☕️ Welcome to the Great Lock In

+ AI/ML Breakfasts, NYC Breakfast, SF Breakfast, El Segundo Breakfast

Author

Morgan Barrett
September 08, 2025

👋 Hi, Breakfast Club Members!

Thank you to Superposition for sponsoring today’s newsletter - Superposition is outperforming human recruiters and helping the fastest growing startups hire better matched talent

This week we have NYC and SF AI/ML Leaders Breakfasts for engineer and CTO friends. Congratulations to Baseten (the OG AI/ML TBC sponsor) on their series D!

Next week we’re in NYC for the original TBC with Lori Berenberg. We’re coming up on 3 years of Tech Breakfast Club!

Then the following week it’s off to California for SF and El Segundo Tech Breakfast Clubs.

Resources:
-Clerky offers a $100 discount for TBC Members on their formation packet. Reply to the newsletter and I’ll send you an invite
-Fixing the YC SAFE: Reply to the newsletter and I’ll send you a redline for the YC Postmoney SAFE that can save founders millions in dilution
- Time to get a Ramp card? Reply to the newsletter and I’ll hook you up with a bonus
- Free Zendesk for 6 months. Time to scale your customer service? Talk to Zendesk

Tech Breakfast Club Events

NYC ML Leaders Tech Breakfast Club (Tuesday, Sept 9th)
Cohosting with Hathora and ElevenLabs - if you’re a CTO or ML Engineer, come join! Many are saying this is the highest ROI way to start your day

SF ML Leaders Tech Breakfast Club (Wednesday, Sept 10th)
Teaming up with Baseten to feed and caffeinate some of the brightest minds in AI. If you’re a CTO or ML engineer, come join!

NYC Tech Breakfast Club (Thursday, September 18th)
Cohosting with the iconic Lori Berenberg (Bloomberg Beta) who might have sourced the most deals from TBC of any investor (awaiting Guinness to confirm)

For Founders & VC’s

SF Tech Breakfast Club (Tuesday, Sept 23rd)
Come have breakfast with one of the most elite evaluators of talent - Danielle Strachman. She helped start the Thiel Fellowship and now backs early stage startups at 1517

El Segundo Tech Breakfast Club (Thursday, Sept 25th)
Rounding out the month with Meghan Moreland from Riot Ventures. Meghan and Riot back the craziest hardtech founders, including OG Tech Breakfast Club friends like Isaiah Taylor (Valar Atomics) and David Tearse (Karman).

Tech Breakfast Club 🤝 Superposition

#Sponsoredpost

Superposition proactively headhunts the best matched candidates. 

It's not a tool for recruiters - it is the recruiter. Superposition hires faster and hires better than a human. 

Chat with voice to refine your vision for an ideal hire; then it finds that perfect fit candidate. 

Superposition lives on your slack and messages like a real team mate

Rocketship startups like Delve, Plastic Labs, and Truewind already use Superposition to scale their teams. 

Book a 15 minute demo here or reach out to [email protected]

The Great Lock In

Welcome to the Great Lock In of September to December 2025 

What does it mean to be locked in?
Lot’s of different ways to be locked in - dialing your daily routine… gym, nutrition, sleep. Getting to product-market fit. Finalizing that next round. Returning the fund. When in doubt - just take more creatine. 

If you’re a VC, being locked in might be as simple as reading the deck before a pitch or remembering what your portfolio company does before the board meeting. 

Whatever form it takes, I want you to be so locked in. And all signs are pointing to the Universe wanting you to lock in, too. September 1st even fell on a Monday this year. 

How does Tech Breakfast Club fit into locking in?
Well, I’m glad you asked

Tech Breakfast Club gets you out of bed. You leave caffeinated and nourished, armed with new connections to smart founders and VC’s. It’s efficient - you’re in and out. And there’s no alcohol (I’ll make an exception for celebrating acquisitions, though). Tech Breakfast Club is the official event of the Great Lock In. 

Is locking in right for you?
There’s a case to be made against locking in too hard 

Paul Graham had an important point in his essay How to do Great Work: 

For example, while you must work hard, it's possible to work too hard, and if you do that you'll find you get diminishing returns: fatigue will make you stupid, and eventually even damage your health. The point at which work yields diminishing returns depends on the type. Some of the hardest types you might only be able to do for four or five hours a day.

PG

And there’s an even more cautionary tale with Jack Ma 

In 2019, he publicly praised 996 (9am to 9pm, 6 days a week) culture, calling it a blessing. Months later Ma disappeared from public life and his companies were broken up or fined heavily. Coincidence? Maybe.

If you’re going to really lock in, though, you should lock in so hard that the Chinese Communist Party views it as a threat.

About Morgan Barrett:
Morgan is the creator of Tech Breakfast Club. He hosts breakfast meetups in NYC, LA, SF, (and occasionally Austin, Miami, Boston) that bring together the best founders and investors.

Morgan is also a Startup Lawyer at Optimal, an elite lean boutique startup law firm repping clients funded by a16z, Sequoia, Kleiner, Accel, and countless other VCs. He works with clients from formation to exit, in collaboration with Optimal’s partners.