Merve Isler

Merve IslerOct 7, 2026

AI can help you reach more people. What makes them want to spend time with you? I’ve been thinking about that since having dinner on a baseball field with Barry Bonds. Airwallex brought around 100 founders and investors onto the field at Oracle Park for SF Tech Week. One very long dinner table. Stadium lights overhead. Giants blankets on every chair. And an impressive group of people I wanted more time to talk with. Somewhere during dinner, plans for a $10 million raise came up as casually as weekend plans. Very San Francisco 😂 As someone building Marvelous and AI Insiders, I came away with three lessons for anyone trying to earn attention: Give people a reason to choose your invitation. A dinner on the Giants’ field with Barry Bonds is easy to get excited about. People can immediately picture the experience and tell a friend about it. Ask yourself: what makes your invitation worth rearranging an evening for? Give strangers something to share before they introduce themselves. The field, the stadium lights, meeting Barry Bonds. There was already something to talk about before “What do you do?” A shared experience makes starting a conversation easier. It also gives you a natural reason to reconnect afterward. Make your guests feel like MVPs too. The seat waiting for you. The blanket on your chair. The thought put into who you’d meet. Those details communicate something simple: we’re glad you’re here. That’s where I see the opportunity for events built around celebrities and creators. Their presence can attract attention. The host’s job is to turn that attention into an experience people value. As AI agents automate more research, outreach and follow-up, I believe the reason behind the invitation will matter even more. We’ll have more ways to contact each other. We’ll still need reasons to care, show up and build a relationship. Michael Morgenstern, Head of Startups at Airwallex, thank you for bringing together such a thoughtful mix of founders and investors. You and the team gave us plenty of reasons to stay in touch. A useful question for your next event: what will your guests have in common before they exchange names? #SFTechWeek

Merve IslerOct 14, 2026

Can AI actually help us live longer, healthier lives? A pretty big question for a Thursday afternoon. We wrapped up our second AI Insiders event of SF Tech Week with AI × Longevity, bringing together researchers, founders, doctors, and investors to explore everything from virtual cells to turning AI breakthroughs into real treatments. Huge thanks to Prof. Ronjon Nag for his keynote, and to Christin Glorioso, Max Marchione, and Girish Redekar for a great panel, moderated by Hannah Luxenberg-Tono. One of my favorite parts was our Longevity Startup Showcase. It's one thing to talk about the future of healthcare, and another to meet the people actually building it. Special thanks to Citizens Private Bank for hosting with us, Sprinto for partnering, and everyone who joined! This event was powered by Marvelous, the platform we're building to make hosting experiences like this easier. I came in curious about what AI could do for longevity. I left realizing how many different problems we're trying to solve to get there. A lot of work ahead, but also a lot to be excited about. #SFTechWeek #AIInsiders #Longevity #HealthcareAI

Merve IslerOct 21, 2026

Building is democratized. Distribution is not. I saw both halves of that on Monday, judging the Universal Hackathon at AWS Builder Loft in SF. The brief: build a company run by AI agents, in one day. Building wasn't the hard part. In one day, the strongest teams had agents handing work to each other, with a human signing off on the risky calls. So the question I kept coming back to wasn't "does it work?" It was: who is the first customer, and how do they find you? That's not a hackathon question. That's every founder's question right now. AI made the product cheap. Trust, timing and the right room are still expensive. That's why I build Marvelous AI and AI Insiders: find the right people, bring them into the right room, and make the follow-up count. If I ran the next hackathon, I'd add a distribution track. Show me the build, then show me the first people who will use it. Thank you Crewbase Collective for organizing. Building is democratized. Distribution is not. I build the rooms where it happens. Founders: what's harder for you right now, building it or getting it in front of the right people? Want an invite to the next AI Insiders room? Link in the first comment.