Do these this week. In order. They compound.
Each move is a few hours of work and unlocks the next. If you do nothing else from this page, do these five.
Apply to Emergent Ventures today.
Tyler Cowen's grant program. No equity. $5K to $100K. Rolling deadline, fast turnaround. The easiest free yes in your stack.
mercatus.org/emergent‑ventures →Stack the six free credit programs.
Microsoft for Startups, AWS Activate, Google for Startups, NVIDIA Inception, Anthropic for Startups, OpenAI. Roughly $700K of free compute. Zero equity. About three hours of paperwork.
Jump to the stack →Apply to HF0 for the next cohort.
The best free housing fellowship in SF, period. 12 weeks. Free housing, meals, and a $1M SAFE. Selection bar is velocity and past shipping.
hf0.com →Tune your weekly rhythm.
Set up Lu.ma for discovery and Partiful for the after parties. Subscribe to one community calendar. The rest of SF will pull you in.
Calendar setup →Show up in person, weekly.
One AGI House hackathon. One Latent Space paper club. One South Park Commons dinner. The compounding is in the repetition.
Find your tribe →Programs.
Accelerators, fellowships, grants, credit stacks. The fastest compounding lever of the four. 22 entries, every link verified.
Emergent Ventures
Tyler Cowen · Mercatus Center
$5K to $100K grant. No equity. Fast rolling decision. The single highest leverage yes you can chase this week.
HF0 · Hacker Fellowship Zero
Dave Fontenot
Best free founder housing in SF. 12 weeks of housing, meals, and a $1M SAFE. Selection bar is velocity and prior shipping.
Y Combinator
Garry Tan · two batches per year
Still the global default. The network alone is worth the equity. Apply even if you think you are too early.
AI Grant
Nat Friedman · Daniel Gross
$250K plus Azure credits at ultra low dilution. Cohort based AI native fellowship. Applications gated. Write tight.
South Park Commons Founder Fellowship
Ruchi Sanghvi · Aditya Agarwal
Founder community, SF office, weekly dinners, a check. Best "between things" runway in the city.
Neo Residency
Ali Partovi
Hand picked early stage cohort. Senior operator network. Best for technical founders with conviction.
Berkeley SkyDeck
UC Berkeley
University anchored accelerator. Strong technical network. Visa friendly for international founders.
Sequoia Arc
Sequoia Capital
Sequoia's seed stage accelerator. Selective. Designed to bridge into a Series A from inside the firm.
a16z Speedrun
Andreessen Horowitz
$1M for games, consumer, and AI. Fast cohorts. Heavy on creative tech founders. Apply with a demo, not a deck.
Endeavor Outliers 2026
Endeavor Global · Comporta
Invite only retreat for Endeavor's top tier founders. Strong LATAM track. Mentor network and capital intros.
Latitud SF Fellowship
Brian Requarth · Yuri Danilchenko
SF immersion built for Latin American founders. Pipeline straight into Latitud Ventures and portfolio network.
Conviction Embed
Sarah Guo
In house residency at Conviction. AI only thesis. Heavy ML access. Best if you have research credibility.
Z Fellows
Cory Levy
One intense week in SF. $10K cash. Quality founders. Networking density beats check size here.
1517 Fund · Medici Program
Mike Gibson · Danielle Strachman
Anti credentialist. Funds young, weird, technical. Heavy on dropouts and indies. Tiny checks, big network.
500 Global
Christine Tsai
Global accelerator with deep Latam pipeline. Multiple geo tracks. Pragmatic, distribution focused playbook.
Microsoft for Startups
Microsoft · Founders Hub
Up to $150K in Azure credits, OpenAI API, and Microsoft Teams. Self serve approval. Largest credit pool of the stack.
AWS Activate
Amazon Web Services
Up to $100K AWS credits. Free for accelerator backed founders or self applied with a pitch. The easiest credit win.
Google for Startups Cloud
Google Cloud
Up to $200K GCP credits across two years for AI startups. Larger ceiling if you are inside a partner program.
NVIDIA Inception
NVIDIA
GPU credits, early access, and DGX cloud discounts. Critical if you are training or fine tuning your own models.
Anthropic for Startups
Anthropic
Claude API credits and go to market support. Lower volume but highest quality model access for product teams.
Ganas Ventures
Lolita Tagliaferri
Latam aligned micro VC and community. Pre seed checks. Strong Hispanic founder operator network.
Hustle Fund · Angel Squad
Elizabeth Yin
Hundreds of small check angels syndicated through Hustle Fund. Worth pitching once you have a metric.
Housing.
Where you live in SF is who you compound with. Some are free with a bar to entry. Some are paid with a vibe. Pick density over square footage.
HF0 Residency
Hacker Fellowship Zero
Best free founder housing in SF, period. Demonstrate velocity and past shipping. Cohort gated.
AGI House SF
Rocky Yu
SF anchor for AI founders. Saturday hackathons and Summit access. Even visiting unlocks density.
AGI House Hillsborough
Rocky Yu
The Hillsborough estate version. Larger events, longer stays, founder residencies. Backed by Schmidt and Andreessen.
Hexa House SF
Hexa
Curated founder housing. Application only. Strong AI and SaaS mix. Good middle cost option.
Frontier Tower
SoMa
Sixteen floors in the heart of SF, filled with frontier tech builders. Mixes housing, coworking, and hackathons.
Founders Inc
SF Marina · venture studio
Venture studio, coworking, and capital. Heavily AI and consumer tech. Application based residency.
Frontier Tower · Open Coworking
SoMa
Drop in access without committing to housing. Lowest friction entry to the SoMa AI scene.
