Introducing Cohort 1 of Startup Foundry 🚀 26 companies. 38 founders. 8 countries. Building across AI, healthcare, fintech, security, and productivity.

$10K in cash prizes. $22K in AI credits. A trip to Vegas. We’re hosting the Build an Agent Hackathon in San Francisco, Corgi Cafe, this Wednesday, Oct 7. Bring a problem you know well. Spend an afternoon building an agent people would pay for. Link to apply below 👇

@Agent37HQ - is the most affordable sandbox for teams building agents. We're 94% lower cost than most sandbox providers. Every team building an AI agent product ends up rebuilding the same plumbing. Each agent needs its own private computer that keeps its files, wakes when someone messages it, and costs almost nothing while idle. That's why we built Agent37. It comes with - Ready to launch templates for agent harness like Hermes, Claude Code, OpenCode etc. - Managed MCPs for 1000+ app integrations - Metered payments per minute instead of locking into monthly subscriptions. Tag anyone who's building agents today. I will send them my calendar link & help launch real quick. @ycombinator

The state of venture in 2026: what does it really take to get funded right now? Tomorrow at Foundry Day, two investors sit down to answer that honestly. @RumikaSharma (BankTech Ventures) and SagnikDey (Roundtable Ventures) go deep on where early-stage capital is flowing, how the bar has shifted for first checks, and what actually makes them say yes to a founder. No fluff. Just a real conversation about how money moves at the earliest stage. It is all part of Foundry Day, our virtual showcase where founders building in AI and frontier tech pitch live to investors. September 23. 12 PM PT. Virtual. Join us here: luma.com/w6w3hycp

Meet Kelly Lau, founder of RxScope, pitching at Foundry Day on September 23. RxScope is a real-time care-operations copilot for care homes, a single layer of intelligence across every nurse, room, and task that multiplies the care workforce. Foundry Day is our virtual showcase closing out Startup Foundry's inaugural cohort, where our founders present to a curated room of investors and operators. Investors and partners who want to meet exceptional early-stage founders. Request an invitation here: luma.com/w6w3hycp

Meet Jaclyn Kilani, founder of SafeMinds AI, pitching at Foundry Day on September 23. SafeMinds AI gives kids a safe way to explore AI, and gives parents visibility and control without hovering over every prompt. Foundry Day is our virtual showcase closing out Startup Foundry's inaugural cohort, where our founders present to a curated room of investors and operators. Investors and partners who want to meet exceptional early-stage founders early. Request an invitation here: luma.com/w6w3hycp

Meet Eshwar Boini, Co-founder of Quper, pitching at Foundry Day on September 23. Quper is a FinOps and DataOps intelligence platform that shows where your cloud costs are going before they scale out of control, using AI root-cause analysis. Foundry Day is our virtual showcase closing out Startup Foundry's inaugural cohort, where our founders present to a curated room of investors and operators. Investors and partners who want to meet exceptional early-stage founders early. Request an invitation here: luma.com/w6w3hycp

Meet @agarwal_nipurn, founder of @100XPrompt , pitching at Foundry Day on September 23. 100X Prompt turns open-source models into frontier-grade AI teams for enterprises and governments, at a fraction of the cost and with zero data leaving their control. Foundry Day is our virtual showcase closing out Startup Foundry's inaugural cohort, where our founders present to a curated room of investors and operators. Investors and partners who want to meet exceptional early-stage founders early. Request an invitation here: luma.com/w6w3hycp

Meet @meet_hao , founder of @admitplus_ai AI, pitching at Foundry Day on September 23. AdmitPlus AI personalizes learning with multimodal AI agents at global scale. Foundry Day is our virtual showcase closing out Startup Foundry's inaugural cohort, where our founders present to a curated room of investors and operators. Investors and partners who want to meet exceptional early-stage founders early, request an invitation here: luma.com/w6w3hycp

Meet Mehul Agarwal, founder of Elara AI, pitching at Foundry Day on September 23. Elara turns getting dressed into a conversation: tell it the occasion, and it builds the outfit from what you own, fills the gaps from any store, lets you try it on, and checks out, all without a search bar. Foundry Day is our virtual showcase closing out Startup Foundry's inaugural cohort, where our founders present to a curated room of investors and operators. Investors and partners who want to meet exceptional early-stage founders early. Request an invitation here: luma.com/w6w3hycp

