The Future of Work Pitch Night + Open Demos: Worktech, Robotics & Agentic AI
🚨 ANNOUNCEMENT 🚨
1️⃣ We've got a deal with Startup Grind! The winner of the Future of Work Pitch Night will get a pass straight to the SG stage and present to investors at this year's conference in Redwood City (session EduTech, HRTech & Future of Work, Wed April 29th 2026, VC Stage, 1 PM - 2 PM).
2️⃣ We've also got a deal with BlooFusion, a business consulting firm with 25+ years of experience with GTM and scaling! The winner receives $10,000 worth of GTM strategy consulting tailored for high-ticket VC pitching.
3️⃣ Last but not least, our judges:
Tanya E. Montméan, LvlUp Ventures
Lauren Dermody, Venture University
offer a 30-minute exclusive, private consulting session for the winning team.
List of all awards for the winner:
Deadline for startup pitches: Sunday, April 19th, 23:59 PT
Last batch of decision emails: Monday, April 20th, 23:59 PT
Join us @ Tesla Van Ness – SF for yet another edition of our Future of Work-themed pitch night + open demos! This is the "origin story" edition. We'd love to hear your "why" — not just your pitch.
When & Where
📍 Downtown SF (register to see the address)
📅 Tuesday April 21st 2026
🕔 5:30-8:30 PM PT
📅 Agenda:
5:30 - 6:00 PM | Networking
6:00 - 6:20 PM | Welcome from Organizers, Sponsors & Jury
6:20 - 6:30 PM | Fireside Chat with Emma Feirstein, RentaHuman.ai (YC Spring 2026)
6:30 - 7:00 PM | Blitz Pitches 🚀
7:00 - 7:10 PM | Professional Blitz Pitch Analysis, Lital Cohen
7:10 - 8:00 PM | Open Demos 🧡 The Tesla Experience
8:00 PM | The Winner Announcement
8:00 - 8:30 PM | The Tesla Experience & Continued Networking; music, greetings, farewell
The Tesla Experience:
Take a vehicle on a Full Self-Driving (Supervised) experience guided by a Tesla Advisor
Explore the newest models in the showroom
Chat with Tesla Advisors about ownership options
Witness Tesla’s signature Light Show!
Professional Blitz Pitch Analysis
Lital Cohen is a communication and executive presence coach at Stanford Graduate School of Business and a former national champion in Toastmasters public speaking.
She prepares founders from around the world at Plug and Play to present effectively to audiences and investors, focusing on delivery, presence, and impact.
At the event, she will share observations on how speakers show up and influence the room.
Our Jury
Our distinguished investor jury includes:
Tanya E. Montméan, LvlUp Ventures
Shawn Trabanino, Draper University, Berkeley Ventures
Joanna Gough, Pulse Impact Ventures
Akash Aggarwal, MESA Capital Partners
Lauren Dermody, Venture University
Daniel Theobald, Angel Investor
Presenting Startups
RTRVR: Retrieve anything from the Web
TalentOS: Supercharge your staff with AI skills
FlowWolf: Streamline and integrate your B2B operations with AI
Otin: Make better decisions thanks to AI
Talk: Offer your advice on the global startup/VC scene. Monetize your time
Partenit: Deterministic decision-making for real-world robots
Sense Space: The infrastructure and marketplace for agentic sharing economy
SinManos: Expose driving risk across every vehicle, every mile, everywhere you drive
JoinBreakthrough: Full visibility into how your team communicates
Tedy: Employee benefits done right
Workind: A SaaS platform that enables organizations to seamlessly deliver lifestyle and high‑impact benefits at scale
Exosphere: Behavior Enforcement for Agents
HealthQA: The future of education in healthcare: Professional 1-hour courses for nurses & healthcare providers
Gorest: AI-native engine that turns ideas and sketches into playable prototypes in seconds
Oasis Learning: Intelligent Knowledge Layer for Businesses
* we will also welcome last-minute open 60-second pitches on stage
How Can You Participate?
We are a community focused on building (and disrupting!) the future of work — sharing and promoting innovation in work tech, agentic AI, and robotics so that humans and AI can happily cohabitate in the labor market and build a wonderful economy together.
This time around, we are putting together a social mixer.
This isn’t your standard pitch night.
This gathering is for founders, operators, investors, and builders who want to shape how humans and AI collaborate in the workplace of tomorrow.
It's a tiny festival of bold, cross-disciplinary innovation, surrounded by music and top-tier modern urban cars.
It’s your chance to connect authentically, get feedback for your project, talk to investors in powerful, intimate one-on-one conversations, and see where the future of work is headed.
🍀 My project is not in Worktech. Shall I still submit my pitch?
The Future of Work is a broad category, with a variety of tech projects influencing the job market, either directly or indirectly. When in doubt, just give it a try, and we will get back to you!
The Demos
We will open several demo tables. If you'd like to pitch, choose the "Pitching Startup" ticket type during registration and bring your laptop! It is that simple.
About Us
Ontology of Value® by Natalia Bielczyk, PhD is a high-end career incubator and talent intelligence platform for managing careers and teams in the AI-first economy. We build lighthouses and telescopes for the leaders of the future.
Watch Natalia’s recent TEDx to learn more.
PartnersRecommendations
We also recommend taking part in the local chapter of The Pitch by Deel, operated by Startup Grind: a global free-entry pitch competition with the chance to win a $1,000,000 investment for your startup.
Previous events in the series:
The Future of Work Pitch Night #4: Social Mixer & Open Demos (LongHouse SF, 83 Minna St): https://luma.com/pgvpc0sl
The Future of Work Pitch Night #3: Social Mixer & Open Demos (Minna Gallery, 111 Minna St): https://luma.com/mgnddbk4
The Future or Work Pitch Night #2 (Minna Gallery, 111 Minna St): https://lu.ma/qzgpv6kw
The Future of Work Pitch Night #1 (JLL, 1 Front st): https://lu.ma/lrt26pot