The calendar.
SF compounds in person. Don't memorize event lists. Memorize the two platforms where they all live, plus the communities that publish to them.
Lu.ma
Source of truth for SF tech events. Hackathons, demo nights, AI dinners, paper clubs, summit side events. Subscribe to a few host calendars and your week fills itself.
Partiful
Where the smaller, social, sometimes invite only gatherings live. SF house parties, founder dinners, post conference drinks. Lu.ma is the meeting. Partiful is the after.
How they relate. Lu.ma is structured: a host, an agenda, an RSVP. Partiful is loose: a vibe, a venue, your friend's friend. The best week mixes both: one Lu.ma per weekday, one Partiful on Friday.
AI Engineer World's Fair
The biggest gathering of AI builders on the planet. Talks, side events, dinners, hiring. Most deals around the event happen at the Lu.ma side parties, not the conference floor itself. Book the hotel six months out.
ai.engineer →Always on. Publish to Lu.ma weekly.
Latent Space
swyx · weekly paper club
Highest signal AI engineering community on the internet. Paper club, Discord, IRL meetups. Show up consistently.
AGI House
Rocky Yu
Weekly Saturday hackathons plus an active Discord and Telegram. Drop in, ship something, meet AI founders.
South Park Commons
SF · weekly dinners
Founder community with SF office and weekly dinners. There is a bar to entry. Worth the application.
Cerebral Valley
Eric Newcomer · newsletter + summit
Themed AI hackathons and an invite only summit. The room where AI deals get done.
Hugging Face
huggingface.co
Open source ML community. Best for model researchers and applied ML founders. Strong Discord.
Frontier Tower
SoMa
Sixteen floor frontier tech tower. Runs near nightly events on Lu.ma. Drop in days available.
SF Tech Week
a16z · annual
Hundreds of side events across SF in one week. Mostly hosted on Lu.ma. Calendar arbitrage opportunity.
Capital.
Funds, solo capitalists, angels. Bias toward cold friendly first, Latam friendly second, tier 1 last. Apply pressure to the warm path first. Cold email the rest with personalization.
Hustle Fund
Elizabeth Yin
Famously cold friendly. Small first checks. Strong follow on through Angel Squad. Contact elizabeth@hustlefund.vc.
Elad Gil
Gil Capital · solo capitalist
$1B+ AUM. Fund III. 200+ investments. Operator pedigree. Warm intros work best. Reads cold email when sharp.
Conviction
Sarah Guo
$230M Fund II. 50+ portfolio. AI only thesis. Pair with the Conviction Embed application.
Naval Ravikant
AngelList · USVC Fund III
USVC Fund III ($500M retail AI, 2026). 378+ total investments. Highest mythos density per dollar in the city.
South Park Commons VC
Ruchi Sanghvi · Aditya Agarwal
The fund attached to the SPC community. If you are in the room, the capital follows.
Pear VC · Pear Garage
Pejman Nozad · Mar Hershenson
Top tier pre seed fund. Pear Garage is the residency style early track. High touch from day one.
Sahil Lavingia
shl.vc · Gumroad founder
Active angel. Builder bias. Tweets back. Send a working product, not a deck.
Shaan Puri
AllAccess Fund · My First Million
Active angel. Best for consumer and media adjacent plays. Followers are not checks. Lead with traction.
Lenny Rachitsky
Lenny's Newsletter
PM builder angel. Strong for consumer and B2B SaaS. Distribution aware. Newsletter intros help.
Nazca
Héctor Sepúlveda · Mexico City
$17.3B portfolio EV. 90+ companies. Strong LATAM coverage. Bridge Latam merged in. Network driven.
Ganas Ventures
Lolita Tagliaferri
Hispanic founder first thesis. Network led. Small checks but loud cheerleaders. hello@ganas.vc.
Latitud Ventures
Brian Requarth · Yuri Danilchenko
Latam first fund. Pipeline from the Latitud fellowship. Apply to fellowship first. Fund follows.
Y Combinator
SF · two batches per year
Apply to the program. The fund is the byproduct. Still the highest leverage default in the city.
a16z Speedrun · START
Andreessen Horowitz
a16z's early stage on ramps. Speedrun for games, consumer, AI. START is the first check fund.
Sequoia Arc
Sequoia Capital
Sequoia's seed program. Inside track to a Series A from the firm. Selective and design forward.
K9 Ventures
Manu Kumar
Solo capitalist. Pre seed first checks. Engineering heavy founders preferred.
Air Street Capital
Nathan Benaich
$232M Fund III. 18 active. Deep AI research thesis. London and SF presence.
AI Grant
Nat Friedman · Daniel Gross
Cohort based AI grant. Listed again here under capital. The Friedman and Gross network is the value.
Emergent Ventures
Tyler Cowen · Mercatus
Listed again because every founder needs to apply. Zero equity. Fast. Cold friendly by design.
How to use this page.
One page, four levers.
Programs unlock money and network. Housing unlocks density. Calendar unlocks serendipity. Capital closes the loop. Pull all four in parallel. Never sequentially.
Bias to action.
Tier S is doable this week. Tier A is doable this month. Tier B is for when you have leverage. The fastest founders apply to everything tier S in their first seven days here.
Cold friendly first.
Warm intros take weeks. Cold friendly investors and grants take days. Stack the fast yeses first. Let them buy you the warm intros to the slow ones.
Latam is a feature.
The SF playbook is not a substitute for the Latam playbook. It is a multiplier. The best founders here use both networks simultaneously.
From a place where the future is being shaped.