The LA Grind: Week of September 15th

Upcoming events, venture deals, LA opportunities, founder spotlight, and more in Los Angeles this week.

Author

Justin Gordon
September 15, 2025

👋 I’m Justin. I run The LA Grind, host the Just Go Grind podcast, and scout for Headline. I’ve lived in LA since 2018, earned my MBA from USC (✌️), and I’m probably out running when I’m not writing this.

Before we dive in, I want to give a big thank you to Howdy for sponsoring the 100+ person Sunset Soirée I co-hosted last week with CapV at a beautiful Venice home.

Howdy helps companies build high-performing global teams by connecting them with top talent across Latin America. From engineers to designers to operations pros, Howdy makes it seamless to scale your team with vetted, full-time professionals who align with your culture and time zone. Trusted by hundreds of growing startups, Howdy is redefining how ambitious companies hire and grow.

Also, I’m considering re-launching a vetted founder community: invite-only, for founders with real traction, focused on private events and peer support to help with growth, fundraising, hiring, and more.

Would you be interested in joining a vetted founder community if it launched?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

Let’s get to it.

Today’s edition is a long one. Click below to read the whole email online.

Safeguard Your Startup’s IP Now.

I’ve gotten to know Marc Hankin from HPL Law in the past few months and can say he is one of the most genuine, supportive people you will meet. While I have not worked with him as my attorney yet, I have seen firsthand how much he cares about helping founders protect what they are building.

Marc and his team at HPL Law advise inventors, startups, and growth-stage companies on patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and licensing across California, the US, and beyond.

Their IP Check-Up helps you:

  • Confirm ownership is in your company’s name

  • Make sure assignments are signed and recorded

  • Stay on top of renewals and maintenance fees

  • Get one clear dashboard of assets, numbers, evidence, and owners

Before your next fundraise, launch, or M&A conversation, know exactly where you stand.

Email Marc E. Hankin at [email protected] to get started. Learn more at HPL’s website.

Upcoming Events

🌴 Upcoming Events I’m Hosting 🌴 

🗓️ September 23: Members Breakfast - Culver City. Want in? Become an LA Grind Club member. Currently sold out, will update if people cancel. 

🗓️ October 2: The LA Grind: Curated Founder & Investor Dinner. More details still being finalized. Tentative date. This is a special dinner experience with a private chef and curated group. Looking for 1 or 2 sponsors.

🗓️ October 14: Curated Beachfront Dinner. Join us during LA Tech Week for an intimate evening connecting 60 top founders and investors at a stunning private beachfront residence in Santa Monica. Thanks to Polsinelli, AE Studio, and Relay Human Cloud for sponsoring! Room for 1 more sponsor, reply to this email if interested. 

🗓️ October 16: The LA Grind and Polsinelli's Curated Coffee & Tech Mixer - #LATechWeek. Room for 1 more sponsor. Santa Monica. 8-10 am.

🗓️ October 28: The LA Grind: Seed to Series B Founder Dinner. I’m looking for a couple of sponsors for this curated VC-backed founder dinner.

🗓️ December 11: The LA Grind: Startup Community Holiday Party. Early bird tickets now available!

👋 This Week 👋 

🗓️ September 15: Yondu AI: Private Launch. Gardena. 7-9 pm.

🗓️ September 16: Global Domain Awareness. El Segundo. 9 am - 5 pm.

🗓️ September 16: A16Z Summer Speaker Series. Santa Monica. 5 pm.

🗓️ September 16: The Future of Air Travel. Playa Vista. 5 - 7:30 pm.

🗓️ September 16: Ex-Xers Founders x Investors Mixer. Hawthorne. 5:30 - 7:30 pm.

🗓️ September 17: The Climate Catalyst: Demo Day. Marina del Rey. 5:30 - 8:30 pm.

🗓️ September 18: The Factory Rebuilt. El Segundo. 9 am - 5 pm.

🗓️ September 18: SoCal Deep Tech Symposium 2025. El Segundo. 1 - 6 pm.

🗓️ September 18: Demo Day LA. Venice. 3:30 - 9 pm.

Coming Soon

Want to submit an event for consideration in the next edition? Fill out this form.

LA Grind Club

The LA Grind Club is where ambitious, kind people in the LA startup community come together. Members get free access to at least two private events each month, including coffee meetups, happy hours, hikes, co-working, small dinners, and more.

We are now 33 members strong with a diverse mix of VC-backed founders, bootstrapped builders, operators from leading tech companies, and community leaders driving LA’s startup scene. The true value is in the connections. Members build relationships that become collaborators, customers, hires, and real friends.

