The Startup Starz in the Cafes

I was in a cafe in Japantown this week, working on my taxes, and halfway through my coffee I realized I was sitting across from a guy in t-shirt and jeans pitching his app to investors.

The guy was in his late twenties, we could have been the same age for all I know. Sitting across from him were the investors: a man who was maybe 40, and a younger blonde woman. The guy with the app was clicking through a Keynote presentation and talking not just to the man and woman at the table, but to some third party he had on speaker from his iPhone.

I didn't overhear much about the app, but it had something to do with shopping and social networks. I caught pieces of the guy's pitch: "You walk into Walgreens and..." and "your friends send you tips..."

The blonde woman seemed to be the 40-year-old man's protege or assistant. She was clearly new at tech startups. She kept asking dumb questions and the man had to tell her to stop.

At one point she chimed in and asked the app developer, "Will there there be an installation wizard?"

The two guys looked at each other and chuckled, mutteirng something like "Uh... that's Windows 95..."

Eventually she left, and the man scooted next to the developer guy, to look over his should and give him some tips about branding and market segments or something.

When I left, the developer had been joined by another twenty-something, probably his partner, and they were revising the Keynote to take into account the investor's advice.

It's a cool cafe, so I'll go back soon. If I ever see him again, given how crazy things are in the San Francisco startup scene right now, he'll probably be a millionaire.