi [Name] — came across [Company] in YC's directory. I'm spending Sep–Nov in SF talking to founders before committing to my next AI venture, and would love to hear how you landed on [specific detail about their company]. Open to a quick call or coffee if you have 15 min?

Discord intro post (Latent Space / MLH)

Hey all — [name], in SF [date]–[date] meeting people building in AI/agents before I commit to my next thing. If you're around and want to trade notes over coffee, I'm easy to find here or on [X handle]. Also happy to poke holes in anything you're building if a fresh pair of eyes is useful.

Follow-up, within 24 hours

Great meeting you yesterday, [Name] — really liked your take on [specific thing discussed]. Sending [resource/intro] I mentioned. If anyone comes to mind for what you're building, would love an intro — happy to return the favor on my end too.

These are for you to send from your own accounts — I'm not going to message anyone on your behalf. A ready-to-use meeting tracker (CSV) is attached separately so you can log source, status, and follow-ups against the 150 target as you go.