Field plan · San Francisco

The pre-company circuit

Sep 1 – Nov 15, 2026. Corrected 2026-08-10: this page spent its first week calling its own reader "pre-idea — no company yet, no deck yet," and that description had leaked into all fifteen drafted outreach notes. It was wrong. The accurate one is pre-company, not pre-idea: a working prototype (a Rust analyzer that ranks ML engineers off their commit and PR history rather than their résumés), no registered entity around it, no raise, no co-founder. Ex-founder, ex-Amazon, currently running AI product at Cars24. That is a materially stronger position than this page had been claiming on your behalf, and several entries below are re-scored because of it. The job of this trip is to be in enough rooms that the next thing is obvious. Built around DevDay week (Sep 29) and SF Tech Week (Oct 5–11), the two weeks with the highest founder-investor density on the calendar. ⚠️ Note as of 2026-08-09: in-person applications to DevDay itself are closed — see the Sep 29 entry. The week still stands; the ticketed room may not be available to you.

SEP 4TechCrunch Disrupt Side Event applications close⚠️ Deadline passed 2026-09-05
SEP 5Founders Inc Spatial Intelligence + Generative 3D Hackathon — Fort MasonSold out, waitlist only
SEP 9Founders Inc: Open Campus (Blueprint Edition) — Fort MasonConfirmed, application-gated
SEP 10Founders Inc: Silly Robots Contest — Fort MasonConfirmed, application-gated
SEP 15AI Engineer Code Summit CFP — early-review deadline for international speaker applicantsConfirmed
SEP 16Bay Area Frontier Research Club #23 (Founders Edition) — dinner + paper discussion, AGI House-adjacentConfirmed, application-gated
SEP 17AGI House SF: "The Data Goldmine" — apply via lu.ma/agi-houseConfirmed, application-gated
SEP 19AGI House SF: Voice AI Hackathon (SambaNova + General Compute + Infinity + Hume)Confirmed, application-gated
SEP 20AGI House SF: The AI Debates HackathonConfirmed, open RSVP
SEP 22AGI House SF: Energy Optimization of GPUs through Self-Improving AgentsConfirmed, open RSVP
SEP 29OpenAI DevDay — Fort Mason⚠️ Applications closed
SEP 29–OCT 1The AI Conference 2026 — Pier 48, SF (Day ZERØ, Sep 29, already sold out)Confirmed, paid, main days open
OCT 5–11SF Tech Week — citywide, calendar now live with named eventsConfirmed
OCT 11⚠️ DEADLINE — AI Engineer Code Summit Call for Speakers closes (final)Confirmed
OCT 13–15TechCrunch Disrupt — Moscone WestConfirmed
NOV 10–12AI Engineer Code Summit — general attendance not yet open, email-notify only⚠️ Corrected
NOV 12Cerebral Valley AI Summit — SF, apply to attendConfirmed

