The one where founders from 20+ countries joined eChai at Draper University, San Francisco
Meanwhile, across eChai
Jay Kreps, Jun Rao & Neha Narkhede 🇮🇳
Founded 2014 to commercialize Apache Kafka (built by the founders at LinkedIn); the data-streaming platform. IPO'd 2021; IBM announced an ~$11B acquisition in Dec 2025 (completed Mar 2026). Co-founder Neha N...
Dheeraj Pandey, Mohit Aron & Ajeet Singh 🇮🇳
Founded 2009; pioneer of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and now a hybrid multicloud platform, positioned as a key VMware alternative after the Broadcom acquisition. Public since 2016. Largely Indian-ori...
Vlad Tenev & Baiju Bhatt (Indian-origin co-founder)
Founded 2013 in Menlo Park; commission-free trading of stocks, options, ETFs and crypto. Public (Nasdaq: HOOD) since 2021; joined the S&P 500 in September 2025 with a market cap around $98B mid-2025. Crypto ...
Bipul Sinha, Arvind Jain, Soham Mazumdar & Arvind Nithrakashyap 🇮🇳
Founded 2014; cloud data-management and cyber-resilience / data-security platform (backup, recovery, ransomware protection). IPO'd on the NYSE in Apr 2024 at ~$5.6B, raising $752M. Predominantly Indian-origi...
Jay Chaudhry 🇮🇳
Founded 2007; the zero-trust cloud-security / SASE leader (Zero Trust Exchange) that pioneered securing users directly to apps rather than via the network perimeter. Public since 2018. Founder-CEO Jay Chaudh...
Evan Reiser & Sanjay Jeyakumar 🇮🇳
Founded 2018; AI-native email/human-behavior security that models normal behavior to block socially-engineered attacks. Raised a $250M Series D in Aug 2024 at a $5.1B valuation; crossed $200M ARR with 100% Y...
Max Levchin
Founded 2012 by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin; buy-now-pay-later installment lending integrated at checkout with major merchants (Amazon, Shopify, Apple Pay). Public on Nasdaq (AFRM) since 2021. As of 2025 r...
Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia & Nathan Blecharczyk
Founded 2008 renting air mattresses in a SF loft; became the world's largest home-sharing and short-stay travel marketplace. IPO'd December 2020 (NASDAQ: ABNB) and has been consistently profitable since 2022...
Adam Goldstein & Brett Adcock
Founded 2018, HQ Santa Clara with manufacturing in San Jose (South Bay); building the Midnight eVTOL air taxi for urban 'air mobility.' Public via SPAC 2021 (NYSE: ACHR); named official air-taxi provider of ...
Kristen Fortney & Eric Morgen
Longevity biotech founded 2015; mines human aging-cohort data with AI/ML to discover targets for metabolic and aging-related diseases, including obesity/metabolic drugs. Went public on Nasdaq (BIOA) in Septe...
Mike Belshe & Ben Davenport
Founded 2013; pioneered multi-signature institutional crypto custody with a decade-long unblemished security record; ~4,600+ institutional clients and ~$100B assets under custody. IPO'd January 2026 (first p...
Jack Dorsey & Jim McKelvey
Founded 2009 as Square; HQ in Oakland. Operates Square merchant payments, Cash App (57M+ active users) and TIDAL, with a deep Bitcoin strategy — held ~8,997 BTC corporate treasury (Mar 2026) and rolled out m...
Jane Chao & Xingjuan Chao
Neurotech/medtech company (founded 2014) making a rapid, portable EEG headband plus AI ('Clarity') that detects seizures and status epilepticus at the bedside. Completed an upsized ~$207M Nasdaq IPO (CBLL) i...
Richard Lowenthal, Dave Baxter, Harjinder Bhade & Praveen Mandal
Founded 2007 (as Coulomb Technologies); operates one of the world's largest EV-charging networks (NYSE: CHPT), selling AC/DC charging hardware plus cloud software to businesses, fleets and drivers across Nor...
Chris Britt & Ryan King
Founded 2012 in SF; consumer neobank offering fee-free banking, early direct deposit and credit-builder products aimed at everyday and underserved Americans. IPO'd on Nasdaq (CHYM) June 12, 2025, raising ~$8...
The most storied venture firm in the world, seeded on Sand Hill Road in 1972. Early backer of Apple, Google, Nvidia, Airbnb, Stripe and WhatsApp. In 2023-24 it split off its China (HongShan) and India/SEA (Peak XV Partners) arms, so the ...
Founded 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, now a multi-stage giant with 40B+ under management across crypto, bio, American Dynamism and AI. Portfolio includes Coinbase, Airbnb, Databricks and Anduril. Known for its heavyweight fou...
Peter Thiel's contrarian, founder-friendly firm, run day-to-day by partners including Brian Singerman and Napoleon Ta. Made defining bets on SpaceX, Palantir, Anduril, Stripe and Facebook. Famous for large concentrated positions and a de...
