🌴 The LA Grind: Week of August 17th

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

Author

Justin Gordon
August 17, 2026

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

Happy Monday! We’re about 5 weeks out from the Ambition Summit and tickets go up in price in a few weeks. We have a great speaker lineup and I’m so excited for this to all come together after months of work. Apply to join here.

Let’s get to it.

What happens when you put 150 ambitious founders, investors, and operators in one room for a full day?

We're about to find out.

On September 24th, Ambition 2026 takes over a private venue in Santa Monica. One day, one room, no filler panels. Speakers include:

  • Shivani Siroya (Tala)

  • Mehul Nariyawala (Matic)

  • Dee Murthy (Ghost)

  • Jessica Chang (Upwards)

  • Shamin Walsh (BAM Ventures)

  • Jo Phillips (Payabli)

  • Dara Ladjevardian (Delphi)

This isn't a massive conference you wander through with a lanyard. It's curated, it's capped at 150, and attendees have already signed up from across the US and as far as Australia.

VIP tickets include an intimate dinner the night before with some of the speakers and as many great people as I can talk into showing up.

Upcoming Events

🌴 Upcoming Events I’m Hosting 🌴  

🗓️ August 19: The LA Grind: Seed to Series A Founder Dinner. Santa Monica. 6:30 - 8:30 pm. Sponsored by Wells Fargo and Pilot.

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

🗓️ September 2: Members Coffee Meetup. Santa Monica. 8 - 9:30 am.

🗓️ September 8: The LA Grind: LA Startup Community Walk. Manhattan Beach. 4 - 5:30 pm.

🗓️ September 18: The LA Grind: Poker Night. Hollywood. 6 - 11 pm.

👋 This Week 👋  

🗓️ August 20: LA Tech Happy Hour. Culver City. 6 - 8 pm.

🗓️ August 20: Sunset Circle. Beverly Hills. 6 - 8 pm.

🗓️ August 23: Cyberdeck Workshop. Arts District. 3 - 6 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 & VC Jobs

Founding Engineer @ Superunit

Test Engineer II @ Airhart Aeronautics

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.

Looking for a house in LA?

A friend of The LA Grind is renting out her house in Studio City. 3 bed; 2 bath; Private Pool and Hot Tub. $4,800 per month, available immediately. Contact Trina at +1 (323) 603-6332 to coordinate a showing and see more details here. 

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 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.

First episodes of Ambition:

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

Neros Technologies, a provider of a drone platform, raised a $250M Series C co-led by Sequoia Capital and American Strategic Technology Fund (ASTF).

Atlas Motion, a developer of high-performance electric motors and actuators for defense platforms, raised a $11.5M round led by Greycroft.

Dimension, a social commerce technology company, raised a $1.65M in Seed round backed by Science Inc., UpscaleX and more.

Heaviside Industries, a provider of multi-domain precision munitions platforms, raised a $60M Series B led by Felicis with participation from Hedosophia, Menlo Ventures.

Blaze.tech, a provider of an AI app building platform purpose-built for healthcare, raised an additional $5M from Friale to bring the Pre-Seed round total to $8.5M.

Diald, a provider of an AI-powered real estate due diligence and valuation platform, has raised a $1M round led by Feedback Ventures.

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

Featured Location

San Laurel. Elegant Spanish restaurant at Conrad Los Angeles with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Fun Events

See you next week,

Justin

P.S. Want to connect?

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