Before you land

⚠️ Missed: South Park Commons Founder Fellowship (Fall 2026)
Applications closed 11:59pm PT Sunday Aug 2, 2026 — six days before this was found (confirmed on southparkcommons.com/news/f26-founder-fellowship). The bootcamp runs late September to late November in San Francisco, overlapping nearly your whole trip, and funds people who don't yet have an idea: $400K upfront, $1M total. Re-scored 2026-08-10: with a working prototype already running, "no idea yet" is not your case — SPC's relevant claim is the -1 to 0, pre-company phase, which is. Still a fit, just not the perfect one this page implied. Email SPC to ask whether late consideration is ever possible and to be notified when Spring 2027 opens — then set a January 2027 reminder so this can't happen twice.
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. Note Founders Inc's 42,000 sq ft campus sits at Fort Mason — the same venue as DevDay (Sep 29) and GitHub Universe (Oct 28–29) — and runs weekly Ship-its and office hours across all three months. Refined 2026-08-09 — "follow" is not sufficient for AGI House: its SF events are application-gated per event, run through Partiful/Luma pages where you apply and must be accepted, not open RSVPs. Budget lead time for each and expect some rejections; following the calendar only tells you when to apply. Founders Inc's Luma calendars located 2026-08-09: luma.com/finc and luma.com/fdotinc — both list on-campus events at the Fort Mason space. With DevDay itself now closed to new applicants, these are the pages that actually determine your Sep 29 week. Update 2026-08-26: luma.com/fdotinc now shows its first two live events — the Sep 5 hackathon in the Settle-in card below, plus a free general-admission "Open Campus (Blueprint Edition)" on Aug 27, which lands five days before you land and isn't reachable. luma.com/finc is still showing zero events pending approval. ⚠️ Corrected 2026-09-05: the AGI House calendar this page has pointed to since it was written, luma.com/agihouse, is the wrong one. Its own structured data now returns "launch_status":"archived" and describes itself as "Calendar for AGI House Hackathons in 2025" — a retired calendar, not a slow one. AGI House's own site (agihouse.ai) links to a different, currently live calendar instead: lu.ma/agi-house (hyphenated), "launch_status":"launched", with real upcoming events including one the day of this pass and another on Sep 17. Swap the bookmark. Update 2026-09-06: lu.ma/agi-house now lists four upcoming events, not one — beyond Sep 17, there's a Sep 19 Voice AI Hackathon (require_approval: true) and, notably, a Sep 20 AI Debates Hackathon and a Sep 22 GPU energy-optimization hackathon, both require_approval: false — genuinely open RSVP. That corrects the "application-gated per event, not open RSVPs" rule stated above: true often, not always — check each event's own page. Also, luma.com/fdotinc went from one live event to three: alongside the (now sold-out) Sep 5 hackathon, it lists Sep 9 "Open Campus (Blueprint Edition)" and Sep 10 "Silly Robots Contest," both require_approval: true and both new dates, not the stale Aug 27 listing that aged off earlier. Update 2026-09-09: both calendars gained one more event apiece. lu.ma/agi-house now lists a fifth event, Sep 16 "Bay Area Frontier Research Club #23 | Founders Edition" (require_approval: true, 228 spots remaining) — a dinner + paper discussion co-hosted by Julius Ritter and Kristopher Floyd of The Frontier Syndicate, the evening before Data Goldmine. luma.com/fdotinc now also shows an "Apple Event Watch Party @ Founders, Inc.," Sep 9, 10am–12pm PT (require_approval: true) — same day as Open Campus, but a two-hour morning window that may already be over by the time this page is read same-day; noted for completeness, not pushed as actionable.
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. Added 2026-09-07: The San Francisco Tech Scene (luma.com/thesanfranciscotechscene, run by Christopher Carew, WhatsApp group at The-Tech-Scene.com) belongs in this rotation too — its Luma calendar currently carries 20+ upcoming SF events, several the same Tech Week listings luma.com/sftw surfaced last pass (SF Tech Mix & Mingle, Batter Up San Francisco!, AI Native Summit), plus others neither calendar had on its own (Pitch Roast Live, an AI-Native Startup Hackathon, an AI Hackathon: Sales Copilot AI). A third aggregator, not a duplicate of the other two.
Apply to founderdinner.ai
Curated, application-based AI-founder dinner series. Selective, but "pre-company and building" is a fine reason to apply — apply early, decisions take time. Re-checked 2026-08-04 through 2026-08-24 via independent search (the site 403'd every direct fetch); re-checked again 2026-08-26 with a successful direct fetch this time, confirming the same facts first-party: request access with your email, get a short application in return, review is for "relevance, fit, and timing" — still no public cohort dates or deadline. 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 through 2026-09-07 across every pass) — of everything on this page, it's now the one program still open that's built for exactly your stage, since SPC's Fall cohort closed Aug 2. Exact calendar dates still unconfirmed — Q3 ends Sep 30, three weeks out, with nothing posted yet. New 2026-09-08: the admissions page now carries a direct "APPLY NOW" button, linking to form.fillout.com/t/x2fuWdEqkSus (live, returns 200) — twenty-one prior passes described this as "apply at admissions.joinodf.com" without ever finding a direct form link; the application doesn't appear to wait on calendar dates being posted, so there's no reason to hold off applying until Q3 firms up.
⚠️ Corrected 2026-09-06: luma.com/sftw is not still "launching soon" — it's quietly live
Nine straight passes (Aug 4 through Sep 5) read this calendar's visible banner — "This calendar is launching soon" — and reported no change, because the banner itself hasn't changed. A direct curl of the raw page now returns structured data listing five real, dated events: SF Tech Mix & Mingle (Oct 4), Batter Up San Francisco! (Oct 6, Hustle Fund Events, co-hosted by Mariane Bekker — already queued for outreach), Build Better Electronics Manufacturing Summit 2026 (Oct 7, $100), AI Native Summit - SF TechWeek 2026 (Oct 9), and Human Performance, Capital & Innovation (Oct 9, BLCK VC San Francisco). The banner is stale UI, not a reliable status signal. Re-check closer to Oct 5 as more events post.
⭐⚠️ Apply to host a TechCrunch Disrupt Side Event — applications close September 4, three days after you land
Confirmed 2026-08-09 on techcrunch.com/events/techcrunch-disrupt/side-events (announced Aug 7). Side events run Oct 10–16; on conference days (Oct 13–15) only evening events from 5:00pm PT. Applying and being listed is free — TechCrunch promotes your event to the 10,000+ attendees already in town — though hosts bear the actual execution costs, so scope it small. Their own framing of what qualifies is broad: "a founder mixer, an after-hours panel, a themed party, a morning run, whatever fits your goal." A morning run costs nothing. This is the single most actionable item on this page, and the one with a real deadline — Sep 4 is 72 hours after you land, so draft the application before you fly. Eligibility for an individual with no company isn't stated; email side.events@techcrunch.com to ask rather than assuming either way. One new detail confirmed 2026-08-26: the page's only stated eligibility rule at all is age, not company status — "all Side Events must be 18+ and 21+ if alcohol is served" — worth knowing if the eventual event format involves either.
⭐ Stop only waiting for the Tech Week calendar — apply to host an event
Newly confirmed 2026-08-08: Tech Week events are all independently hosted, and submissions run through an open portal at hosts.tech-week.com/submit (tech-week.com/host now redirects there; general contact hello@tech-week.com). Any company, startup, or community can propose an event, subject to calendar inclusion. This is the highest-leverage move available to you before you land. You have no registered company, which makes every other room on this page one you're asking to be let into — hosting inverts that. A ten-person dinner on a narrow topic costs a restaurant booking and puts you at the centre of a room whose guest list you chose, during the densest week of the trip. Submit early; the calendar fills 3–6 weeks out. Refined 2026-08-09: the portal is a seven-step form (email → event → confirm → checklist → details → company → review), covering BOS/NY/SF/LA. Step 06 being "Company" suggests a company is expected, so the individual-eligibility question stands — ask hello@tech-week.com. No submission deadline is published, unlike Disrupt's.