A deliberately small, equal-partnership firm with no junior investors, known for high-conviction Series A leads. Legendary early bets on eBay, Uber, Snap, Twitter, Discord and Dropbox. Each partner sits directly on boards; no growth arm.
One of the oldest US venture firms (1965), now heavily focused on early-stage enterprise and consumer, plus a strong AI push led by partners like Reid Hoffman and Saam Motamedi. Backed LinkedIn, Airbnb, Figma, Discord and Coinbase. Runs ...
Multi-stage global firm (Palo Alto, London, Bangalore) famous for its early Facebook bet. Portfolio spans Slack, Atlassian, CrowdStrike, Spotify and Vimeo. Its India office (Accel India) is a major force in the domestic startup scene, re...
The world's most influential startup accelerator and the anchor of the Bay Area ecosystem, running batches that give founders roughly $500K on standard terms plus three months of intensive guidance culminating in Demo Day. Founded in 200...
The San Francisco chapter of the global Techstars network, a 13-week mentorship-driven accelerator investing about $120K per company and plugging founders into 10,000+ mentors and investors worldwide. The Spring 2025 class was composed e...
A global venture firm and accelerator (formerly 500 Startups) headquartered in San Francisco, known for a high-volume, geographically diverse seed program that has invested in thousands of companies across dozens of countries. Founded in...
A small, highly selective seed accelerator founded in 2010 by ex-Google product manager Thomas Korte and Carine Magescas, taking roughly 15 teams per batch from ~2,000 applicants. Nicknamed the 'anti-Y Combinator' and ranked #1 US accele...
A venture-backed accelerator focused specifically on enterprise / B2B startups whose revenue comes from other companies, running a roughly six-month program with seed investment (~$36K) into about 75 companies per year. Founded by Ravi B...
A 12-week live-in residency accelerator for repeat technical founders, who move into a historic 22,000-sq-ft mansion across from Alamo Square Park and focus solely on building, with HF0 investing around $500K. Founded by Dave Fontenot. I...
A 42,000-sq-ft startup campus and early-stage fund at Fort Mason on the SF waterfront, founded in 2020 by Furqan Rydhan. It offers workspace for up to ~80 founders plus a hardware lab (CNC, 3D printers, robotics/BCI gear), media studio, ...
A technical community and VC firm founded in 2016 by former Dropbox execs Ruchi Sanghvi and Aditya Agarwal, described as an 'anti-incubator' focused on the 'minus one to zero' pre-idea phase of company building. It backs members' compani...
An affordable ($70–$140/month) members' coworking space in a 4,000-sq-ft exposed-brick vault beneath Hayes Valley, aiming to build an intergenerational campus of builders through events like potlucks, writing club and a Sunday open house...
Originally a nickname for the AI-dense Hayes Valley neighborhood, now also an organization that runs hackathons, summits and community programming connecting technical talent, AI startups, enterprises and investors. It has become a defin...
The largest and founding chapter of TiE, the global South-Asian-rooted entrepreneurship nonprofit. Runs year-round mentoring, angel investing (TiE Angels), charter-member networking, and pitch programs, and has empowered ~25,000 entrepre...
A technical community and VC firm founded in 2016 by ex-Facebook/Dropbox execs Ruchi Sanghvi and Aditya Agarwal, focused on the 'minus one to zero' pre-idea stage. Described as an 'anti-incubator'; over 1,000 technologists have joined to...
A 42,000 sq ft startup campus and first-check fund founded in 2020 by Furqan Rydhan, at Fort Mason in the Marina. Backs founders in AI, hardware, robotics, AR/VR, and content creation, with a CNC/3D-print hardware lab, media studio, and ...
The umbrella brand/community for SF's AI builder scene (the nickname coined for Hayes Valley's dense AI cluster). Runs co-working sessions in startup offices, a curated events newsletter, hackathons, and connects ML engineers, researcher...
A prominent AI hacker house / residency in the Bay Area (AGI House Hillsborough opened late 2022, AGI House SF late 2023). Hosts frequent hackathons drawing ~150 Bay Area techies, plus demo nights, workshops, and residencies for AI found...
