San Mateo · Redwood City · Menlo Park · Palo Alto · Los Altos · Mountain View · Sunnyvale · Cupertino · Santa Clara · San Jose
The best weather in the world, the deepest bench of talent anywhere, safe and family friendly. And a startup scene that drifted to San Francisco and left this place bare. We are building it back, one gathering at a time.
The mission
Not that long ago, the gravity of this industry sat squarely in Palo Alto. Founders lived here, built here, and stayed. Over the last decade the locus of tech moved north, and the scene down here thinned out.
None of the fundamentals changed. The talent is still here. The weather is still insanely great. Our families are here. What went missing was the connective tissue: the dinners, the demo nights, the Saturday coffee where two people decide to build something. Most of us are too busy to get to San Francisco more than once or twice a month, so we are going to make the thing we want to attend.
South Bay Renaissance is a centralized structure for tech, startup and social activity across the South Bay and Peninsula. One shared calendar. One pool of venues, volunteers and sponsors. One community that anyone can host inside. Where there is clear demand and nobody running it, SBR goes and recruits the hosts to fill the gap.
The post that started it
It's time for a South Bay renaissance
— Rajat Suri (@rajatsuri) August 21, 2026
Might be hard to recall, but used to be not that long ago that the center of Silicon Valley was squarely in Palo Alto, not SF. When I came to the Bay in 2010, that's where I lived and that's where I stayed and settled down to build my startups
It's a beautiful place to live, maybe the best weather in the world, teeming with top talent, safe and family friendly.... but the locus of tech has moved to SF., leaving the startup scene down here somewhat bare and deprived.
I'm committed to revitalizing the South Bay for startups, with events, dinners, social activities (incl parent/kids activities), etc. We can build a vibrant hub down here if a few of us make it happen.
Paul Graham @paulg · Aug 22
@rajatsuri You may well be onto something.
160,000+ views · 797 likes · 193 replies
Calendar
Everything SBR touches lands here first, then goes out to the sub-communities most likely to show up. The slots below with open dates are waiting on hosts.
A fireside conversation on how AI-native companies differ from software firms with AI bolted on, and what that means for hiring, team structure, management and business models. Gokul Rajaram is an investor and product leader formerly at Google, Block, Coinbase, DoorDash, Meta and Pinterest. Hosted by Akriti Vora and Rajat Suri.
An evening on perceptive AI in healthcare: systems that interpret the care environment, not just the medical record. Cloudphysician co-founders Dhruv Joshi and Dileep Raman present, followed by Q&A and networking with food and drinks. Hosted by Akriti Vora and Rajat Suri.
The format that started all of this. One long table and one question worth an hour.
Someone who actually built the thing walks through how it works, then takes real questions for an hour.
A lot of us moved down here for the families. Bring them. Half the reason we live down here.
Four hours of walking gets you further than an hour in a conference room.
The full shared calendar goes live as hosts claim dates. Subscribe once and you will never miss the thing you would have loved.
Put your event on itPast gatherings
A casual picnic-style evening at the Off the Grid food trucks. Pick your own food and sit together on picnic mats; solo, friends and families with kids are all welcome. Bring a warm layer, since it can get chilly and windy. Hosted by Anjita Pandey, presented with Tribe.
A casual Mario Kart tournament with light appetizers and soft drinks. All skill levels are welcome, solo or with a friend, and races rotate so everyone gets a turn with time to talk between rounds. Hosted by Guillaume Bienaime, Rajat Suri and Akriti Vora.
A low-key night to step away from the laptop, grab a drink and put your random knowledge to use. Come with friends or solo; teams form on the night. Hosted by Guillaume Bienaime, Rajat Suri, Akriti Vora and Raymond Lin.
An inside look at Circuit Launch during Hardware Hackathon week: a facility tour, then drinks and appetizers with founders, engineers and builders across hardware, robotics and deep tech. Hosted by Circuit Launch, South Bay Renaissance, Raza Rafiq, Akriti Vora, Rajat Suri and Raymond Lin.
AI is moving beyond screens and software and into the physical world. An intimate conversation on where the real opportunities in Physical AI are emerging, what makes building in robotics, manufacturing, infrastructure and deep tech fundamentally different, and what the next wave of companies could look like. Hosted by Sarvesh Karkhanis at Pupa Ventures, with South Bay Renaissance. Speaker details coming shortly.
Some of the most consequential work in AI is happening underneath the applications. One small table of founders, engineers and researchers building across the AI infrastructure stack: inference, chips, agent infrastructure, foundation models, reinforcement learning. No panels, no pitches. Hosted by Prateek Joshi, in partnership with South Bay Renaissance and Pupa Ventures.