The circuit, week by week

Sep 1–9 · Settle in

One dated anchor now on the books: Founders Inc: Spatial Intelligence + Generative 3D Hackathon (Confirmed, Sep 5, 10am–8pm PT, Fort Mason SF — with World Labs, Tripo, mint.gg, and Convex.dev). Found 2026-08-26 via a direct fetch of luma.com/fdotinc, which showed zero events as recently as the 2026-08-11 pass — the first live listing on either Founders Inc calendar this page has tracked. Free, but application-gated (the event's own page returns require_approval: true); no stated review turnaround, so apply now rather than closer to the date. Update 2026-09-05, the day of: the listing now shows is_sold_out: true, spots_remaining: 0, waitlist active — "apply now" was right while it was live; it's a waitlist-only door now. Otherwise still no confirmed anchor for the rest of the week: get a place, join Shack15 or a similar coworking space, and start showing up to whatever recurring meetup fires first. New 2026-09-06: luma.com/fdotinc now also lists "Founders Inc: Open Campus (Blueprint Edition)," Sep 9 — application-gated (require_approval: true), no other details published yet. Falls inside this window; apply now.

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 unfunded solo founders actually belong right now. Re-verified 2026-08-10 and this entry is right as written: ycombinator.com/blog/2026-demo-days confirms Thu Sep 10, invitation-only, investors and media only, with invites going to active seed-stage check-writers via the YC Investor Portal or partner/alumni referral. There is no founder path in. Noted because a claim verified as correct is worth as much as one corrected.

Same-day add-on, newly found 2026-09-06: Founders Inc: Silly Robots Contest, also Sep 10, also on luma.com/fdotinc, also application-gated (require_approval: true). Two gated Founders Inc events land back to back — apply to both now rather than picking one blind.

Sep 18–22 · AGI House hackathon cluster

(New section, 2026-09-06) — lu.ma/agi-house turned out to have three more dated events beyond the Sep 17 Data Goldmine, filling a gap this page previously left blank between Dreamforce and Meta Connect. Voice AI Hackathon: SambaNova + General Compute + Infinity + Hume (Sep 19, 10am, AGI House SF: 170 St. Germain Ave) is application-gated (require_approval: true). The AI Debates Hackathon (Sep 20, 9am, same venue) and Energy Optimization of GPUs through Self-Improving Agents (Sep 22, 7pm, same venue) are both open RSVP (require_approval: false) — no application, no acceptance wait. These two are the easiest AGI House doors on the whole page.

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. Badge pricing corrected 2026-08-10: this page said "$500–$2,000+", which understated the floor — there is no $500 badge. Update 2026-08-24: the Aug 20 early-bird window has closed — the Conference pass is a flat $2,299, up from the $1,899 early-bird figure recorded two weeks ago, with the $999/pass group rate at 3+ still standing (one source says 5+, so treat the threshold as unconfirmed). Salesforce's own FAQ and registration pages both return 403 to direct fetch, so these figures come from consistent independent reporting rather than a first-party read — the same caveat this page applies to founderdinner.ai. Free alternative confirmed: Dreamforce streams live on Salesforce+ Sep 15–18, free registration, 400+ sessions. The content isn't gated at all — only the floor is.

Same-week add-on, newly found 2026-09-05: AGI House SF — "The Data Goldmine" (Sep 17, evening, application-gated). Found on lu.ma/agi-house, the correct live AGI House calendar — require_approval: true, address released only after acceptance, hosted by Ascension/AGI House SF with Julius Ritter, already in the outreach queue. Lands inside Dreamforce week and is the first dated, individually-reachable AGI House event this page has been able to name.

The night before, newly found 2026-09-09: Bay Area Frontier Research Club #23 | Founders Edition (Sep 16, 5:30–8:30pm PT, application-gated) — a recurring dinner + paper discussion run by The Frontier Syndicate, co-hosted this session by Julius Ritter. require_approval: true but 228 spots remaining, a much looser gate than the other AGI House events this week. This is its 23rd session — an established recurring research forum, not a one-off — which is also why its founder, Kristopher Floyd, has been added to the outreach queue.

