Founders Creative, from Palo Alto to San Francisco

Connecting 10,000 AI founders, investors, and executives in Silicon Valley

Author

Mala Ramakrishnan
February 17, 2025

In the last year, Founders Creative has had significant traction in the peninsula and while we maintain the cadence, we are excited to start having regular events now in San Francisco. We even dared to rent a co-working space in SF to host our events, and are hopeful to see a new community thrive there, so bookmark Founders Creative SF Calendar and help us spread the word.

Founders Creative – 10000+ executives, founders & investors in Silicon Valley

If you work in high tech and want to find your tribe outside the workplace, Join us at Founders Creative, a volunteer run community by executives in Silicon Valley with 10,000+ executives, founders, and investors. We hold weekly events to bring thought leadership and community across organizational boundaries

www.founderscreative.org.

Table of Contents

Upcoming Events Highlights

Venture Capital Events

Curious about what’s ahead for venture capital in 2025? Join the partners from Progressive Ventures to explore trends, growth opportunities, and strategic insights for the year ahead. Get a front-row seat to what’s next in the evolving market.

Session with a VC: Investing in Startups [Online] · Zoom | Wed Feb 19 2-3pm PST

Join Founders Creative for a live session on investing in AI startups hosted by Progressive Ventures.

lu.ma/u1wxy0ls

Investing in Generative AI Startups: Live Networking [Palo Alto] | Feb 21 2-3:30pm

Join Founders Creative for a live session on making a break into venture capital. Meet the partners at Progressive Ventures.

lu.ma/nw7a2pj8

Making a break into AI Venture Capital: Live Networking [San Francisco] | March 26 1-2:30pm PST

We will discuss the state of the industry and investing, how to evaluate startups, and make a break into Venture Capital

lu.ma/b8ej7qfd

Deep Dive Council sessions

Are you ready to find your tribe and increase your domain expertise, find a peer council, and advocacy that helps you land your next role?

AI Go-to-Market Salon · Lunch & Learn | Feb 21 12-1:30pm

In the new era of AI, the go-to-market function is being redefined on multiple levels. The traditional models for lead generation are being revolutionized by AI. Join other GTM leaders to explore how this impacts your career.

lu.ma/gtmsalon2

AI Cybersecurity Forum · Feb 27 2-5pm | Live Networking

Join us for an engaging and informative event where cybersecurity experts, AI enthusiasts, and industry leaders come together to discuss the latest trends in AI & Cybersecurity

lu.ma/cyber1

Founder Focus Events

AI Innovators Forum: AI Agents in Action | Feb 19 6-9pm, Founder Pitches, Executive Panel

Are you ready to be inspired by the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs? Join us for an empowering afternoon at the Founders Pitch Event, where visionary technologists will showcase their groundbreaking ideas alongside startups.

lu.ma/innovators2

Blog of the week

What Is Behind The DeepSeek Hype? | Ram Senthamarai, Sr ML Engineer Sentry.io

The tech industry have been rocked by the DeepSeek R1 model since its early January 2025 release. Is the hype justified? This series of posts will examine the technology behind the R1 model.

founderscreative.substack.com/p/what-is-behind-the-deepseek-hype

  • DeepSeek is a Chinese AI company founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, who previously co-founded a hedge fund called High-Flyer.

  • The company developed an AI model called DeepSeek-V3 that reportedly matches the performance of leading AI systems at a fraction of the cost.

  • DeepSeek's approach uses a "Mixture-of-Experts" method to make its AI models both powerful and efficient.

  • The company's success has disrupted the AI market, leading to significant impacts on stock prices and forcing major tech firms to rethink their AI strategies.

    In this blog go into a deep technical dive on what is behind the DeepSeek foundational model.

    Video of the week: YC Founder Series 2024

    YC Founder Series| Pitches and Demos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j244cHRhYg&t=11s

Join us at an upcoming events: lu.ma/founderscreative and sign up for our newsletter: www.founderscreative.org/#newsletter

Sponsors this week

TheAgentic

The AI Agent Infrastructure Company. We believe that the future of AI needs to be owned and driven by thousands of innovative AI founders and not big tech. At TheAgentic we are out to change that. TheAgentic provides a complete suite of agent infrastructure— reasoning LLMs, a digital worker framework, and web automation—enabling startups, AI founders and SaaS companies to build, deploy and scale with ease, and at the lowest possible cost.

www.theagentic.ai

Join us at an upcoming events: lu.ma/founderscreative and sign up for our newsletter: www.founderscreative.org/#newsletter