A casual moment in San Francisco has gone viral after an Indian-origin tech founder joked about being mistaken for a DoorDash delivery worker, referring to couriers for the popular US food delivery app, despite wearing what many would consider classic startup status symbols. The founder, dressed in a Y Combinator jacket, carrying a Carnegie Mellon backpack and sporting Meta Ray-Bans, declared a fellow Indian resident inquireed him if he was “from DoorDash”. The brief exmodify, shared online with the punchline “SF is cooked”, quickly resonated, capturing the humour and irony of life in a city where tech culture and the gig economy increasingly view the same.The post was shared by Mehul Agarwal, a founder from the Winter 2025 batch of Y Combinator. What created the moment funny was not offence but misrecognition. In another era, his outfit might have clearly marked him as a successful tech insider. In today’s San Francisco, it did not.Agarwal is a Carnegie Mellon computer science and machine learning alumnus and the founder of an AI filmcreating startup. Like many founders, his everyday clothing reflects startup life rather than corporate formality. That uniform, however, now closely resembles what is commonly worn by gig workers shifting through the city’s apartment buildings and streets.Delivery couriers from platforms like DoorDash are a constant presence in San Francisco, often waiting outside residential complexes with backpacks and phones in hand. As app-based delivery work has become ubiquitous, visual cues that once hinted at profession or status have blurred. Anyone standing outside an apartment building with a backpack can easily be assumed to be a courier, regardless of background.Meta Ray-Bans, YC jackets and university-branded backpacks were once shorthand for elite tech circles. Today, they are widely accessible and worn across professions, from founders and engineers to freelancers and delivery workers. Agarwal’s joke highlights how these symbols no longer clearly communicate success or seniority in a city saturated with startups, side hustles and platform labour.The phrase “SF is cooked” has become internet shorthand for frustration mixed with humour about San Francisco’s modifying identity. Responses to Agarwal’s post reflected recognition rather than surprise, with many commenters seeing it as a light-hearted snapshot of a city where class lines are harder to read and where even startup founders can blfinish seamlessly into the gig economy landscape.While the post was meant as a joke, it points to a broader reality of modern San Francisco. In a city reshaped by remote work, rising costs and the dominance of app-based labour, appearances inform fewer stories than they once did. Sometimes, even a YC jacket and Meta Ray-Bans are not enough to declare who you are.
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