What is Tech Week and what does it do?

Tech Week is a decentralized technology conference presented by a16z. It brings founders, funds, startups, VCs, companies, and local communities together through hundreds of independently hosted events across major tech hubs. Instead of one central venue, Tech Week creates a citywide calendar where each host runs its own event and the audience builds its own week.

At a high level, Tech Week does two things:

1. It helps attendees discover and register for high-signal founder and technology events.
2. It gives hosts a shared platform for distribution, credibility, and access to a broader audience.

How Tech Week works

Tech Week uses a decentralized conference model. That means startups, companies, venture funds, and community organizations submit and run individual events under the Tech Week umbrella. The Tech Week team reviews host submissions and follows up after approval.

This model is built for density and choice. Instead of forcing everyone into the same rooms, Tech Week aggregates many niche gatherings into one citywide experience. That can include sponsor-led gatherings, private dinners, workshops, community meetups, panels, happy hours, hackathons, lunches, and experiential events.

For founders and operators, that means more relevant conversations in a short time window. For hosts, it means access to a larger event ecosystem without building the entire audience from scratch.

What Tech Week does for attendees

For attendees, Tech Week is a discovery layer.

People browse the official calendar, choose the events that fit their goals, and apply or register directly with individual hosts. Each host controls its own registration process, so attendees hear back from the event organizer about approval or status.

That gives attendees a few concrete advantages:

• Access to hundreds of events in one place
• A chance to target specific themes, industries, or communities
• More flexibility than a single-track conference
• Direct access to founders, investors, company leaders, and operators

In practice, Tech Week helps people build their own schedule around the conversations that matter most.

What Tech Week does for hosts and sponsors

For hosts, Tech Week is a distribution platform.

Companies, startups, VCs, and communities can submit an event proposal through the Tech Week host page. Once approved, the event becomes part of the broader Tech Week calendar and audience experience.

The site highlights several popular formats:

• Panels
• Happy hours
• Hackathons
• Lunches
• Experiential events

It also encourages creative ideas, which makes room for founder-focused programming that feels current and useful.

For sponsors and partner brands, Tech Week offers visibility across a founder and technology audience. The 2026 sponsor area includes names such as Andreessen Horowitz, Fenwick, HSBC Innovation Banking, IBM, a16z speedrun, Adobe Acrobat Studio, and Mostest. The public site also highlights partner programming and executive-level events.

A strong example is IBM Masters of Scale Live, featuring IBM CEO Arvind Krishna and Jeff Berman of WaitWhat / Masters of Scale. Another is the Deel and a16z masterclass, “A founder’s guide to building the world’s fastest growing company,” featuring Deel co-founder and CRO Shuo Wang and a16z General Partner Anish Acharya.

That is the Tech Week model in action: high-signal programming, brand partnership, and founder-relevant content in one shared ecosystem.

Where Tech Week happens in 2026

Tech Week 2026 includes four city editions:

• Boston: May 26–31, 2026
• New York: June 1–7, 2026
• San Francisco: October 5–11, 2026
• Los Angeles: October 12–18, 2026

Boston is debuting in 2026, and New York is returning for the fourth year. The site positions each edition as part of a recurring city-based calendar, with events spread across the week and organized by individual hosts.

That city format matters. It creates local energy, but the brand and calendar connect the events into one larger experience.

Why Tech Week matters for founders and the ecosystem

Tech Week is designed for ecosystem density.

Founders want access to investors, customers, talent, and peers. Funds want high-quality conversations and deal flow. Companies want brand reach and executive-level thought leadership. Communities want a way to bring people together around the most active week in their city.

Tech Week serves that need by aggregating independent events into one shared schedule. The result is a founder-focused conference without a single room, single agenda, or single host. It is decentralized by design, but coordinated through the calendar and the Tech Week brand.

That is what Tech Week does: it turns a city into a networked conference experience.

If you are a founder, host, or attendee

If you are attending, browse the calendar and register for the events that match your priorities.

If you are hosting, submit a proposal through the Tech Week host page and build something people actually want to attend.

If you are sponsoring, look for ways to add value through high-signal programming, not just logos.

Tech Week is built for people who want to meet the right people fast, in the right city, during a concentrated week of founder and technology events.

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