A tech founder claims he was chased and shot at in the wee hours of Saturday morning outside his Fisherman’s Wharf hotel, but law enforcement says the loud bangs came from fireworks — and hotel security video reviewed by The Standard shows fireworks exploding.
The claim of gunfire by Deep Prasad, CEO of Austin, Texas-based AI company GenMat, went viral after he took to X to tag SF tech-scene overlord Garry Tan in an apparent cry for help.
Prasad added that he and a hotel staffer “heard a Glock” and wrote: “I’m still shaking.” Tan did not respond to a request for comment made through his public relations rep, Sam Singer.
“They chased me to my hotel and shot the second time when I ran inside and got one of the staff to come out,” Prasad wrote.
San Francisco Police Department spokesman Evan Sernoffsky was quick to comment to Prasad that the area is the responsibility of the U.S. Park Police.
“This sounds like a frightening incident, and I’m sorry this happened in our city,” Sernoffsky wrote. “We are happy to assist in any way.”
On Tuesday, Prasad said in a phone interview that he had gotten into a brief verbal altercation with a car full of young men.
“He just said, ‘Why don’t you stay within the crosswalk, and we won’t hit you,’ or something like that,” Prasad said. “I said, ‘Shut the fuck up, dumbass.’ Those were my exact words.”
Later, while walking near his hotel, Prasad said, he saw the same vehicle drive up and heard “this loud bang.” He added that it was a hotel staff member who told him the sound was gunfire.
“In America, you don’t know who actually has a gun,” said Prasad, who grew up in Canada.
But park police told The Standard they found no evidence of gunfire, just some detonated fireworks, and no suspects.
Argonaut Hotel general manager Tony Roumph called Prasad a “really nice man” who was kind to staff but disputed his claims, citing the hotel’s surveillance footage, which shows what appears to be a small firecracker being thrown from a car window and exploding in the street.
“If someone feels they had a traumatic incident, I wouldn’t hold it against him for not remembering,” Roumph said. “I would say it’s a big city. We’re definitely in one of the better, safer areas, but at 4 a.m., anything can happen anywhere.”
Still, Prasad stuck to his imaginary guns, demanding the SFPD investigate the incident.
“It is my opinion that @SFPD wrongly misclassified this as a use of fireworks case with zero investigation and it is dangerous to treat cases like this with such callousness. The city is dangerous. I have never experienced this in 30 years,” he posted, adding that he’d be happy to be proved wrong.
And then came the memes.
The bizarre phenomenon of techies tagging Garry Tan whenever something goes bump in the night is nothing new. So much so that a number of Batman-themed memes appeared on X in response to Prasad’s panic.
— Software Arthropod (@nayshins) April 1, 2025
“I kinda wanna get ice cream but I don’t wanna go by myself @garrytan,” posted one X user two days after Prasad’s viral post, which netted some 1 million views.
Hacker legend and mega-Waymo fan Jane Manchun Wong also got in on the action, posting: “What’s up with people @-ing Garry Tan with different random questions as if he’s ChatGPT?”
By Monday afternoon, even Prasad seemed to be lightening up a bit, writing: “lmao these memes are actually helping me heal and process.”