🌴 The LA Grind: Week of October 5th

Upcoming events, venture deals, LA opportunities, and more in Los Angeles this week.

Author

Justin Gordon
October 05, 2026

👋 I’m Justin. I run The LA Grind and The SF Grind, host the Ambition Podcast and the Ambition Summit, and scout for Headline.

Happy Monday! If you missed it last week, check out the 2026 Ambition Summit Recap. Reminder: SF Tech Week is this week and LA Tech Week is next week!

Need a graphic designer or brand manager? My good friend, Lena, is looking for a remote, full-time role (She can also do contract work if needed). Check out her website to get in touch.

Let’s get to it.

A note from a fellow member: Shawn Gold, long-time LA Grind member, CMO of Relay Human Cloud, 25 years hiring for startups in LA.

I know the tradeoff: the hire you need versus the runway you have. Relay solves it. Dedicated, full-time team members from Asia and Latin America at roughly 75% below US rates, month to month. Not freelancers. Not outsourcing. 100% dedicated people, managed by you, in your standups, on your systems. Developers, accountants, marketing, ops, AI-capable talent. SOC-verified, Dallas-based.

Questions? Message me directly. [email protected]

Upcoming Events

🌴 Upcoming Events I’m Hosting 🌴  

🗓️ October 7: The LA Grind: Coffee & Co-Working. Hollywood. 8 - 11 am.

🗓️ October 8: Pitch and Run. Beverly Hills. 7 - 8:30 am.

🗓️ October 15: Pitch and Run. Beverly Hills. 7 - 8:30 am.

🗓️ October 20: The LA Grind: Startup Community Mixer. Santa Monica. 6 - 8 pm.

🗓️ October 21: Member Coffee & Co-Working. Hollywood. 8 - 11 am.

🗓️ October 27: Members Dinner. West Hollywood. 6:30 - 8:30 pm.

🗓️ November 5: Game Night. West Hollywood. 6 - 10 pm.

🗓️ November 7: LA Startup Community Hike. Hollywood. 8 - 9:30 am.

🗓️ November 10: Member Coffee Meetup. Santa Monica. 8 - 9:30 am.

🗓️ September 23, 2027: Ambition Summit. Santa Monica. 9 am - 8 pm.

👋 This Week 👋  

👀 Events Coming Soon 👀 

LA Grind Club

Over the past 16 months, we’ve hosted ~100 events in Los Angeles to bring together the startup community.

Who were many of these events specifically for?

Members of The LA Grind Club.

The LA Grind Club is where the LA startup community comes to life. We’re a community of ~70 founders, investors, and operators in LA who gather multiple times per month through basketball runs, poker nights, coffee meetups, dinners, and other member-only events.

Marc Hankin of HPL Law advises inventors and high-growth teams on patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and licensing. Before your next fundraise, launch, or M&A chat, know where you stand by talking with Marc, who you can reach at [email protected].

Marc can often be found at startup events in LA and has been one of the biggest supporters of The LA Grind since its inception!

Top 5 LA Startup & VC Jobs

LA Regional Director @ 3i Members

Account Manager @ Subject

Hiring?

RJR Partners: Experts in helping startups scale their teams with high quality hires. Their team is comprised of tech industry veterans, allowing them to source and vet candidates directly through their personal networks. Their industry expertise also enables a deeper understanding of the needs of clients and candidates on a level unmatched by other firms.

Additional Opportunities

Storyverse is raising a seed round. They’re building the Warner Bros. of the AI era: an IP engine that discovers, develops and packages IP, then ships finished scripted video. Every production feeds an internal harness so capacity compounds. $1M+ B2B booked; their latest DramaBox title hit 28M+ views in its first days. Next: a gamified creation platform where people enter story worlds, cast characters, and direct through play.

Know a founder or investor in Los Angeles who is raising capital or searching for a co-founder? Reply to this email with more details that I could share in this newsletter for 11,000+ founders, investors, and operators.

The Ambition Podcast is a show about the world's most ambitious people from history, and the lessons you can take from their lives and use in your own work and life.

Each episode is deeply researched, built around the definitive biography of one person (or in some cases, two), with dozens of hours spent reading, synthesizing, and pulling out what actually matters.

The latest episode is on Charlie Munger. By 31, Charlie had been through a divorce and had just lost his nine-year-old son to leukemia. He went on to become Warren Buffett's partner and the man Buffett called the architect of Berkshire Hathaway, a struggling textile company they built into one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Available now on all podcasting platforms including: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, YouTube, and more.

Hop Aero, a defense technology and autonomous aerospace engineering startup, raised an $11M Seed round led by Initialized Capital.

Charter Space, an aerospace technology and space insurance startup, raised a $5M Seed round led by Crystal Venture Partners.

Varda Space Industries, a microgravity-enabled life sciences company, raised a $251M Series D led by Lux Capital and Natural Capital.

Notey, a provider of a music education and gaming platform, raised a $3M Seed round led by Tivoli Ventures and co-led by Malta Venture Capital.

Send any fundraising news for LA-based companies or funds, including your own, to [email protected].

Featured Location

Cicada. A grand, lavish art deco supper club in Downtown LA, known for Northern Italian dining, classic big band nights, and an opulent 1920s atmosphere.

Fun Events

See you next week,

Justin

P.S. Want to connect?

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