🌴 The LA Grind: Week of July 6th

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

Author

Justin Gordon
July 06, 2026

The LA Grind Club

👋 I’m Justin. I run The LA Grind and The SF Grind and scout for Headline.

Happy Monday! I announced my new podcast last week, Ambition, a show about history’s most ambitious people and the lessons you can learn from them. The first episode was on S.I. Newhouse, who built the multi-billion-dollar Advance Publications empire, but not many people knew who he was. This week, the second episode, about the Wright Brothers, comes out. Between launching the show and producing these first two episodes I’ve spent 80+ hours. I’m trying to make something great, that’ll eventually impact millions of people, and I hope you’ll check it out!

This newsletter, as well as the many events I’m hosting, will continue, I’ve just shifted a bit how I spend my time (and am somehow “working” even more).

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 10: The LA Grind: Poker Night. Hollywood. 6 - 11 pm.

🗓️ 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 👋  

👀 Events Coming Soon 👀

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

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

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

Office Manager @ Evlo AI

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:

Arcturus, a developer of carbon-infused advanced conductor materials, raised a $8M Seed round led by Initialized Capital.

Cosm, a company that operates immersive “Shared Reality” venues that use dome-shaped LED screens for live sports, concerts and entertainment experiences, received a $100M strategic investment from Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Sophia Space, a company building AI-powered infrastructure and intelligent systems for the space economy, raised a $7M SAFE round, led by EverGreen, The NVIDIA Alumni Investment Network, SparkLabs Group and more.

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

Featured Location

The Musso & Frank Grill. LA's legendary old-Hollywood restaurant, dating back to 1919, with tuxedoed servers, perfect martinis, red leather booths, and a dining room that feels frozen in time. It's the kind of place where movie stars, writers, and directors have been eating for generations.

Fun Events

See you next week,

Justin

P.S. Want to connect?

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