Demo Day
The recurring end-of-program event at Founders, Inc. where cohort participants present working products to investors, the f.inc team, and each other inside the 42,000 sq ft campus at Fort Mason.1 Each of f.inc's 4-to-6-week programs concludes with some form of demo day, though the name and scale have changed as the organization has grown from hosting 20 developers in early 2024 to 500 founders in spring 2026.1121 The format is closer to a science fair than a pitch competition: founders stand at booths or tables with working prototypes, and attendees walk the floor, try the products, and talk directly to the builders.1112
Format
Founders, Inc. does not use traditional pitch decks or formal presentations at any point in its process — not during applications, not during the program, and generally not at demo day.2 Instead, the organization's application and investment model is built around watching people build: applicants are invited to work at the lab for one to two weeks, and investment decisions are made based on what they ship during that period.2 Demo days follow the same logic.11
During cohort programs, participants set goals every Monday and complete working demos by Friday — the weekly Ship-it cadence that structures life at the campus.111 The final demo day at the end of each program is an expanded version of this weekly rhythm: every team shows what it built over the full 4-to-6-week sprint.1110
The f.inc team and outside investors evaluate teams throughout the program, not just at the final event.2 Historically, roughly the top 10% of program participants receive first checks of $100K to $250K for 4–7% equity.102
Vision Pro Residency (February–March 2024)
The first demo day that drew significant outside attention was the Vision Pro Residency showcase on March 6, 2024.11 Twenty software engineers, entrepreneurs, and technologists had been hand-picked by the f.inc team for a four-week residency to build Apple Vision Pro applications.11 Developers received access to $3,500 Vision Pro headsets, mentoring from f.inc leadership, workshops on marketing, and desk space at Fort Mason.11
Hundreds of people packed into the campus for the demo night, walking from table to table and trying the apps firsthand.11 Projects included a virtual art gallery, a 3D mahjong game that developer Ethan Sherbondy had already published on the App Store (total revenue at the time: $200), a spatial computing answer to MySpace built by J'mari Wyatt, a trilingual real-time translation app by recent San Jose State graduate Piram Singh, and a meditation app immersing users in nature or outer space.11
Hubert Thieblot, General Partner at f.inc, described the residency as producing "the first wave of apps" for the device and compared the technology to "peeking into the future."11 Colin Lowenberg, a Vision Pro resident who quit his Web3 job to join the program, noted the campus Wi-Fi password was "first check" — a reference to f.inc's investment model.11 At the time, f.inc had invested in over 60 companies and incubated about two to three companies per year, with a single investment up to $50,000 available for the residency's top project.11
Ship It (February–March 2025)
Ship It ran from February 24 to March 21, 2025 at Fort Mason.16 More than 60 builders flew to San Francisco from around the world for a four-week sprint.4 The program's demo day directory lists companies spanning AI phone agents (RESA AI, by Zhaouyu Wu and Tanmay Kejriwal), autonomous surgical robots for tumor resection (Vaidya Surgical, by Meer Patel and Aydin Turkay), AI-powered cooking robots (Cheforge, by Sangam Chapagain), disaster prevention infrastructure (Nexstera Tech, by Kylene Landenberger, Stefany James, and Penny Lane Case), and a crypto exchange API (Bluvo, by Luca Dalla Chiara and Florian Sabani).4
F.inc described the results as: "Some of them got funding. All of them got motion towards what they were building."4
Off Season (Summer 2025)
Off Season was a six-week summer program targeting college students, recent graduates, and dropouts.5 Forty-eight teams were selected; ideas ranged from an elevator robot to multiplayer GarageBand to AI glasses for field engineers.6 The demo day showcased teams including 3E8 Robotics (autonomous multi-floor delivery robots), Budbreak (vineyard disease detection robots), Stratus (airport intelligence systems), Parse (web scraping infrastructure), Ato (tech for seniors), and Axial Composites Industries (robotic factories for composite manufacturing).6
