If you build startups on the Peninsula or in the South Bay, the next few days are unusually full. Tribe's Luma calendar currently lists three founder events between Nov 11 and Nov 13, covering a sales and go-to-market conversation in Redwood City, a small founder dinner, and a social poker night. Each one has a different format, so it helps to know what you're signing up for before you spend an evening on it.
All three are part of South Bay Renaissance (SBR), the community Tribe has organized since August 2026 to rebuild the South Bay and Peninsula startup and social scene in person. This post goes through what each event page says as of Nov 9, then covers how to choose between them and how to follow up with the people you meet.
South Bay founder events on Tribe's calendar this week
Here are the three upcoming events exactly as the Tribe Events calendar shows them. Times are Pacific.
South Bay Renaissance | Mastering Sales & GTM: Redwood City, Wed, Nov 11, 6:00 PM PST
Tribe of Founders: An Intimate Monthly Dinner: Location TBD, Thu, Nov 12, 5:30 PM PST
South Bay Renaissance | Poker Night: South Bay, venue shared with confirmed guests, Fri, Nov 13, 6:00 PM PST
Two of the three need host approval to attend, and the dinner and poker pages both say space is limited. If one of these appeals to you, it's worth registering early so the hosts have time to review your request.
Mastering Sales and GTM in Redwood City on Nov 11
This one runs from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM at 810 Hamilton St in Redwood City, and the event page describes it as a fireside conversation between Peter Kazanjy, author of Founding Sales, and Rajat Suri, a serial entrepreneur and enterprise sales leader. The topics listed include finding your ideal customer, moving from founder-led sales to a repeatable sales motion, closing larger enterprise deals, and common go-to-market mistakes. The page also leaves room for audience questions and says food and refreshments are provided.
The page says attendance is intentionally limited to a small, curated group of founders, and ticket pricing is tiered, starting with a limited early bird price of $35. Since the tiers can change as tickets go, check the page for the current price. If you want the longer breakdown of this evening, we wrote it up in our guide to the founder sales evening in Redwood City.
A founder dinner and a poker night, Nov 12 and 13
The Tribe of Founders dinner on Nov 12 is hosted by Manish, Rajat Suri and Akriti Vora and is co-hosted by Tribe and Manish Jain, founder of Mezzi. The page describes an intimate gathering of 15 to 20 founders talking candidly about building a company, with registration subject to host approval. It says there's no fee to attend and guests cover their own food and drinks, and the location is still listed as TBD. If you've ever wanted to run something similar yourself, our post on how to host a founder dinner in the Bay Area covers the basics.
The Poker Night on Nov 13 is a social evening hosted by Akriti Vora, Rajat Suri and Raymond Lin. The page says it's a return of an earlier Poker Night, with friendly games, food, drinks and conversation among a curated group of founders, investors and builders, and it notes you don't need to be a regular at the table to enjoy it. Registration needs approval, and we cover the evening in more detail in our Poker Night guide.
What South Bay Renaissance is building
The SBR site says the group was started in August 2026 by founders, operators and parents across the Peninsula and the South Bay, and is coordinated by the team at Tribe. Its stated aim is to rebuild the dinners, demo nights and coffees that connect people, with one shared calendar covering cities from San Mateo to San Jose. The same page lists a Designing AI for Humans event in Redwood City on Nov 19, which we cover in our Redwood City AI design event post.
The calendar also has a recent track record. In October, SBR and Circuit Launch hosted a Physical AI & Robotics Mixer in Mountain View, at a space the page describes as home to 30+ companies building across robotics, hardware and deep tech. On Sep 30, a smaller AI Infra Dinner in Palo Alto was set up as a small dinner for founders, engineers and researchers building across the AI infrastructure stack.
How to pick an event and follow up as a first-timer
Start with the format that matches what you need this month. If you're trying to find your first customers or build a repeatable sales process, the Nov 11 conversation lists those exact topics. If you mostly want to talk to other founders about what building a company feels like, the dinner's page is written for that, and if you'd rather meet people in a relaxed setting, the poker night page describes a social evening. You can also go to more than one, since the three dates fall on consecutive days.
Before you go, read the page's "who should attend" section and bring one specific question, since the sales page asks people to bring their questions and the dinner page encourages you to seek feedback. After the event, send a short message within a day or two that mentions what you talked about and offers something concrete, such as an intro or a link to an article. SBR's own values page says hard selling and working the room for leads don't fit the community, so a follow-up that starts with a favor tends to land better than a pitch. If you're still looking for a technical partner, our guide on how to find a co-founder in the South Bay covers that search in more detail.
Find your people in the South Bay
The easiest way to hear about new gatherings is to join the South Bay Renaissance group chat on Tribe, which is the community's group chat. Tribe is ad-free and built around intentional communities, so the chat stays focused on the people in it. You can also browse the full Tribe Events calendar on Luma and register for anything that fits your week.
