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It’s tough being a startup founder. For many, just posting on LinkedIn is a full time gig, and that’s before you get into venture capitalist parties, Slack inquisitions, and hustle-culture burnout.
In today’s increasingly polarized world, they also have to contend with the threat of assassination — at least in their fertile imaginations.
Meet Deep Prasad, the Canadian engineer and entrepreneur whose “quantum computing” AI startup, GenMat, claims to be developing an AI that can “predict the behavior of atoms combined together,” among other pie-in-the-sky wonders.
Most recently, Prasad went viral on X-formerly-Twitter recently after claiming he was shot at twice outside of his San Francisco hotel.
“They chased me to my hotel and shot the second time when I ran inside and got one of the staff to come out,” the founder wrote, tagging tech bigwig Garry Tan, the CEO of Y Combinator. “We both heard a glock and he saw the gun while I saw the bullet impacts. I’m still shaking.”
The alleged shooting came after a verbal exchange with a BMW full of guys who apparently told Prasad to “stay within the crosswalk” if he doesn’t want to get hit, according to the San Francisco Standard, which spoke with the founder. “I said, ‘shut the fuck up, dumbass,’” Prasad recalled. “Those were my exact words.”
Some time later, Prasad said he saw the same car pull around to the front of the hotel, when he heard a “loud bang,” which a hotel worker said was gunfire.
This is where things get fuzzy: security footage reviewed by the Standard tells another story, namely that the “gunfire” he heard actually came from firecrackers.
If there was actually gunfire, it would also follows that police would have found bullet holes in the side of the hotel, necessitating an investigation. Instead, police offered thoughts and prayers: “this sounds like a frightening incident, and I’m sorry this happened in our city,” an SFPD spokesperson told the Standard.
Netizens were quick to turn Prasad’s excitable posts into a meme, blasting him for tagging Tan, as if there was anything he could do. “My girlfriend is not eating her vegetables @garrytan,” one user quipped.
It doesn’t appear to be the first time Prasad’s posts have been of this world.
A now-dormant reddit account sharing his handle on X-formerly-Twitter has posted prolifically on a UFO subreddit while claiming to be Deep Prasad. The account previously posted about extraterrestrial metals, UFO debris, and Project Serpo, a conspiracy theory claiming that the US military runs a “human exchange” with aliens from the planet Serpo.
One post links to a file owned by “deeptanshu.prasad” containing a catalogue of “samples of materials said to have been ejected by/dropped from UAP [unidentified aerial phenomenon], or have been found after a UAP sighting.” The 54-page catalogue is credited to Keith Basterfield, an Australian ufologist, and lists analyses of samples taken from events like the 1947 “Roswell Incident” in New Mexico, and the “Puebla UFO crash” of 1977.
Like his crosswalk candor, Prasad’s online persona is a little touchy, to put it mildly. The reddit account frequently came to blows with other users on r/UFO, usually arguing over academic credentials and various ufology personalities. Most arguments descend into hollering about honor and personal pride.
“I have a big ego which keeps me afloat from being slowed down by naysayers like yourselves,” the account raged in a thread about the state of the UFO community. “I’ve never called myself the next Einstein, only others have.”
Other scrums crumble into credentialism.
“Im [sic] waiting on your correction of my integration tough guy..come on,” the account posted after a long argument with “mr_knowsitall” about whose physics career was more impressive. “Prove to all of r/UFO you dont know jack shit about basic math and physics lolol. I am waiting.”
If Prasad’s e-manners are any indication, it’s really not hard to believe he rubbed a couple of pranksters the wrong way — a hypothesis even he’s embracing.
“Realistically there’s no recovering from this,” he posted in a lighthearted followup, again tagging Garry Tan. “I’m taking the L and the kids who followed me around at 4am in a BMW and threw fireworks successfully pranked tf out of me it’s high key embarrassing but at least we got a good meme out of it.”
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