1,000+ guests. 7 partners. 6 events. 1 unforgettable week.
Over a thousand founders, investors, and operators. That’s how many people joined the six events Unicorner hosted during SF Tech Week. 💃
It wouldn’t be possible without the amazing partners who made it all a reality.
A shoutout to a16z, Bolt, Mercury, Notion, SimpleClosure, Deck, and Descope for co-hosting the highlight events of Tech Week 2026.
If you couldn’t make it, no worries. This special edition gives you a taste of what happened and what you can expect at our next in-person events. 👀
(Didn’t get a chance to talk with us? Just reply to this email and we’ll chat.)
If it looks delicious, we can confirm - it was!
For our seventh founding GPs omakase, we wanted to answer the age-old question: why do we keep doing these omakase dinners with investors?
Turns out, we enjoy hosting omakase dinners because they bring together everything we love, which means great food, handpicked guests, and a cozy setting. Plus, emerging VCs are an awesome group of people to host.
Many thanks to Mercury and Carta for building this experience with us. These dinners are intimate by design, which means seats go fast. If you want in next time, keep an eye on our events page or the top of our weekly emails.
We also hosted three firesides in partnership with SimpleClosure, Deck, and Descope, featuring the conversations founders rarely get to hear on stage.
We kicked off with a difficult one. Shutting down a company is never easy, but it doesn’t have to be a hard and lonely process.
We sat down with YG Leboeuf (CEO & Founder of Deck), Dori Yona (CEO & Founder of SimpleClosure), and Drew Glover (GP at Fiat Ventures) to talk about the art of entering the second-time founder club: learning from your mistakes and starting better next time.
Closing your company doesn’t have to be draining, and it can even put some money back in your pocket. Your proprietary data and code can be valued, priced, and licensed to AI labs.
That was the topic of our second fireside, which also covered, of course, the privacy and legal questions around this decision.
It featured Dori Yona, Jad Jawad (Handshake AI), and Shannah Johnson (CEO of SamaraData, former CEO of Cielo 24), who sold her company’s data through SimpleClosure.
And for the grand finale, a conversation with people who, against all odds, turned a crazy idea into a billion-dollar company.
We welcomed back Eric Simons, CEO of Bolt.new, and Gaurav Bhogale, Partner at Mantis Venture Capital, for an awesome conversation about the tough decisions behind the successful companies you see today.
But that wasn’t the end of the day…
If we ended October 8th totally drained, it wasn’t by chance.
After all these amazing chats, our stage transformed into a dazzling experience. We executed this event for Bolt alongside our friends at Flite, with influencer, DJ, and investor Chantel Jeffries headlining. 🚨
The night was full of food, drinks, and games, all hosted in a historic 150-year-old venue. A few lucky guests went home with exclusive take-home goodies (including a branded Bolt mini camera).
It was truly one for the books!
And this was just the first of two iconic nights in SF…
The following evening, we partnered with the one and only a16z, for… the Official SF Tech Week Afterparty.
With an immaculate crowd, a breathtaking view of SF, branded cotton candy, and even a robot drawing live portraits of our guests, brought to you by your friends at Notion… there was no better way to cap off the week.
When we started Unicorner, we wanted to tell the stories of the founders defying the odds, the investors supporting them, the unbelievable talent that it wouldn’t be possible with, and so much more. These are your stories.
Six years in the making, and dozens of events later, your stories are coming to life. We promise, it’s only going up from here.
This was our biggest Tech Week yet. If you made it out this year, thank you for participating.
And if not… we look forward to seeing you at the next one!
