🌴 The LA Grind: Week of November 9th

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

Author

Justin Gordon
November 09, 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! The 13th episode of the Ambition Podcast went live yesterday, featuring James Dyson, with my source this episode being his incredible autobiography, Against the Odds. Two takeaways: 1) Difference for the sake of difference 2) Retain total control.

Let’s get to it.

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Upcoming Events

🌴 Upcoming Events I’m Hosting 🌴  

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

🗓️ November 20: Poker Night. West Hollywood. 6 - 11 pm.

🗓️ December 3: Rams Game (Seed and Series A Founders). Inglewood. 5:15 - 8:45 pm.

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

👋 This Week 👋  

🗓️ November 14: Life Summit 2026. Culver City. 10 am - 7 pm.

👀 Events Coming Soon 👀 

LA Grind Club

Over the past 18 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

Office Manager @ Sophia Space

Social Media Manager @ Rvivl Drinks

Executive Assistant @ ReMarkable Career

Website Marketing Manager @ Simple Practice

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.

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 James Dyson. He built 5,127 prototypes of one vacuum cleaner, most of them in a coach house beside his home. Electrolux told him he’d never sell one without a bag, and added that they made a lot of money selling bags. Manufacturer after manufacturer turned him down, so he built it himself. He was 45 when the first Dyson was finished, and it went on to become the best-selling vacuum cleaner in Britain.

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

Harbinger, an American-made medium-duty electric and hybrid vehicle manufacturer, raised a $240M Series D co-led by Tiger Global, Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund, and Ridgeline.

Guava, a provider of a platform for building voice agents, raised a $12.5M Seed round led by Acrew Capital.

Doughy, a cookie dough brand, raised an undisclosed amount backed by Oversubscribed Ventures, Corazon Capital and more.

Northwood Space Corp., a provider of a shared ground network connecting satellites to Earth, raised a $375M Series C co-led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and DFJ Growth.

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

Featured Location

Dear Jane’s. A retro-inspired seafood restaurant in Marina del Rey, serving oysters, lobster, seafood towers, fresh fish, and classic American dishes with beautiful marina views.

Fun Events

See you next week,

Justin

P.S. Want to connect?

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