LiveSan FranciscoFast

Term Sheet

Your idea is fine. Your network isn't. Welcome to San Francisco.

About this game

You've landed at SFO with a duffel bag, a half-baked deck, and 90 days of personal runway. The startup is almost beside the point — the real game is the people. Charm a jaded ex-Stripe PM into co-founding. Survive a hike-pitch with a vibes-based angel. Don't let the YC alum scoop you. Land a term sheet before you're broke.

Opening scenario

Wheels Down at SFO

A red-eye lands. A coffee meeting in 90 minutes. A duffel bag, a Notion deck, and ninety days of personal runway against the most expensive city in America.

Where you start

Your setup

It is 6:47 AM on a foggy Tuesday in late September. [YOUR NAME] has just deplaned from a red-eye out of Columbus into SFO Terminal 2 — duffel bag, beat-up Dell, an iPhone with 38% battery, and a Notion deck titled "Untitled v0.4" that is roughly 70% finished. Personal runway: $4,200 in checking, no credit cards left with headroom. No apartment yet — a friend-of-a-friend in the Mission has offered a couch for "a week, ten days max."

In 90 minutes, [YOUR NAME] has coffee at Ritual on Octavia with Priya Shah, 31, ex-Stripe PM, two years of side-project burnout and a quiet but real itch to build something that isn't a dashboard. She agreed to meet because [YOUR NAME] sent her a Twitter DM that was funnier than most. She is not yet a co-founder. She is not even close. She is a maybe.

Lurking off-stage but very real:

Hunter Vance, 44, angel investor, $1M–$3M check size, takes meetings only on hikes or at SoulCycle, decides on vibes within four minutes.
Mira Okafor, 28, tech Twitter (41K followers), runs a Substack called Cap Table, can torpedo or anoint a launch with a single quote-tweet.
Derek Lim, 35, YC W19 alum, currently "between things," replies to every cold DM with "happy to help" and has a documented history of shipping clones of ideas pitched to him.
The Sightglass barista (everyone calls her "Coal"), 26, reads decks over shoulders, knows who's raising and who's pretending.

What just happened: the plane landed, [YOUR NAME]'s phone reconnected, a notification came through from Priya — "running 10 min late, see u at ritual" — and the BART to the city is one escalator down. The deck is unopened. The pitch is not yet a sentence.