2024: a founding week in El Segundo, to test whether the cohort idea worked at all.2025: the format settled.2026: the week moved to Long Beach and ran past capacity.
2024
The first week
A small founding edition in El Segundo, built around a single founder dinner and 2 flagship summits. About 140 people in the cohort.
2025. The working edition. Still in El Segundo: the first program-office roundtable and the first GP-to-founder forum. A cohort of 390.Between sessions, 2025.2026. Long Beach. 3 summits on working factory floors, beside the port. 856 people from 642 organizations registered, out of 1,769 requests.
Next: 2027
The fourth edition, in Southern California. The dates and host city will be announced.
Hard tech gets from lab to factory floor one room at a time.
Why rooms
SDTW runs on small rooms that meet more than once, where founders, capital, primes and program offices get down to work. We pick the cohort by hand. Each flagship summit is a single track, and the dinners run under Chatham House.
The bet is that Southern California, the country's largest dual-use manufacturing cluster beside the largest port complex on the Pacific, is the right place to hold that conversation.
How we operate
What the cohort and partners can hold us to.
Small rooms, repeatedly
Each summit day holds about 150 people. Smaller rooms produce more partnerships per square foot, so we plan for people to run into each other twice.
Operators in the room
Every flagship session is moderated or hosted by a working operator: a founder, a fund partner, a program officer. We don't book professional moderators.
Chatham House by default
Closed-door rooms run under Chatham House Rule. In 2026 nothing was recorded.
The whole city
The week spreads across a city's hangars, factory floors and waterfront. Long Beach was the first city we built the whole week around.
The team
A small core team and a host council of operators, investors and program leads. Everyone runs ops on site during the week.
Jay Velasco
Founder
Started the week in 2024. Sets the editorial line and the host council each edition.
Rahul Singh
President
Owns the cohort, the program and the partner roster. The first call for capital and primes.
Drew “Murph” Busbee
Director, Ops & Programs
Runs the week itself: venues, run of show, summit production and the post-event memo.
Jesse Nuese
Director, Special Projects
Owns the concept briefs, the city-scale build-outs and the off-program rooms each edition.
Ways in
Partner with the week by writing to convene@sparrowpoint.org, or host a side event under the SDTW banner. More on 2027 is coming soon.