Access: paid (flat $2,299)Free: Salesforce+ streamSatellite parties: free/RSVP
Don't buy the badge. Work the after-parties — same buildings, same people, no ticket required. A flat $2,299 makes that advice stronger still.
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

⚠️ Status changed — verify which case you're in. Confirmed 2026-08-09 on devday.openai.com: "Applications to attend OpenAI DevDay in-person are now closed." Attendance is invitation-only, decisions went out by late July (already past), and invitees have 14 days from notification to register at $650 or the seat returns to the waitlist. This page previously stated flatly that you already have the invite. If that's true, nothing here affects you — just confirm you registered inside the 14-day window, because an unregistered invite has already lapsed. If it isn't, the ticketed room is gone and no planning reopens it.

What stays open either way: the opening keynote is livestreamed free to anyone who signs up, and all sessions are recorded and posted to openai.com shortly after — the content was never the gated part, only the room. OpenAI's own satellite program (DevDay Exchanges) runs in Bengaluru, Tokyo, Seoul, Paris, Berlin, London, São Paulo and Mexico City, not SF, so there's no official local overflow track. The real density is unofficial and fully open to you: 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. Newly confirmed via skydeck.berkeley.edu: Batch 22 runs May–October, ~20 startups take $200K for 7.5%, and Demo Day draws 600+ attendees weighted toward seed and angel investors. Open registration and 600 investors is a rare combination on this page — register the day it opens.

Access: open registrationRoom: 600+, investor-heavy

The AI Conference 2026

Confirmed — Sep 29–Oct 1, Pier 48

Second same-week add-on, newly found 2026-08-27. Confirmed directly on aiconference.com: 3 days, 7 tracks, 120+ speakers (Peter Norvig, Anthropic's Emmanuel Ameisen, Chris Lattner, and Ion Stoica among the first announced), roughly 5,500 builders, researchers, and AI leaders expected at Pier 48 Shed A/B. Day ZERØ — Sep 29, the same date as DevDay — is already sold out; the main conference (Sep 30–Oct 1) still has tickets on sale. Speaker CFP is closed, no volunteer track is open, but media/analyst passes remain open via a dedicated form. Exact current price isn't confirmed first-party (the ticket widget loads dynamically); a secondary aggregator lists "starting from $199," recorded as unconfirmed. This is a second, much larger, ticketed room reachable without an invitation, right when DevDay itself isn't.

Access: paid — Day ZERØ sold outRoom: ~5,500, builder/researcher-heavy
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. Newly confirmed via foundersbay.com: run by Mariane Bekker (also Head of DevRel at You.com, and an angel), 200,000+ subscribers, and the breakfast is not a one-off — there's a monthly AI Breakfast with VCs plus quarterly founder dinners. Treat Oct 2 as your entry point to a recurring room; September and November instances should exist too.

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. And note the corollary of "independently hosted" — nobody gatekeeps the host list either: submit your own event at hosts.tech-week.com/submit. See the starred item under Before you land.

Update 2026-09-06 — the calendar has actual events on it now. luma.com/sftw's visible page still shows the "launching soon" banner, but its structured data lists five dated events: SF Tech Mix & Mingle (Oct 4), Batter Up San Francisco! (Oct 6, Hustle Fund Events — co-hosted by Mariane Bekker, already queued for outreach on Founders Bay), Build Better Electronics Manufacturing Summit 2026 (Oct 7, $100), AI Native Summit - SF TechWeek 2026 (Oct 9), and Human Performance, Capital & Innovation (Oct 9, BLCK VC San Francisco). See Before you land for the full method note.

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 — Battlefield takes companies, so it's a pre-company problem, not a pre-idea one.

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

Disrupt side events

Confirmed window · Oct 10–16

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. Window corrected to Oct 10–16 per TechCrunch's own page; on conference days (Oct 13–15) only evening events from 5:00pm PT are accepted.

Access: open, individually organizedHost applications: closed Sep 4
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. ⚠️ Update 2026-09-05: the Sep 4 host-application deadline has passed. TechCrunch's own page still reads in future tense — "the deadline is swiftly approaching on September 4" — unedited a day later, and the Airtable form shows no visible closed state. If the application wasn't in before landing, email side.events@techcrunch.com to check whether it's truly shut before writing this room off.
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.

Pricing and access filled in 2026-08-10, where this page previously said only "paid in-person / free virtual": in-person was $1,099 Early Bird through Aug 20, rising to $1,399 regular (Super Early Bird at $799 closed Jul 8), with a further 20% off at 4+ passes. Update 2026-08-24: the Early Bird window has closed — in-person is now the flat $1,399 regular rate, confirmed directly on githubuniverse.com (4+ passes still take the 20% off, to $1,119 each). Three cheaper doors, with sourcing made explicit: GitHub offers a limited number of discounted passes for students and nonprofits (official); selected open-source projects have historically received passes via the Open Source Zone (precedent); and — from a GitHub community discussion, not official policy — "in past years, some active community contributors have received complimentary tickets by reaching out directly" to socialimpact@github.com and events@github.com. That last is a lead worth one email, not a plan.