Meet @islam_sohazur , founder of @ReachLLM , pitching at Foundry Day on September 23. ReachLLM is an AI-native agency that boosts your AI search visibility, getting your brand recommended by AI. Foundry Day is our virtual showcase closing out Startup Foundry's inaugural cohort, where our founders present to a curated room of investors and operators. Investors and partners who want to meet exceptional early-stage founders early. Request an invitation here: luma.com/w6w3hycp

Meet Sree Vidya Alivelu, founder of Causis, pitching at Foundry Day on September 23. Causis is personal health intelligence for chronic conditions. Every body has a pattern, and Causis finds yours, starting with thyroid. Foundry Day is our virtual showcase closing out Startup Foundry's inaugural cohort, where our founders present to a curated room of investors and operators. Investors and partners who want to meet exceptional early-stage founders. Request an invitation here: luma.com/w6w3hycp

Meet Kritika Jha, founder of @Aekovera , pitching at Foundry Day on September 23. Aekovera connects CPG brands with the right manufacturers and suppliers in three weeks, replacing months of cold outreach and dead ends. Foundry Day is our virtual showcase closing out Startup Foundry's inaugural cohort, where our founders present to a curated room of investors and operators. Investors and partners who want to meet exceptional early-stage founders early. Request an invitation here: luma.com/w6w3hycp

Meet @Vatsalpandya333 Pandya, founder of @TasksMind, pitching at Foundry Day on September 23. Taskmind turns production bugs into root-cause fixes and the customer follow-up that closes the loop, going beyond the patch. Foundry Day is our virtual showcase closing out Startup Foundry's inaugural cohort, where our founders present to a curated room of investors and operators. Investors and partners who want to meet exceptional early-stage founders early. Request an invitation here: luma.com/w6w3hycp

Meet @itsshashank, founder of @noveumai AI, pitching at Foundry Day on September 23. Noveum AI builds AI agents that test, monitor, and fix other AI agents. Foundry Day is our virtual showcase closing out Startup Foundry's inaugural cohort, where our founders present to a curated room of investors and operators. Investors and partners who want to meet exceptional early-stage founders early. Request an invitation here: luma.com/w6w3hycp

Last week, we closed out the inaugural cohort of Startup Foundry. Now we are bringing it home with Foundry Day, our virtual showcase on September 23. A curated group of founders building across AI and frontier technologies will pitch live, alongside a State of Venture panel on where early-stage capital is going right now. This one is for the investors, angels, operators, and partners who want to meet exceptional founders early, before everyone else does. It is invitation-only and virtual, so you can join from anywhere. If you would like to be in the room, Request an invitation here: luma.com/w6w3hycp Speakers and founders announced this week. Stay tuned.

As we close out Cohort 1, we are ending the week where it matters most for founders: fundraising. @kroshkina_dasha , Co-founder of Fundraising Bootcamp, joins our founders for our final office hours of the cohort. Dasha is a two-time founder and Techstars and Berkeley SkyDeck alum who has built a community of over 3,000 founders and 200 VCs, and through her work has helped founders raise more than $50 million. In this session, she works directly with founders on how to approach their raise, the frameworks, the pitch, and how to get in front of the right investors.

This week, as part of the final stretch of Cohort 1, a group of our founders will pitch live and get real-time feedback from investors on their story, their positioning, and how to talk to VCs, all in preparation for our upcoming showcase. We are glad to have @RumikaSharma of BankTech Ventures joining as one of our investors for the session.

We are in the final week of Cohort 1, and it is all about getting our founders ready to pitch. Tomorrow, @Jkraus23 , Founder and CEO of Prepare 4 VC, joins our founders for a pitch workshop. Jason runs an investor readiness firm that has helped early-stage founders raise more than $480 million, and he will work through what makes a pitch actually land with investors, from structure and positioning to the story that moves a room. The perfect way to sharpen a pitch heading into our showcase

Most startup advice covers raising capital, finding product-market fit, and scaling fast. Far less is said about the quiet decisions that actually decide whether a company makes it. This week, Ashwin Gulati, President of Match Point Ventures and author of Soul Venture, joins our founders for a masterclass on what nobody tells you about building a startup. Drawing on more than 30 years working with over 100 companies, Ashwin shares candid lessons from inside the trenches, the mistakes founders repeat, the warning signs they miss, and the hard transitions that stall promising ventures

Scaling is where many companies either find their footing or lose it. Getting it right takes more than growth, it takes clarity. This week, May Shek, Founder and CEO of Boundless, joins our founders for a scaling workshop. With over 15 years across the public and private sectors, May helps leaders navigate complex moments of change, clarifying the story, making disciplined bets, and equipping teams to act. A practical session on how to grow with clarity and intention, not just speed.