Several Off Season teams went on to join the f.inc portfolio: 3E8 Robotics, Budbreak, Stratus, Parse, Neuronav, and Axial Composites Industries all appear on f.inc's current portfolio page.3 Off Season II is scheduled for summer 2026, ending with a demo day where top teams can receive up to $250K in funding and $500K in credits.5
Blueprint (October–November 2025)
Blueprint was f.inc's first hardware-only program.7 Fifty hardware builders came to the Fort Mason campus for five weeks with access to the Garage lab: six Bambu Lab X-1 Carbon 3D printers, four Nvidia Jetson Nano developer kits, ten Raspberry Pis, a Hakko FM203-DP soldering station, an XTOOL laser cutter, a Langmuir Systems CNC mill, and a V-One PCB printer, among other equipment.7
The Blueprint showcase featured InteractionLabs (a Pixar-lamp-style desk robot), MakerMods (modular robotics for physical AI), Polysynth (multi-material 3D printing for dental labs), Trepo (a fridge that auto-orders groceries), Hayla (direct current data center power infrastructure), and Pluto (a $1,000 mini-humanoid for homes), alongside 40+ other hardware teams.8 Top teams were eligible for up to $250K in funding plus $400K in credits.7
InteractionLabs, MakerMods, Polysynth, Trepo, Hayla, and HerdCycle all subsequently appeared in the f.inc portfolio.3
Artifact Festival (January–February 2026)
Artifact was the largest program f.inc had run to that point: 200 founders accepted, $2 million allocated to top teams, five weeks on campus from January 12 to February 13, 2026.139 Applications closed December 31, 2025, with early decisions beginning December 20 and final decisions going out January 6.10 The program required full-time, in-person commitment at Fort Mason for the entire five weeks.10
The final day — February 13, 2026 — was billed as the "Artifact Festival," a public event from 4 to 8 PM at the campus at 2 Marina Blvd, Building B300.12 One hundred and twenty teams showed working products: AI cameras, voice agents, facade-cleaning robots, world models running on laptops, and over 100 other projects that attendees could touch and try.12 The event also included live DJ sets, food, refreshments, and interactive games.12 F.inc described it as "the BIGGEST FOUNDER FESTIVAL of the year," with an estimated 4,000 attendees filling Fort Mason.15
MakerMods, which had first appeared at the Blueprint showcase, demoed upgraded open-source robots at the Artifact Festival as a newly invested f.inc portfolio company.18 Historically, f.inc invested in roughly the top 10% of Artifact teams, writing $100K to $250K first checks.10
Canopy (Spring 2026 onward)
Canopy, introduced in spring 2026, consolidated f.inc's various program formats into a single five-week cohort that runs four times per year.20 The first Canopy cohort (April 15 to May 22, 2026) brought 100 teams to the Fort Mason campus in person and added an online track for 400 more — the first time f.inc opened a remote path.21 F.inc announced it was looking to deploy $3 million through the Canopy cohort.20
Canopy's demo day sits at the end of the five-week cycle, maintaining the same format: founders show working products, f.inc and outside investors evaluate, and top teams receive first checks.220
What happens after
Demo day is not the final gate.2 F.inc's model differs from traditional accelerators in that portfolio companies retain long-term access to the campus, returning to Fort Mason to work even after completing programs like Y Combinator or other accelerators.2 Many founders get their campus access extended when they show real progress, regardless of whether they receive a first check on demo day.10
As of early 2026, f.inc had funded 55 startups in the preceding year alone, produced its first unicorn (the portfolio's billion-dollar company), doubled the campus footprint, quadrupled deployed capital, and hosted over 1,000 founders through its various programs.14 Crunchbase records 91 investments total.17 The portfolio includes companies that first presented at demo days and went on to raise significant follow-on funding, including LiveKit (reached $1B valuation in January 2026), Sync Labs (backed by GV and Y Combinator), and Shapes ($4.2M seed led by Lightspeed).3
The demo day livestream on YouTube — a recording of a recent program's final event — had accumulated 3,200 views by April 2026.19 The events themselves remain the primary audience: in person, on the floor, products in hand.12