Access: flat $1,399 (4+ passes: $1,119 each)Free: virtual track confirmed
The free virtual stream covers the keynotes and is the sane default at your stage. Only pay for in-person if the hallway track is the point for you. Speaking is closed for this year — the Call for Speakers deadline was May 1, 2026, 11:59pm PT, long past and not something you could realistically have hit. Worth knowing anyway: one of the three formats is "Ship & Tell," explicitly for founders sharing what shipped, what broke and what worked rather than polished demos. That's the Universe 2027 target, CFP likely opening around spring — and corrected 2026-08-10, this page said "by then you may have something that broke," which understated you: the GitHub-signal analyzer is already running and its signal-weighting problem has already broken in interesting ways. That's a 2027 CFP you can draft today. Attend this year, watch how Ship & Tell lands, and file it.
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 10–12

⚠️ Corrected 2026-08-24: general attendance is not currently a live application. A 2026-08-09 pass read the FAQ as saying "If you don't have one, you can apply for an invite and we'll review your application within a day," via apply.ai.engineer. Fetching both pages directly this pass shows something different now: ai.engineer/code/2026's own FAQ states "Applications for the 2026 San Francisco summit will open soon" with an email-notify signup, no live form; and apply.ai.engineer currently serves the previous event's page — "Returning Nov 20–22, 2025 • New York, NY … Applications now closed and conference is sold out." Sign up for the email notice instead of hunting for a form that isn't there right now. What is confirmed open: the Call for Speakers, rolling review, final deadline Oct 11, 2026 (11:59pm PT), up to 3 proposals, and "We cover travel and hotel for everyone that needs it." New this pass: the CFP page also lists a Sep 15, 2026 early-review deadline, flagged "apply early if international" — three weeks after landing, well before the Oct 11 final cutoff. Failing both, all talks are recorded to their YouTube channel (550k+ subscribers) and the event is livestreamed, with free remote access via their newsletter. Venue confirmed 2026-08-29: Hilton San Francisco Union Square, 333 O'Farrell St — worth knowing now for hotel/logistics planning even with attendance still gated on the email list. New 2026-09-05: the venue page now advertises a discounted room block at the Hilton, bookable directly at book.passkey.com/go/AIEngineerCodeSummit — worth booking early since room blocks sell out before the event does.

Access: not yet open (email-notify)CFS early review: Sep 15CFS final: Oct 11Venue: Hilton SF Union Square

Cerebral Valley AI Summit

Confirmed · Nov 12 · SF

Hosted by Eric Newcomer with Volley/Weekend — invite-only, with a real apply-to-attend path that resolves to reg.newcomer.events/cvai8/start, re-confirmed 2026-08-24. No deadline, cost or selection criteria are published; summits@newcomer.co is the address for all three. Their own attendee breakdown is roughly 50% founders from venture-backed startups, plus investors, media, execs and researchers — which puts an unfunded solo applicant outside the modal profile. Apply anyway. Re-scored 2026-08-10: this line said "a pre-idea, pre-company applicant," which was the weakest available framing — an ex-founder who raised $350K and hit #1 on Product Hunt, now shipping AI products in production, is not that. Apply with the record, not the humility. It now lands on the final day of AI Engineer Code Summit (Nov 10–12) rather than in the middle of it, given the corrected dates — check whether that eases the Nov 12 clash before assuming you still have to pick.

Access: apply → reg.newcomer.events/cvai8/startDeadline: none published

Plug and Play Silicon Valley Summit

Corrected · Nov 17–19

Corrected 2026-08-11: this page had it at Nov 15–17, "starts the day you fly home." Confirmed directly on plugandplaytechcenter.com as Nov 17–19, 2026, Sunnyvale — cross-checked against the prior year's edition (Nov 18–20, 2025, same Tue–Thu pattern one year apart) via Eventbrite. That's two days after the Nov 15 trip end. As dated, it doesn't overlap the trip at all — not even day one — unless the return flight moves.

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
lu.ma/agi-house (corrected 2026-09-05, was luma.com/agihouse) / 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

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.

OptionMonthly~10.5-week totalNote
Foundry Coliving (Mission)$1,990–2,190~$5,000–5,500Founder 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~$2,900–6,600Real live listings; verify identity before paying anything
908 Coliving (Russian Hill)$1,050–3,300~$2,600–8,200Shared room at the low end; near Fort Mason/Ferry Building
HI Hostel, Fort Mason (dorm bed)~$950–1,300~$2,300–3,200Steps from the DevDay venue; dorm-only, no privacy for calls
Craigslist / FB Marketplace room$900–1,800~$2,250–4,500Cheapest if it works out; highest scam risk — never wire money unseen
Oakland (cross-bay) private room~$1,300–1,700~$3,250–4,250Direct BART to SoMa/Mission; last trains cut off late-night networking

Skip these

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

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, extended 2026-08-05 (two passes), 2026-08-06 (two passes), 2026-08-07 (two passes), and 2026-08-08 — 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

