TECH WEEK by a16z

You can’t growth-hack your way out of a product people don’t love. Build something users rave about first — then the referrals, virality, and GTM magic start to compound. — Keith Peiris Co-Founder Lightfield 📹 Roll

When Hedra decided to host during SF Tech Week, their goal was simple: to create a conversation that felt bigger than the company itself. They brought together Hedra’s Michael Lingelbach , Descript's Laura Burkhauser and Andreessen Horowitz's Justine Moore for a panel on AI and creativity, moderated by Ryan K. Rigney from a16z speedrun. The discussion drew founders, investors, and creators who wanted to understand how AI is changing the way content is made and shared. Erna Balayan, who leads events and product marketing at Hedra, spoke to us recently and said that the key was keeping the focus on the broader ecosystem rather than a product demo. “Every company is doing something different within AI,” she told me. “Seeing how those pieces fit together helps people think about the space in a new way.” Hosting as part of Tech Week helped them connect with a community already tuned into those conversations, and gave the team the structure to execute at a high level while staying true to their startup pace. Her biggest takeaway for other hosts: think about what you want the conversation to be, not just what you want to show. “If you start from that,” she said, “the right people show up.” Thinking about hosting next year? Start with the story you want to tell, and let Tech Week help you bring the right people together.

we added a new city, so of course, had to pull out some Boston visuals. anyway, see you in May? (also pls send this to/tag your Boston friends)

2026 DATES ARE LIVE!!!! And yep, we’re pulling up in a new city. Boston, get ready! Katia Ameri Andrew Chen Rose Johnson Shrikala Kashyap Emlyn Thompson Tracy Massaro Joung Lee Janelle Johnson

BIG NEWS! For the very first time, we’re adding a new city to TECH WEEK by a16z next year… Boston! 🎉 Boston will kick off a full run of back-to-back Tech Weeks, and will run the week before New York, and then we’re back in SF and LA in October. Boston has one of the most thriving early-stage tech ecosystems in the country, and we’ve seen so much demand from the community there. Here’s where (and when) we’ll be next year: 🆕 Boston: May 26–31 🗽 New York: June 1–7 🌁 San Francisco: Oct 5–11 🌴 Los Angeles: Oct 12–18 Over 100K people came out across 3,000+ Tech Week events this year, from companies like NVIDIA, Google, Anthropic & OpenAI to early startups to launch, hire, and fundraise. Can’t wait to see how it all evolves next year. If you’re in Boston and want to be part of the early crew, sign up here: https://lnkd.in/girg-rrj

BIG NEWS! For the very first time, we’re adding a new city to TECH WEEK by a16z next year… Boston! 🎉 Boston will kick off a full run of back-to-back Tech Weeks, and will run the week before New York, and then we’re back in SF and LA in October. Boston has one of the most thriving early-stage tech ecosystems in the country, and we’ve seen so much demand from the community there. Here’s where (and when) we’ll be next year: 🆕 Boston: May 26–31 🗽 New York: June 1–7 🌁 San Francisco: Oct 5–11 🌴 Los Angeles: Oct 12–18 Over 100K people came out across 3,000+ Tech Week events this year, from companies like NVIDIA, Google, Anthropic & OpenAI to early startups to launch, hire, and fundraise. Can’t wait to see how it all evolves next year. If you’re in Boston and want to be part of the early crew, sign up here: https://lnkd.in/girg-rrj

“AI is real. It enables things that were not possible before in terms of use case. It enables cost savings. But also what we see is a lot of things that don't solve a PO a problem for their customer or are not real sustainable businesses that are gonna have legs to actually get funded. I think on one side you have people like us that see, okay, this transformation is real. This is true pro platform shift. Let's go look for the things that should exist. But on the other side, there's a lot of supply that is just technology looking for a problem that. It's not there.” — Renata Quintini (Renegade Partners) from SF Tech Week 2025 📹 Roll

Tomorrow.

so excited about the announcement this week that Gemini decided to add an extra S 😅 follow us, stay tuned and see you Wednesday 🫡

“With AI engineering, testing is a lot less optional.” Guillermo Rauch (Vercel) at the Evalion event during SF Tech week hit on something key: The best builders move fast enough to learn in production. In this new cycle, the winners will test twice: in code and in the wild. 📹 Roll