🌴 The LA Grind: Week of July 13th

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

Author

Justin Gordon
July 13, 2026

The LA Grind Club

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

Happy Monday! Last week, I announced the latest speaker for the Ambition Summit: ​Arteen Arabshahi, General Partner at Fika Ventures. He invests in "pre-Series A" B2B and B2B2C software and AI companies. He was with Fika at its inception, but left for an operator role as SVP of Strategy at Route during its hypergrowth phase, before returning in 2023.

Arteen joins a great speaker lineup and I’m excited to announce more speakers in the next few weeks! Stay tuned.

Let’s get to it.

At our largest event in the last year, with 250+ attendees, a private chef, open bar, and curated artwork, who got guaranteed access?

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.

Upcoming Events

🌴 Upcoming Events I’m Hosting 🌴  

🗓️ July 21: K1 Race Night. Culver City. 6 - 7:30 pm.

🗓️ July 29: Coffee Meetup. Santa Monica. 8 - 9:30 am.

🗓️ August 7: The LA Grind: Game Night. Hollywood. 7 - 11 pm.

🗓️ August 21: The LA Grind: Poker Night. Hollywood. 6 - 11 pm.

👋 This Week 👋  

🗓️ July 15: Cafe Cursor Los Angeles. Marina Del Rey. 10 am - 6 pm.

🗓️ July 15: Startup Arena. Santa Monica. 5 - 9 pm.

👀 Events Coming Soon 👀

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 Jobs

Marketing Assistant @ Sixty8 Capital

Hiring?

Feature your job in The LA Grind newsletter or reach out to our partners:

  • 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.

  • Relay Human Cloud: Deploy dedicated global teammates. Fully supported, ready fast, no long-term commitment. Relay handles everything behind your teammates so you just manage their work. Every seat comes fully provisioned; your teammates show up ready, supported, and embedded in your workflows from day one.

Additional Opportunities

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 10,000+ founders, investors, and operators.

Ambition is a podcast 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: what they built, how they thought, the struggles they overcame, and the tactics, strategies, and principles underneath it all.

Available now on all podcasting platforms including:

Cableteque, a provider of a comprehensive digital operating system, raised a $6M Seed round backed by 11 Tribes Ventures, PHX Ventures and more.

Bidbus, a developer of an online automotive auction marketplace, raised a $15M in Series A led by Ibex Investors.

Oratomic, a developer of fault-tolerant quantum computing architectures and quantum-error correction systems, raised a $300M Series A co-led by ARCH Venture Partners, Spark Capital, and Khosla Ventures.

EdVisorly, a provider of an educational technology (EdTech) platform for colleges and universities, raised a $13.3M Series A led by Breachway Capital.

Wonderdog, a developer of an AI-powered canine preventive health and at-home diagnostic platform, raised a $5M Pre-Seed round led by WndrCo and Maveron.

Savi Security, a consumer tech company protecting families from AI-powered scams and fraud, raised a $7M Seed Round led by Acrew Capital.

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

Featured Location

Water Grill. An upscale seafood restaurant in Santa Monica known for fresh oysters, elegant dining, and excellent cocktails, just a few blocks from the beach.

Fun Events

See you next week,

Justin

P.S. Want to connect?

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