Louis Beaumont
Screenpipe · ycombinator.com/companies/screenpipe · Launch HN
Screen/audio capture that builds a searchable local-first memory layer for AI agents — 20K+ GitHub stars. YC S26, SF.
Matthew Wong & Mojmir Horvath
Poth Labs · ycombinator.com/companies/poth-labs
Agentic research platform that connects to company data (PostHog, HubSpot, Slack), builds a customer knowledge graph, and validates hypotheses about churn/product issues with cited evidence. YC S26, SF, two-person team.
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.
Govind Kavaturi & Mike Molinet
Dock · ycombinator.com/companies/dock (trydock.ai)
Multiplayer agent workspace — spin up teams of specialized agents to run whole company departments. YC S26, SF.
Karan Raina & Shailendra Singh
HyperProbe · ycombinator.com/companies/hyperprobe
Lets coding agents drop non-breaking debug probes into running production services straight from the IDE, so agents can fix prod, not just write code. YC S26, SF.
Aniket Deshpande & Mugdhaa Patankar
Agent FM · ycombinator.com/companies/agent-fm
Desktop app giving engineers one group chat to hear and steer multiple coding agents at once, instead of babysitting separate chat windows. YC S26, SF.
Kion Fallah & Silen Naihin
Experiential Labs · ycombinator.com/companies/experiential-labs
Continual learning for agents — model endpoints matching frontier quality at 50%+ lower cost by training on production agent traces. YC S26, SF. Both ex-Waabi staff research scientists, ML PhDs from Georgia Tech.
Jibril Moinuddin & Christ Xu
Rational · ycombinator.com/companies/rational
AI coworkers for accounting firms — agents onboard themselves to the firm, build a company brain, and handle month-end close through tax prep. YC S26, SF. Xu previously exited a company for $400K and was the youngest Senior SWE at Tencent; also ex-Jane Street ML engineer and OpenAI SWE intern.
Emre Işık & Hakan Enes Aksu
SpaceFlow Technologies · ycombinator.com/companies/spaceflow-technologies-inc
Managed runtime for enterprise AI agents — governs supply-chain work across ERPs, email, spreadsheets, and supplier portals. YC S26, SF, already at six-figure ARR. Işık is a Cambridge grad; team relocated from Istanbul to build this.
Michael Jeffords & Charles Muehlberger
Conifer · ycombinator.com/companies/conifer
Local-first least-cost routing system cutting token spend 80%+ across LLM calls. YC S26, SF.
Ray Liao, Alex Wilcox & Dima Vremenko
Inkbox · ycombinator.com/companies/inkbox
Identity and communication layer for AI agents — gives agents their own email, phone, iMessage, and internet address. YC S26, SF.
David Khachaturov & Erin McGurk
Egoist Machines · ycombinator.com/companies/egoist-machines
User-owned memory and preferences layer that follows you across every AI app instead of being locked into one. YC S26, SF.
Nikos Dritsakos
Glen · ycombinator.com/companies/glen
Unified organizational context layer for agents and humans. YC S26, SF.
Aidan Tiruvan
Archal · ycombinator.com/companies/archal
"The improvement loop for AI agents" — an eval platform that tests agents against clones of real services. YC S26, SF.
Michael Zhou
Codag · ycombinator.com/companies/codag
Compresses raw agent logs into schema-valid incident capsules — log compression built specifically for AI agents. YC S26, SF.
Jonathan Waldorf
Cerenovus · ycombinator.com/companies/cerenovus
Aggregates a company's files, emails, and messages into one markdown knowledge graph with native agent integration. YC S26, SF, 5-person team.
Jeffrey Byun, Henry A. Lee & Michael Moore
Akkari · ycombinator.com/companies/akkari
Autonomous customer-operations platform — captures commitments, bugs, and requests across Slack/email/calls/Discord and executes the follow-up work itself. YC S26, SF.
Alex Musy & Paulien Jeunesse
Huscarl · ycombinator.com/companies/huscarl
AI-native actuarial platform letting large corporations self-insure — claims ~30% premium savings by finding over/under-insured coverage. YC S26, SF (also a Paris office).

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/Series A, 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.
Kahlil Lalji, Eric Wang & Walt Leung
Natural · techcrunch.com, Jul 20 2026 · linkedin.com/in/bykahlil
Payments/orchestration infrastructure for autonomous AI agents — a Stripe for agents. $30M Series A led by Forerunner's Kirsten Green, 193 days after launch ($40M total). Lalji previously founded Ivella (acquired by Earnin); Wang was his Ivella co-founder; Leung ex-Nextdoor engineering manager. SF.
Lily Clifford, Brooke Larson & Ares Geovanos
Rime · techcrunch.com, Jul 15 2026 · linkedin.com/in/lilyjclifford
Speech-synthesis models for high-volume enterprise voice calls (Domino's, Wingstop use it for phone orders). $24M Series A led by M13. Clifford ex-Stanford NLP, Larson ex-Amazon Alexa, Geovanos Stanford eng. Runs its own SF recording studio.
Vincent Weisser & Johannes Hagemann
Prime Intellect · techcrunch.com, Jul 8 2026
Gives enterprises the compute and tooling to train their own agentic systems instead of depending on frontier labs. $130M Series A led by Radical Ventures at a $1B valuation, with Nvidia, Intel Capital, Dell Technologies Capital, and Iconiq also in. Larger round than the rest of this list's band, but real, Series A, and SF-based. Founded 2024.
Efrat Rapoport, Idan Tsitiat, Barak Goldstein & Ohad Hen
June · techcrunch.com, Aug 3 2026
Scans a company's existing systems (Salesforce, etc.) to find implementation bottlenecks and auto-builds agent workflows to replace forward-deployed-engineer work. $20M pre-seed led by Marc Benioff's Time Ventures, with Michael Dell, Aaron Levie, and George Kurtz also in. Founding team previously built Bonobo AI (acquired by Salesforce, 2019), then spent five years there. SF-based per PitchBook.