A recurring meetup community for engineers, founders, and researchers working on AI agents, multimodal/voice, RAG, AI coding tools, evals, and production AI infra. Sessions blend demos, lightning talks, and hands-on building. Format: mon...
co-founder & CEO, 23andMe
Co-founded consumer genomics pioneer 23andMe in 2006 with Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza, making DNA-based ancestry and health insights mainstream. One of the Bay Area's most prominent women founders and a self...
co-founder & CEO, TigerEye (previously PlanGrid)
Serial Bay Area founder. Co-founded construction-software company PlanGrid, which sold to Autodesk for $875M in 2018. In 2022 she co-founded TigerEye, an AI-powered go-to-market planning and sales-forecastin...
founder & CEO, Credo AI (Indian-origin)
Indian-origin founder of Credo AI (founded 2020), a leading AI governance and responsible-AI platform helping enterprises manage AI risk and compliance. Named to TIME's 100 Most Influential People in AI (202...
co-founder & CEO, Symbl.ai (Indian-origin)
Indian-origin co-founder and CEO of Symbl.ai, a programmable AI platform that lets developers analyze, act on and comply with voice and video conversations at scale. Recognized on Inc.'s 2024 Female Founders...
co-founder & CEO, CloseFactor (Indian-origin)
Indian-origin founder (IIM Calcutta MBA) who founded CloseFactor in 2020, an ML-driven GTM/sales-research platform that surfaces in-market accounts and buying signals. CloseFactor was acquired by HubSpot in ...
founder, South Park Commons (Indian-origin)
Indian-origin engineer who was Facebook's first female engineer (built News Feed), later founded Cove (acquired by Dropbox, where she became VP Ops). In 2015 she founded South Park Commons in SF — a technica...
The city itself is now the centre of gravity: SoMa and Hayes Valley for AI, the 'Cerebral Valley' corridor, Jackson Square's AI Alley, and Mission Bay for biotech and health.
121 companies 25 investors 18 coworking
Strong in AI, Devtools
The self-styled 'Birthplace of Biotech': Genentech's home turf and the densest life-sciences campus cluster in the world.
8 companies
Strong in Biotech, Devtools
Palo Alto and Menlo Park: Stanford, the classic venture row on Sand Hill Road, and a band of frontier-AI and deeptech names.
27 companies 24 investors 3 coworking
Strong in Web3, Deeptech
Answers about the San Francisco startup scene
What does the startup ecosystem in San Francisco look like?
It is the world's #1 startup ecosystem and the centre of the AI wave. The frontier AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI) are here, alongside the deepest clusters anywhere in fintech, SaaS and developer tools, crypto, biotech in South San Francisco, deeptech, climate and space. The vertical pages and Founder Circuit above map who is building what.
Where do founders network in San Francisco and the Bay Area?
At meetups, demo days, AI hacker houses and dinners far more than at conferences. eChai runs free, open founder meetups in the Bay, with an India-in-the-Bay flavour. Beyond eChai there is a thick layer of communities, from SF Tech Week to the AI-house scene, all listed in the communities section below. The simplest first step is to show up to an upcoming event.
Which are the top AI startups and labs in San Francisco?
The frontier labs, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI, are all in the Bay, together worth over a trillion dollars. Around them sits a deep field of applied-AI, AI-agent and AI-infrastructure companies. See the AI, Generative AI and AI agents vertical pages above for the full, filterable list.
Who are the Indian founders in Silicon Valley?
A remarkable share of the Bay's most valuable companies are Indian-founded or Indian-led, from AI and SaaS to fintech and security. The Diaspora tab above maps that cluster company by company, and lists the India-linked networks, TiE Silicon Valley, Neythri and Indiaspora, that eChai connects into.
Who are the active VCs and angel investors in the Bay Area?
Sand Hill Road hosts the storied funds (Sequoia, a16z, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed, Greylock and more), alongside a deep bench of seed funds, crypto funds, and a set of cross-border US-India funds. The investors section above lists firms by type, including the India-linked ones.
Which accelerators and incubators are in San Francisco?
Y Combinator anchors the region, alongside Techstars, a16z's programs, university engines like Berkeley SkyDeck and StartX, and the AI hacker-house scene (AGI House, South Park Commons and more). The incubators and coworking section above lists them by type.
How do I find a co-founder in San Francisco?
Go where founders already gather. Accelerators like Y Combinator and South Park Commons run co-founder matching, but most pairings start informally at meetups, hackathons and AI houses. Come to a few eChai Bay Area events, meet people building adjacent things, and the conversations tend to find their own way to co-founder fit.
How do I join the startup community in San Francisco as an Indian founder?
eChai is free and open, and the Bay chapter is built around the India ↔ Bay bridge. Pick an upcoming event above, RSVP and walk in, no application or fee. It is one of the most natural on-ramps for an Indian founder landing in the Bay to meet both diaspora founders and the wider ecosystem.
What are the best startup events in San Francisco this week?
The upcoming events block above is live: RSVP to the next eChai Bay Area meetup. Beyond eChai, the region runs SF Tech Week, Dreamforce, NVIDIA GTC, TechCrunch Disrupt and a constant stream of AI meetups and hackathons, listed in the communities section.
New to the Bay Area startup scene? Start here.
eChai runs free, open founder meetups in the Bay, and connects the India ↔ Bay founder bridge. No membership, no fee, just show up. RSVP to the next one and meet the people building here.
See upcoming San Francisco events
