On the 17th floor of the LinkedIn headquarters last Thursday, a rooftop happy hour was underway. Around the 10-foot-long bar covered in charcuterie and a few cocktail tables, there was a gaggle of people in business casual pitching their startup ideas to each other — a rest stop designed specifically for EVs, an AI programmed to behave ethically.
The preponderance of limited-edition rainbow-hued Brooks sneakers offered a clue as to why this specific crowd had gathered: to commiserate with, learn from, and pitch their ideas to other startup founders who identify as LGBTQ+.
This is important, according to StartOut, the San Francisco-based nonprofit that hosts the event every year, because while Silicon Valley has its fair share of queer founders, venture capitalists, and power brokers, according to data that it has collected from VC funding sites like Crunchbase and PitchBook, startups run by openly LGBTQ+ founders receive disproportionately low funding, despite on average creating more jobs and patents.
StartOut aims to change that. It has chapters across the country and hosts programs like GrowthLab, SparkLab, and Founders Program that are designed to nurture LGBTQ+ founders and connect them to early-stage funding.
A lot of the conference sounded like typical startup talk. Outside the conference rooms, people milled about, snacking on rainbow cake pops and delivering their pitches to anyone they ran into. LinkedIns were exchanged at breakneck speed. The hall buzzed with the sound of founders preparing for their VC one-on-ones. Upstairs, some waited for “expert office hours” with legal, financial, and fundraising experts.
This, according to attendees, is a good time to be an entrepreneur. In 2025, $425 billion in venture capital was invested in over 24,000 companies — up 30 percent from the year before. “I think this is the best time to start a company,” said Universe Walker, founder and CEO of BeautyDeskAi, which offers AI voice and SMS communication software for beauty-service businesses. “Utilizing AI models, there are so many problems to be solved and so much money to be made.”
In a panel called “Investor Perspectives: Demystifying the Capital Stack,” participants listened eagerly as a panel of venture capitalists shared insights on how to build a VC-fundable company or secure their first round of investment, hoping to find out anything that might give their business an edge.
“What can I do to stand out?” someone anxiously asked a panel of VC investors.
“Just be a fucking dawg,” said Abbie Strabala, a junior partner at Outlander VC.
When asked how to avoid burnout, another panelist, Monique Woodward of Cake Ventures, told the crowd that she finds it helpful to take regular sound baths.
“If a founder told you they take sound baths, you would see that as an indicator of success?” a participant asked, hopefully.
“Um, no. You really do not need to tell me that,” Woodward said.
The primary draw of a conference like this is the ability to connect with other founders. Antony Tran, a college student and early-stage founder of a language-learning app, said that amid the often cutthroat field of startups, shared experiences make a gathering like this feel less like a competition for VC dollars and status. “Other events are pretty intense,” Tran said. “Here, I feel like you can just pick up conversations.”
“The one thing I see here is people helping each other more,” said Amy Errett, CEO of hair dye company Madison Reed and the keynote speaker of the conference. “The world needs more great entrepreneurs. But there are certain challenges to being out. Having a like-minded community makes it easier to do a very difficult thing.”
That question — when to come out — was one of the most fraught at the conference. Despite the existence of a few extremely successful, openly gay founders, like Sam Altman, StartOut’s own data shows that it’s not easy for everyone.
Specifically, it found that between 2000 and 2022, most of the funding given to startups with openly gay founders went to companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area. On average, Bay Area-based, queer-led startups got about six times more than their equivalents in New York City or Los Angeles.
Which raised the question: Is it to better to wait until after you become rich and famous to come out?
“Unless you work in oil and gas — definitely come out,” advised Sean Howell, founder of Hornet, onstage for a panel on The State of LGBTQ+ Entrepreneurship. “I don’t know a single AI entrepreneur who isn’t queer in some way.”
In fact, Howell said, he saw being queer startup founder in San Francisco as an asset. “Most of the money is invested in this town. You have so much allyship here that you should not be afraid.”
Not everyone agreed. “I think it’s very unsafe to try this if you’re trans,” warned one participant. “It’s very different being gay than trans.”
There’s definitely a difference, said Brian Richardson, CEO of StartOut, between being someone who is visibly queer and someone who can pass in conventional startup culture. “It’s still a challenge,” he told the crowd. “It’s a very personal decision that you have to make and figure out, when we battle those issues continuously.”
The opening address from Richardson invoked an era — not too long ago — when living as an openly queer person meant being locked out of the mainstream economy. Richardson praised activists Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Stormé DeLaverie — though not mentioning that while they were alive, Johnson and Rivera had few options to support themselves beyond sex work, and DeLaverie primarily worked in nightclubs. All three, he told the audience, were “scrappy, passionate, brilliant, entrepreneurial sort of folks.”
“What we can do today is build on their legacy, to make the future better for ourselves and those queer kids who are just starting to come out,” said Richardson.
There was no closing address or keynote to wrap up the event. Instead, one of the organizers announced that the event would end with “time with family.” Conference-goers lounged together on couches and warmly hugged attendees they had only met a few hours before. Pop music played in the background. More cake was passed.
“Queer people have always built better when the cards were stacked against us,” CEO Brian Richardson had told the crowd that morning. “So even at maybe the worst of times, in so many ways, for us it’s still the best of times, right?”