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.

WindowDaysDaily targetTargetPrimary lever
Sep 15–20 (Dreamforce)64/day24Satellite parties + Latent Space intro post
Sep 21–27 (build week)72/day14Cold outreach off YC directory
Sep 28–Oct 1 (DevDay week)46/day24Hacker houses + Lu.ma guest lists
Oct 2–4 (bridge)33/day9Scheduled follow-up coffees
Oct 5–11 (SF Tech Week)76/day42Lu.ma guest lists + speed networking
Oct 12–18 (Disrupt)75/day35Side events + Battlefield floor
Oct 19–25 (follow-up)72/day14Quality 1:1s from contacts made so far
Oct 26–29 (GitHub Universe)44/day16Technical 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.

Small events — where friendships actually happen

Everything above this line is calibrated for professional density — founders, investors, cold DMs, a 150-meeting quota. This section isn't that, on purpose. Utkarsh asked for an equal focus on the small, recurring, low-pressure stuff: a handful to ~20 people, meeting weekly or close to it, where you show up enough times that people just know you. No pitch, no follow-up email — just come back next week.

Already in your plan, not a new find

Foundry Coliving (the top housing pick above) already runs weekly community dinners for residents, plus weekend hikes and shared rituals with other founders in the house. If you take that room, you don't have to go looking for this section at all on move-in week — it's a built-in friendship lever, worth leaning on rather than re-sourcing.

