A handpicked guide to New York Tech Week 2026 - the events I'm actually going to
- Vadi Efe
- May 25
- 3 min read
Every June, New York transforms into something that feels a little like magic — a whole week where the city's best founders, builders, and thinkers converge under one collective energy. New York Tech Week is one of those rare occasions where the barrier between "I want to meet that person" and actually meeting them collapses completely. I've been looking forward to this one for months, and after going through the calendar I made my picks deliberately. Here's what made the cut — and why.
A personal curation of the moments worth showing up for - in New York Tech Week 2026
AI Startup Founders' Lunch
Hosted by Cherry Hill Advisory
An intimate founders' lunch centered on building strong foundations — finance, fundraising, recruiting — with people who are in the thick of it, just like you.
Why I'm going: Kicking off the week with this one felt like the right move. I wanted to start with something grounded and real — a small room, candid conversations about the unglamorous side of building a company. The intimate format is what sold me. Strategy isn't built in keynotes; it's built in rooms like this one.
Fueling Founders: Brex + DoorDash for Business
Hosted by Brex & DoorDash for Business
Coffee, lunch, coworking space, a founder spotlight filming, and networking with no forced agenda. A rare daytime event that actually respects your inbox.
Why I'm going: The "no forced agenda" detail is what got me. Tech Week can be relentless — back-to-back panels, pitches, scheduled handshakes. This feels like a breath of air. You show up, you work, you talk to people naturally. Plus the Founder Spotlight filming is a nice bonus I'll actually use.
Cloudflare + Shopify: Build for the Agent Era
Hosted at Shopify's Soho space
A fireside with Cloudflare's Stephanie Cohen, Rita Kozlov, and USV's Nick Grossman on how AI agents are reshaping commerce, development, and the internet's architecture.
Why I'm going: This panel lineup is genuinely exceptional. The intersection of agentic systems and real commerce infrastructure isn't just theoretical anymore — it's happening. I want to hear how people operating at Cloudflare and USV scale are actually thinking about it. Shopify's Soho space doesn't hurt either.
Zero to Unicorn: Graphite Founder Fireside
Hosted by Unicorner · Powered by Bolt.new & AWS
A deep-dive fireside with Merrill Lutsky, co-founder and CEO of Graphite — the developer tooling startup acquired by Cursor. Real story, real lessons.
Why I'm going: The Cursor acquisition of Graphite is one of those moves that made a lot of people pay attention. I want to hear Merrill tell the story firsthand — what led to the build, how they navigated the exit, and what the dev tooling space looks like from inside that story. And yes, I'll have a good question ready.
OpenAI Builder Lounge
Hosted by OpenAI
Coworking side-by-side with other builders, unlimited Codex access, live demos, and an AMA directly with the OpenAI team. Space is limited.
Why I'm going: There's something different about building in the same room as people who built the tools you use. The Codex access and the AMA format make this more than a networking evening — it's a chance to actually ship something and get real answers from the people building the next era of agentic delegation. Saving this one for last felt right.
What Tech Week does — what it's always done, even as it's grown — is compress time. Conversations that would take months of cold emails happen in a single evening. Ideas that feel lonely in your notes come alive when you say them out loud to someone who gets it immediately. There's something irreplaceable about physical proximity when you're building something that didn't exist before.
Events like these remind me why I love this city for tech specifically. New York doesn't let you exist in a bubble. The energy here is different — more grounded, more diverse, more direct. And New York Tech Week 2026 channels that perfectly.
If you're a New Yorker in tech or media heading to any of these, I'd genuinely love to cross paths. Come say hi — that's the whole point.
See you out there.
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