Name: Everyone Lies in Silicon Valley: Raising, Surviving, and Building for the Long Game
Start: 2026-08-07T01:00:00.000Z
End: 2026-08-07T03:00:00.000Z
Location: San Francisco

Founder education on deep tech capital raising, and the hard truths about building in Silicon Valley. Squarely one of the Founders Guild's missions, and running underneath it, the case against SF burnout, and how to prioritize for longevity as a founder.

Hosted by Berkeley Gateway Accelerator x Founders Guild.

Doors open at 6:00 pm, keynote + founder panel to follow; back to the mixer by 8:00 pm.

Keynote SpeakerDaniel Theobald is a proven founder with a multi-decade track record of building and scaling real-world technologies across robotics, automation, and agriculture. He was chosen as the top student in the MIT school of engineering by the faculty, graduated with an 5.0 GPA, and holds fellowships from NSF, the Ford Foundation, and the Hertz Foundation. He is the Chairman of The Founders Guild, advancing a mission to improve financial outcomes and quality of life for founders worldwide. He is the founder of Vecna Robotics, founding president of MassRobotics, and a global leader in intelligent material-handling automation and autonomous mobile robots deployed across manufacturing, supply chain, and logistics operations worldwide.The Founders Guild is a global non-profit community of founders across 16 chapters and four continents. It gives founders the clarity, insight, and edge to succeed in both business and in life. The Founders Guild’s peer circles, data-vetted playbooks, pro bono professional support, and collective work shift fundraising norms toward founder-friendly terms. Open to any founder, at any stage. No fees, no equity.The Intelligent Machine Guild, a division of the Founders Guild is the global center for advancing the craft of building intelligent machines. Through open interoperability standards, cross-industry working groups, and a practitioner-driven network of engineers, founders, researchers, and end users, IMG works to move robotics and AI from isolated innovations into trusted, interoperable systems that scale in the real world.

Funding Breakthrough Lab is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit pre-accelerator with a mission of creating a supportive community (24,000+ subscribers) to build a better tomorrow. We support founder success not just startup success by ensuring founders have access to education, networks, and resources to unlock their potential. Founded by Natalie Pan, an engineer, community builder and executive coach. Apply for the next cohort here https://fundingbreakthroughlab.org.

Founder Panel

Following the keynote, a panel of founders who've been through both the up rounds and the down rounds, joined by an investor willing to push back honestly. Panelists to be announced.

Alex Grant is co-founder and CEO of Magrathea, an Oakland-based startup building a near-zero-carbon process to make magnesium metal from seawater and brine. A chemical engineer by training (M.S., Northwestern; B.Eng., McGill), Grant previously co-founded lithium extraction company Lilac Solutions and worked at Minviro on battery supply-chain carbon modeling. Named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2021, he's now leading Magrathea's push to reshore US magnesium production, backed by a Defense Production Act partnership with the Department of Defense and a demonstration plant underway in Utah.

Beth Zotter is using the power of ocean-farmed seaweed to create the planet’s most abundant and sustainable source of ingredients and chemicals. Bluekey Bio transforms seaweed into multiple high-value product streams, with its first offering leading its category in alternative proteins. Before launching Bluekey Bio and Umaro Foods,, Beth built a career in renewable energy, serving in various technical leadership and R&D roles. She began her journey in the industry at a seaweed biofuels venture and holds degrees in science and policy from Harvard University and UC Berkeley.

Linda Cheng Founder of Abstract Atomic, Ex-Oxford AI PhD & Clarendon Scholar. Early AI researcher, youngest invited author for Oxford Handbook on applied machine learning. Award-winning classical pianist & serial marathon runner.

Rasheed Auguste invests in deep tech across industrial transformation, materials, manufacturing, energy, and decarbonization, drawing on a career spent at the intersection of breakthrough science and company scaling. At the US Department of Energy, he advised risk strategy for first-of-a-kind energy demonstration projects, shaped new funding solicitations, and authored industry reports. He holds a PhD and Master's in Nuclear Engineering and a Master's in Public Policy from UC Berkeley, where his dissertation examined non-destructive testing of structural materials under extreme conditions, along with dual bachelor's degrees in Physics and Nuclear Science from MIT.

Raphaella Lancia is a five-time founder and Executive Director of The Founders Guild and the Intelligent Machine Guild, a global nonprofit connecting AI founders, investors, and researchers. She also leads AI product development at ExperianRoman Dovgopol is a three-time founder now leading the data backbone for Mixpanel's AI products, after co-founding FiDi, a blockchain data intelligence startup, and taking it through an exit. Roman previously built Twitter's data and ML revenue teams, and co-founded Journey (YC S15), a usage-based auto insurance startup backed by DFJ, 8VC, and a16z angels. His career began in applied AI research at Moscow State University and Kaspersky Lab.

The Details