Run Club SF
Tue 6:30pm Golden Gate Park + Sat 9am adventure run (3–10mi, various starts) · sanfranciscorunningclub.com · Instagram @runclubsf
Four runs a week, open pace bar (~12:00/mile), ends at a bar or coffee most weeks. Show up on the same two days and you'll know names by week three.
EGL board game night
Weekly Monday 6pm, The Game Parlour, 1342 Irving St · heylo.group/sfegl (moved off Meetup Nov 2025)
$7 table cover, same room every Monday, regulars teach newcomers the rules. Recurring enough that "your table" becomes a real thing.
SF Happy Hikers
Meetup, ~3hr/5–7mi hikes, hard-capped at 8 people · meetup.com/sfhappyhiking
The 8-person cap is deliberate — small enough for real conversation on trail, then a bar/restaurant after. Closer to a standing friend group than a hiking club.
SpanFran language exchange
Weekly Thursday 6pm, Muddy Waters Coffee, 521 Valencia St · meetup.com/spanfran
Name tags with languages spoken/wanted double as a built-in icebreaker. Free (just buy a coffee) — low stakes, and repeat attendance is the entire point of practicing a language.
SF Pickup Soccer (Marina)
Weekly Sunday 10am, Marina/Hamilton Rec Center area · meetup.com/san-francisco-pickup-soccer-meetup — just show up
All skill levels, ~12–23 people most weeks, optional $5. No RSVP required — about as low-pressure as recurring gets.
Queer Crush Climbing
Regular Tue/Thu evening sessions at Bay Area gyms incl. Mission Cliffs (SF) · Instagram @queercrushclimbing · queercrush.substack.com
All ages/experience levels welcome. A good example of an identity-based recurring group if that's the circuit you want — built explicitly for community, not just belay partners.
MOSA supper club
Seasonal ticketed dinners, SF (Bryant St venue + pop-ups), communal multi-course format · mosagather.com · Instagram @mosagather
Founder Angelina Hong started it in 2023 to solve her own "how do you consistently meet new people" problem. Intimate table, Michelin-trained chef, dine solo or bring a friend.
Foodies + New Friends Weekly (SF)
Weekly, groups of 6 or fewer, rotating SF restaurant · Eventbrite: "Foodies + New Friends Weekly: San Francisco"
Explicitly billed as "not a networking event" — a short interest questionnaire matches the table of 6. Closest thing on this page to a manufactured small friend group, run weekly.
Timeleft SF dinners
Weekly Wednesday (plus Tue women-only), app-matched groups of 6, SF restaurants · timeleft.com
Global platform (200+ cities) but a real, currently-running SF instance — a short personality quiz seats you with five compatible strangers, app handles the reservation, you just show up. Paid per dinner; lowest-effort way to guarantee a table of new people on a fixed weekly night.
SF Book & Social Club (Mid 20s–Mid 30s)
Monthly, Wednesday 7pm, rotating SF bars near BART · meetup.com/sfbookclub
909 members on paper but a real, small in-room turnout (5–7 most months) — one book a month, always at a bar, occasional happy hours/movie nights on top. Slower cadence than most of this list, but the smallness is the draw.
Cragmont Climbing Club
~2x/month outdoor trips + regular gym nights, Bay Area (Berkeley-based, SF gyms in rotation) · cragmontclimbingclub.org
No membership required — join the email list, then sign up for whichever trip or gym night fits. A looser, non-identity-based alternative to Queer Crush Climbing above if you just want a standing climbing crew.
Slow Runners Club
Weekly Sunday 10am, Panhandle (Baker & Oak) into Golden Gate Park · meetup.com/slowrunnerssf
Explicitly non-competitive — most members run 10:00–15:00/mile, warm-up at 10:10, optional coffee after. A slower, lower-key alternative to Run Club SF above if pace is what's kept you from showing up to a run club.
SF Cycling Club — Friday coffee ride
Weekly Friday 6:15am, Fell & Baker · sfcyclingclub.org
Fully public group ride, no membership needed to join in — ends with coffee at The Mill. Built specifically as the low-stakes way to meet the club before ever applying.
Mechanics' Institute Chess Club
Monthly Chess Social, first Friday 5pm, plus free weekday drop-in (15-min visitor pass at the 4th-floor desk) · milibrary.org/chess
Oldest chess club in the US, still running. The monthly social is billed as "a relaxed, welcoming way to meet fellow players" — no membership needed to just drop by and watch a board.
SF Pickup Volleyball
Multiple sessions/week incl. weekends, Golden Gate Park + Mission Creek Park + other SF courts · heylo.com "SF Pickup Volleyball" group
1,767 active members, mostly 2v2 social games. Intermediate skill bar (pass/set/hit consistently) — but organizers say they'll refer beginners to a group that fits rather than turn them away.
Shut Up & Write! SF Bay Area
Multiple weekly sessions, rotating SF cafes/libraries (Central Richmond, North Beach, Potrero Hill, Glen Park) · meetup.com/shutupandwritesfo
Small in-room turnout (1–8 most sessions) — quick intros, a silent focused-writing block, then optional chat after. Zero pitch, and a built-in reason to sit with the same few people again next week.
San Francisco Pub Quiz
Twice weekly, Mon & Wed 7:15pm, The Sycamore (2140 Mission St) + The Willows (1582 Folsom St) · meetup.com/san-francisco-pub-quiz
Teams of up to six; show up solo and the quizmaster slots you onto a pickup team. Same two bars, same nights, every week — a recurring anchor that isn't a workout or a hike.
SPIN San Francisco — $9 Tuesday nights
Weekly Tuesday, walk-in, 690 Folsom St (SoMa) · wearespin.com/location/san-francisco
Ping-pong bar/club, no membership or reservation needed for the weekly $9 special — first-come tables, full bar. About as easy a "just show up" recurring night as this list has.
Pickup Ultimate Frisbee — Glen Park
Saturdays ~2:30pm, main grass field, Glen Park · pickupultimate.com/cities/san-francisco
Casual, no-club, no-roster pickup game — join through the site's mailing list, show up if enough people commit. All levels welcome, zero season-long commitment required.
Neck of the Woods — SF Open Mic Wednesdays
Weekly Wednesday, doors 7pm, 406 Clement St (Inner Richmond) · neckofthewoodssf.com
Musicians get one song, comedians four minutes, poets and storytellers welcome too — same room every week builds the same regulars. A non-sporty, non-dinner way onto this list.
California Alpine Club — Sunday hikes
Every Sunday 9am–3pm, Alpine Lodge, Mt Tamalpais (Marin) · californiaalpineclub.org/alpine-lodge
Member-led hikes (6–10mi, capped at 10 hikers) each Sunday morning, plus lodge hospitality open to prospective members all afternoon — running continuously since 1913. A short drive/day trip from SF, not an SF address itself, but the closest thing on this list to a standing club you can just walk into.
San Francisco Wednesday Contra
2nd & 4th Wednesday, beginner lesson 7:30pm + dance 8–10pm, The Polish Club, 3040 22nd St · bacds.org/series/contra/san_francisco_wed
Live band and caller every time, explicitly built for newcomers — "come alone or bring a guest." No partner or experience needed; the beginner lesson before each dance is the whole point.
Cookbook to Table (SF)
Monthly, rotating member's home in SF/Peninsula/East Bay · meetup.com/cookbook-to-table
Pick a cookbook, pick a date — each of 6–12 people cooks one dish from it and brings it to share at a host's home, then the group picks the next book. A cooking-and-conversation format none of the ticketed supper clubs above offer.

None of these require an AI angle to join — that's the point. Some overlap with the SF builder crowd (climbing gyms and run clubs skew tech-heavy by demographics alone), but you belong at any of them regardless of what you're building next.