A fireside conversation between Amandeep Khurana, Member of Technical Staff at Anthropic, and Rajat Suri on enterprise AI adoption, followed by audience Q&A, curated presentations and networking over food and drinks. Hosted by Akriti Vora, Rajat Suri and Raymond Lin.
A friendly poker night with the South Bay Renaissance crew. Derek suggested a game, Nitin offered his place, and the room filled up. The $20 ticket is your tournament buy-in, with cash tables running alongside. Food and drinks by Mercury. Hosted by Nitin Pachisia, Derek Cheng, Akriti Vora and Rajat Suri.
A fireside conversation with Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box, moderated by Rajat Suri, on open-weight models and who ends up owning what comes next in AI. Audience Q&A, food and drinks, and a curated room of founders, AI engineers and builders. Presented with Tribe.
The one that started it. No panels, no pitches, no formal programming. Lunch, thoughtful introductions, and a conversation about who is already building here and what is missing. Everyone wrote down what they could contribute, and we left with a plan and with owners against it. Hosted by South Bay Renaissance and Tribe.
A fireside conversation between Karandeep Anand, CEO of Character.AI, and Rajat Suri on where consumer AI goes next, followed by lightning talks and networking. Presented by Excellence in Tech.
Photos from these are in the photos section. If you shot anything, post it tagged #SouthBayRenaissance and grab an overlay or sticker for it.
Photos
Every gathering that carries the name lands here, newest first. Click any photo to see it large.
Shot something at one of these? Post it tagged #SouthBayRenaissance, or send it to the team and it goes up here. Grab an overlay or sticker for your post.
The group chat
More than 200 people joined in the first few days: founders, operators, investors and parents from Palo Alto down to San Jose. It is where events get proposed, venues get offered and hosts find each other. Apply to join and someone will let you in.
Submit an event
A golf outing, an AI training deep dive, a kids playdate. The path is the same for all of them, and SBR does the parts that usually stop people.
Claim a space from the shared venue sheet or bring your own. Every venue in the network has agreed to the same standard request process, so booking one takes a few lines.
Once the time and place are locked, submit it here: the format, the date, who it is for, and what you need from us.
The SBR team sets up the Luma with you and shares it with the sub-communities most likely to come. It also lands on the regional calendar.
Volunteers for check-in and setup, sponsors if you want them, photography from the shared pool. Afterwards, post the photos tagged #SouthBayRenaissance so the next host can see how it went.
No approval committee. If it is a real event that follows the values below, we will help you run it.
The commons
Most good event ideas die on logistics. So the resources sit in one place where any host can draw on them.
People for check-in, setup, teardown and photography, so the host can actually host.
Offices, garages, backyards and event rooms on a shared sheet with one request process.
Companies that want to reach this region, matched to the events that fit them.
One regional calendar so events stop colliding and nothing good stays hidden.
Photography, ticketing, AV and printing, so you are not sourcing all of it alone.
Sub-communities
A region comes alive through small rooms whose people know each other. Every sub-community gets one to five volunteer hosts, and SBR is responsible for finding those hosts and keeping them supported.
By city
By interest
Every one of these is open. Tap the one you want to run or be part of and it takes you straight to the form with that community already filled in. Spinning up a new sub-community and linking it back to the main one takes a day.
About us
South Bay Renaissance was started in August 2026 by a group of founders, operators and parents across the Peninsula and the South Bay, and coordinated by the team at Tribe. There are hosts, volunteers, venues and sponsors, and a set of values every event that carries the name agrees to.
You do not need permission or a title. Pick a format, pick a date, and use the commons to get it in front of the right people.
People come to help each other build. Hard selling, aggressive recruiting and working the room for leads are not what this is.
Someone who moved here last month should be in a real conversation within five minutes of walking in. Hosts own that.
Charging for an event is fine, hosts making money is fine, free and sponsored are equally fine. Just say which one it is, and who the sponsor is, before people show up.
Many of us are here because of our kids. Events for families get planned and run with that in mind, down to the timing and the food.
Harassment or repeated bad behavior gets someone removed from the ecosystem, and hosts hear about it.
Photos from every gathering are in the photos section. Post yours and tag #SouthBayRenaissance so the next host can see how it went.
Get involved
Every one of these is a real gap right now, and none of them need a big commitment to start. Pick one and the form below takes about a minute.
Newsletter
New gatherings, open host slots and venues worth knowing about across the South Bay and Peninsula. One email a month, and you can leave whenever you want.