Palo Alto · Menlo Park · Mountain View · Sunnyvale · Cupertino · 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 absurd. 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.
I'm committed to revitalizing the South Bay for startups, with events, dinners, social activities including parent and kid activities. We can build a vibrant hub down here if a few of us make it happen.Raj Suri · August 21, 2026
Calendar
Everything SBR touches lands here first, then goes out to the sub-communities most likely to show up. If a slot below says the date is open, that is an invitation.
No panels, no pitches, no formal programming. Just food, thoughtful introductions, and a conversation about who is already building here, what kinds of gatherings are missing, and what we could create together. Everyone writes down what they can contribute, and we leave with a plan and with owners against it. Hosted by South Bay Renaissance and Tribe. If you register, please make sure you can come, the seats are scarce.
The format that started all of this. One long table, one good question, no name tags.
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. This is half the point of building here rather than in the city.
Four hours of walking is the most underrated networking format ever invented.
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 itSubmit 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 is a few lines, not a negotiation.
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.
No approval committee. If it is a real event that follows the values below, we will help you run it.
The commons
Hosting stalls on logistics, not on ideas. So the resources live in one place and 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 healthy region is not one big list, it is a lot of small rooms that 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
Highlighted ones have hosts already. Everything else is open, and starting one is the single most useful thing you can do right now. It is easy to spin up a sub-community and link it back to the main one.
About us
South Bay Renaissance was started in August 2026 by people who live here: Raj Suri, Akriti Vora and Raymond Lin, alongside a growing group of founders, operators and parents across the Peninsula and the South Bay, and hosted together with Tribe. There is no board and no membership. 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 are planned and run like it, not treated as an afterthought.
Harassment or repeated bad behavior gets someone out of the ecosystem, not quietly passed along to the next host.
Photos from every gathering land here. Post yours and tag #SouthBayRenaissance so the next host has proof this works.
Get involved
Every one of these is a real gap right now, and none of them need a big commitment to start.
A dinner, a deep dive, a run club, a playdate. Tell us the idea and we handle the page, the promotion and the volunteers.
Start hostingAn office after hours, a garage, a backyard, a conference room. Space is the hardest thing to find and the easiest thing to give.
List your spaceFund the food, the venue or a whole series, and reach the founders and engineers who actually live down here.
Talk sponsorshipCheck-in, setup, photography, or running a sub-community. A couple of hours a month moves this a long way.
Sign up to help