Ninad Deshpande

⚠️ Public health advisory: There's a big mind-virus going around these past few months, victims mostly residing in and around metropolitan areas of Bangalore, but clusters of cases also observed in select other large cities including NYC, London, Berlin, and Dubai. The research community is on it, but in the interim, we propose calling the condition SFOsis25 (pronounced ess-eff-OH-sis). Subjects are observed to lose all conviction in themselves, their surroundings, their proximate peers and their work, for the sole reason of them not being geographically present in the San Francisco region of California, USA. The condition is frequently self-mis-diagnosed by subject as ambition or agency. Common symptoms include thinking that relocating to SF is the solution, regardless of what the problem is, sometimes even if there is no real problem. No customers? I just need to get sf users No revenue? I just need an O1 to go to sf No funding? I just need to be visible in sf Patients tend to forget that SF relocation is a supplement, not a medicine. A great booster supplement that can 3x all your vitals. It can probably 3x your fundraise, fundability, sometimes traction, and general momentum. If you get $1m in India, you can probably get ~$3m in SF, etc. But remember, 0 x 3 is still 0. If you think not being in SF is the sole cause of all your miseries, then you are already dead. Current prognosis is poor; most subjects follow a similar course: Stage 1: subject gets a B1/B2 Visa for "customer" or "investor" conversations, while spending time at hacker houses, Luma meet-ups and founder dinners (superspreader events where they talk to other Stage 1 subjects and post about it later). No customers in sight. Stage 2: subject realizes that they were previously just uncredentialed, but now they are uncredentialed and international. They announce a future announcement and that they are "building something in stealth." Unfortunately, this is the last recorded contact for the majority of cases. Stage3: remission is rare, only ~10% of subjects make it here. They recover slowly and unglamorously. Some recover in SF, where they discover SF is no medicine. They decide to stop being tourists, the hustle then goes on for years instead of weeks; they build credibility, reputation & network from scratch, and start doing the work. Some subjects arrive in SF only to discover that most people with 📍sf in their bio are actually not there at all, they are doing the real work too, while sitting in yelahanka new town. Their condition resolves in two more weeks, they recover and get back to work, wherever they can get momentum. If you are already symptomatic, let the virus run its course -- take the trip, eat the sponsored meetup pizza, spend the money. Time to recovery could be as short as a month. If you are asymptomatic, but have found yourself recently looking for airbnbs in sf, you have been exposed. Isolate from x the everything app immediately. There is no vaccine, but recovery could be very close. Get customers, talk to them, get the revenue, repeat until all symptoms are gone. If you are not showing any symptoms at all, congratulations you may have immunity, clinically also referred to as revenue.