San Francisco is home to all kinds of urbanist obsessive-compulsives. There are brain teasers for bus routes and street names, and a podcast that revels in historical minutiae of the western neighborhoods.
Pursarth Tuladhar is taking it to a new level. He wants to map every community bulletin board in the city.
Dog walkers, community theaters, piano teachers: if your notice is pinned to a café cork board, Tuladhar has probably seen it, or will soon. He’s found about 100 boards so far. About 70 percent are in laundromats, but there are plenty in parks, public squares, and — one of his favorites — on the outside wall of an Irving Street home. Tuladhar guesses there are “at least 50 to 100 more.”
San Francisco is also home, of course, to all kinds of tech startup dreamers. Turns out Tuladhar’s quest isn’t just a quixotic tilt. Tuladhar sees all those house painters and chakra aligners as potential clients for his startup, which builds websites for the smallest businesses.
He was born in Nepal, went to college in New Jersey, and drove cross-country to move here, ground zero of the tech world. He’s worked in online marketing for more than a decade. The bulletin board obsession might also be a marketing maneuver, but Tuladhar, who just turned 40, doesn’t seem to have worked it out fully: “I don’t know if there’s much of a business gain for us.”
He says he picks a neighborhood or two and hits all the local businesses that seem community-focused. It’s not the most efficient way to search. He recently posted a photo collage and a plea for help on Reddit. He got a few good suggestions.
We sat down for coffee in the Inner Sunset, a block away from the Irving Street board, to talk about very small businesses, bulletin board etiquette, “neighborly neighborhoods,” and more.
Our conversation has been edited and condensed.
The Frisc: I see you run a startup.
Pursarth Tuladhar: We build websites for local service businesses, and we use ChatGPT to generate the copy and the templates for them. So our target has been essentially folks who come and post at these bulletin boards. They don’t have storefronts, have no online marketing skills, and zero marketing budget. That’s how this whole thing started.
So it’s perhaps something to generate business?
It started like that. I just assumed there was a list somewhere. I Googled, I went on Yelp, which has filters for businesses, like, if they have Wi-Fi or bathrooms. There isn’t one for community bulletin boards. And then that’s when I was like, I could just create a list on my own.
So I scheduled days where I would just crisscross neighborhoods on the so-called main streets. And most laundromats will have them. Once I got over 100, I created that Reddit post, asking can you help me find more? I thought they would take it down, but a lot of the people are like, oh, this is great.
I’ve got a list to go look at this weekend. I just got my bicycle fixed, so I can just ride everywhere. I’ve made a commitment to map each and every one. I’m guessing maybe there are at least 50 to 100 more.
I would guess there are hundreds more.
What I like to call “neighborly neighborhoods” have a cluster of them, like Bernal Heights has a ton. Bernal Bubbles actually has boards organized for events and local services.
But not all grocery stores have them, not all coffee shops have them, perhaps because they’re more tourist focused. The public library has them, but it only allows their own events or nonprofits. Some parks have them. I even went to the Golden Gate Park office and asked if they know how many there are. They said no. So I’m going to have to run everywhere in Golden Gate Park to find where they are.
Is there anything that seems to encourage a business to put one up?
I haven’t had a chance to ask. But it’s like a first line of marketing, it doesn’t cost anything. You don’t need to buy an ad in a magazine or go online or do anything.
So my plan is some sort of a campaign to actually get businesses to put boards up if you have a spare wall. It’s a great way to build community and drive foot traffic.
A pet peeve is when I see a flyer with those little paper tabs that you tear off. I’m like, ‘Bro, come on. It’s 2025. Just put a damn QR code up there.’
As a journalist, I’m quite aware of when the internet and Craigslist came along and killed classified ads. In a way, the community bulletin board is the last vestige.
It’s interesting you mention that. Online marketing is my background, I did it for Zillow, TaskRabbit, a lot of home services brands. I think these online channels are getting extremely saturated. Like the cost per clicks for keywords are super high. Most recently I’ve been doing Google ads for cleaning businesses. It’s like $5 to $6 per click in San Francisco. That’s a lot. If you’re a big company, you can afford that, but if you’re a small company, you can’t.
Has anyone done market research on the efficacy of putting up notices on a bulletin board?
It’s hard to do because [even if a flyer has a] QR code, what if I put up 100 flyers? I don’t know which neighborhoods [the traffic is] coming from. You would have to customize every flyer for every board. Tracking is hard. But online marketing is very easy. You can track everything down to the foot.
Say you can convince another 100 cafés or whatnot to put up these boards. What happens next?
I don’t know if there’s much of a business gain for us. Our target customers are these local services. We want to just give something so they’ll know us — “Hey, that’s the company that does the maps of the local bulletin boards and helps me because I can put up more [flyers] for my painting business.”
That creates some sort of name recognition. The second thing is, which is like a personal pet peeve, is when I see a flyer with those little paper tabs that you tear off with the phone number. I’m like, “Bro, come on. It’s 2025. Just put a damn QR code up there.” When you do, maybe you’ll use our site, you know?
I’ve only seen one bulletin board with a warning about no politics, no religion, no foul language. Have you seen more like that?
Usually the business owner will ask what you want to post. They will just say up front: no politics, no religion. And a lot of business owners, when I say “Can I put up something?” they say, “Don’t use too much tape.”
I’m also a little annoyed — a lot of the boards are using staplers on cork boards. That’s a little too much. Or some people just put their [posts] on top of yours. So I just wrote a blog post about bulletin board etiquette. Nine rules before you post: Ask the business owner. Don’t use staples on a cork board. Don’t cover other people’s stuff. Don’t double post. Stuff like that. It’s a service provided by the business owner, so we should respect that.
You worked at TaskRabbit, which has similarities to the community billboard thing.
Yeah, and after that I went to another startup that was just focused on home cleaning [services], just four or five people sitting around a table in a SOMA loft. I have a picture of us sitting in the loft, and our lights went out because the CEO forgot to pay the bills. The month after that, we were out of business.
But there are a lot of these mom-and-pop businesses doing cleaning, one of the easiest businesses to start. I was like, this feels really good, you’re helping the underdog, overwhelmingly first-generation immigrants because you don’t really need to speak English much, you just pick up a vacuum cleaner and a mop.
What’s one of the strangest things you’ve seen so far on a board?
The guy in Cole Valley who posts about dating women. I’ve seen his notice in a few places.
You have pictures of all the boards. Can you throw them in an AI and do some kind of analysis?
I think it would be quite a challenge, because these [boards] are a mess. And I feel AI overpromises and underdelivers. It’s like a lazy stoned intern. It makes mistakes, you know, and then it pretends like it didn’t make it.
But let’s say you can feed an AI the photos and get some sort of summary like 50 percent dog walkers, 20 percent service companies, 30 percent music lessons. What would you do with that information?
Just post it on our blog. If you try to sell hard, people get turned off. So I just create content or education that’s important for the market that you’re targeting: “This is what we found. Do with it what you want.”
