The one place that lights up everything happening in SD tech & AI.
Every meetup, hackathon, launch party, AI demo night, and founder mixer in San Diego — tracked, tagged, and delivered in one weekly signal. Stop following 40 accounts to find out what's happening this week.
What it is
San Diego's tech & AI scene runs through 150+ meetups, user groups, and community orgs (sdtechscene.org's own count) plus a scatter of Luma pages, Meetup groups, and Instagram accounts. Hackerlantern ingests all of it into one weekly digest and a live site — the front door the scene doesn't currently have.
Not a hosting tool. Luma and Meetup help an organizer publish their own event. Hackerlantern shows a resident everything happening across every organizer, gym-for-devs, and account at once.
Not a general city guide. Do512-class citywide guides cover concerts, food, and drink specials. Hackerlantern is vertical-specific: tech and AI only, at launch — the depth a general guide can't match.
Who it's for
A group organizer running 1-3 meetups, a coworking space hosting a monthly tech night, a bootcamp recruiting locally, or a dev-tool startup doing developer-relations reach — anyone who wants more attendees and has no single channel that reaches beyond their own list.
People who currently check Meetup, Luma, sdtechscene.org, and scattered social accounts by hand to find out what's on this week. The digest and site are free for this side — it's the audience the buyer side pays to reach.
Listings
Every event, launch, and meetup in the next 7 days, one email/site update — CAN-SPAM compliant (physical address, one-click opt-out) from day one.
A standing, always-current view of every group, venue, and recurring event in the vertical — searchable by topic, date, and neighborhood.
An organizer's next 1-2 events pinned at the top of the digest and site, plus a standing directory listing.
Shows a sponsor exactly which sources are being tracked and how fresh the data is — trust infrastructure for a discovery product, not just a pretty page. See the simulated walkthrough below.
Rates
Priced below the closest real anchor found in research — Luma Plus at $59/mo (billed annually) — rather than an invented "cost per lead" figure. No published sponsor-slot rate card exists anywhere in this category yet; these numbers are what we're testing, not an established market rate.
| Line | Rate | Terms |
|---|---|---|
| Resident | $0 | Weekly email digest, live directory + calendar, no account required. Always free — this side is the audience, not the customer. |
| Founding sponsor first 10 | $49/mo | Locked for 6 months. Featured slot (next 1-2 events), standing directory listing, 10% recurring discount per organizer you refer, stacking. |
| Standard sponsor | $99/mo | Open rate after the founding cohort fills. Featured slot (next 1-2 events), standing directory listing, source-coverage dashboard access. |
Breakeven: at $49/mo, the founding rate pays for itself at roughly one incremental signup or attendee the sponsor would not otherwise have gotten. [derived from Luma Plus $59-69/mo anchor — see internal plan below.] Delivery cost: near-zero marginal cost per additional sponsor slot once the shared data engine exists — see internal plan below.
Simulated demo
Three scripted scenarios — a resident chat query, a sponsor's source-coverage dashboard, and a weekly digest preview. Every screen below is illustrative example data, not a live system.
Full-screen version: media/demo.html
Subscribe / sponsor
10 slots at $49/mo, locked 6 months. This is a concept — no sponsor slot exists yet to buy.
Placeholder contactPlaceholder address: placeholder@hackerlantern.example — not a working inbox. Real contact channel is, pending his decision.