Seats at events are limited, and non-members often pay $20 to $40+ per ticket. Members get priority RSVP, exclusive access, and experiences that more than pay for themselves. Join anytime, cancel anytime.

Top 5 LA Startup & VC Firm Jobs

AI Engineer @ Capsule

Investor Relations @ Clocktower Ventures

👋 Hiring? Message me about featuring your role in this newsletter.

💼 Looking for a job? Job board coming soon!

Investment Opportunity

Quinn Vaughn is looking to raise a pre-seed round for Urban Fabric, a tool that lets anyone visualize, share or remix urban planning changes (like bike lanes, zoning, or pedestrian plazas) on an interactive map, with eventual support for running simulations. If interested, email him at [email protected].

Know a founder or investor in Los Angeles who is raising capital or searching for a co-founder? Reply to this email with more details that I could share in this newsletter for 4,800+ founders, investors, and operators.

I’m exciting to announce The LA Grind’s first Community Partner, Marc Hankin of HPL Law!

Marc advises inventors and high-growth teams on patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and licensing. Before your next fundraise, launch, or M&A chat, know where you stand by talking with Marc, who you can reach at [email protected].

Marc can often be found at startup events in LA and has been one of the biggest supporters of The LA Grind since its inception!

About Community Partners:

Community Partners are trusted pros who support our startup ecosystem and get consistent visibility across events and this newsletter.

Each month partners receive a weekly feature, logo and blurb on event pages, an on-site shoutout at one event, four comp tickets to public events, priority to co-host a quarterly event, and measurable results with unique links and opt-in lists.

Apex Space, a spacecraft bus manufacturer, raised a $200M Series D led by Interlagos, valuing the company at $1B+.

Sapphire Technologies, which makes FreeSpin in-line turboexpanders for energy recovery, raised an $18M Series C including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries with existing investors participating.

LocalExpress, an AI-native unified commerce platform for grocers (Glendale), raised $6.2M in a venture round led by OXZ Capital.

Send any fundraising news for LA-based companies or funds, including your own, to [email protected].

Today’s Founder Spotlight features a Q&A with Pablo Fernandez, Founder of Big Rentals.

What's the backstory?

I built a brick and mortar rental business myself for the past 7 years. We scaled it the hard way, manual spreadsheets, pen and paper, and old school methods. Eventually I realized that if I was struggling with all of this thousands of other business owners were too.

We decided to launch Big Rentals as everything I wish I had when I launched my first rental business. Our mission is to help anyone launch and scale a rental business.

How did you get your first customers?

We didn’t have some master plan, my co-founder emailed a list of 100 rental companies that he found, just hoping someone would answer. When one finally did, we literally got in the car and drove straight to Vegas. Walked in, set up the software on their iPads ourselves, showed them how to use it step by step and helped them take photos of all of their inventory.

It was old school, but it worked really well and they were super appreciative and are now one of our biggest supporters. If you want to get your first customer, you have to be willing to do the stuff that no one else is willing to do.

How has the growth strategy evolved since then?

We give away thousands of dollars of value up front... seriously. We don’t care if it takes a day or a week, if someone’s trying to launch a rental business, we’re going to help them do it. For free. That’s what built trust early and got people talking.

Like Alex Hormozi says, make an offer "so good someone would feel dumb saying no", and living by that principle. We are willing to go so above and beyond for our customers that we have built a die hard loyal fanbase that is always advocating for us and now most of our new customers are referral based.

What's something most people either don't know about how businesses in your industry actually make money?

Nobody talks about how cutthroat the equipment rental business really is. The big national rental chains have armies of people, private equity money, and all the tech they can buy.

Meanwhile, mom-and-pop shops are running things on spreadsheets, getting pushed out of their own towns and closing down or being forced to sellout. I know exactly what that feels like.

That’s why I wanted to build something that flips the script, a kind of Robinhood for the rental industry. Give the small business owners the firepower to fight back. That’s the whole point.

What was the last purchase of less than $1,000 that made a serious impact on your life?

Bought the Maksone Portable Walking Pad on Amazon. It slides under my desk and lets me walk while I work and get my 10,000 steps in daily. If you see me pacing and sweating on Zoom, that’s the treadmill. Solid under-$1,000 buy.

What's one book that fundamentally formed your views on money, wealth, or investing, and why?

$100M Leads by Alex Hormozi, has fundamentally changed my understanding of how much effort is required to win. Now I focus on building systems that scale, and putting in so many hours that it would be unreasonable for me to not succeed.

Featured Location

The Cloverfield. I went here for the first time last week with a group of friends. Chill spot. Lots of outdoor seating. Solid food.

Fun Events

See you next week,

Justin

P.S. Want to connect?

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