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These days, every billboard and bus shelter in San Francisco seems to be advertising some kind of indecipherable AI startup . They dot Highway 80 as you cross the Bay Bridge and drive into the city, or they line the side of Mission District buildings.

Or they’re 34-year-old Nikunj Kothari.

“Why buy billboards in SF, when you can just send me swag to market your startup” Kothari wrote on X , shortly before dinner on Labor Day. He did it as a lark, but it kicked off something real.

Kothari’s marketing deal: He wears the company T-shirt or hat sent to him,

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