Is This The Greatest VC Pitch Prank Ever Pulled?

http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/28/is-this-the-greatest-vc-pitch-prank-ever-pulled/

by profitbaron • 15 years ago

25 25 15 years ago

wfoster4• 15 years ago

That's actually almost crazy enough to not be a prank.

I know what you mean. I'm appalled at such an idea - but I can't dismiss it as having no market. And the last line of the article seems to indicate some people have the same opinion.

catch23• 15 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock

"During its short run, the Pet Rock made Dahl a millionaire.[3] With the proceeds, he opened the ironically named "Carrie Nation's" bar in downtown Los Gatos, California."

bmnbug2• 15 years ago

That said, I have to say I'm not convinced of the business model. However, I think I am going to invest in this founder anyway. If we can connect her with a good technical cofounder I can see great things in the future. As everyone says, invest in the team, not the idea.

dot2• 15 years ago

This is hilarious. I love pranks like this. If you feel particularly snide, dare to check out the comments on youtube from people that think this is real.

Main reason this is fake? Someone with lofty ideas about peace and love would have no interest in selling something that belongs to all of us children of mother earth. :)

JonnieCache2• 15 years ago

Lovechild does not mean what you think it means. The phrase you seek is "flower child."

dot2• 15 years ago

thanks!

citizenkeys2• 15 years ago

About flowers... Rachel Sequoia tried to sell me what she referred to as "choice nugs" at Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park.

citizenkeys2• 15 years ago

"Spinal Tap" meets "Startup.com"

beck5• 15 years ago

She has balls i can only dream of.

JonnieCache2• 15 years ago

She's probably an actress. Someone has obviously put a lot of thought and effort into this.

If she's not an actress and is in fact the mastermind, I apologise, kudos to her.

EDIT: Thinking about it, even if she is an actor, kudos to her regardless. I certainly couldn't keep a straight face doing that...

SimHacker• 15 years ago

If he's an actor, I want to know who does his hair!

bmnbug2• 15 years ago

For all her posturing, does this founder not realize how horrible this will be for the environment?

Packaging air in glass jars takes up an enormous amount of space and weight for shipping them around the globe (she hasn't mention how wide the distribution model will be).

Though this air is being marketed as a substitute for travel and and opportunity for new sensory experience, I can envision a future where it becomes a commodity product, scaled up, its value cheapened, and sold as a staple rather than a luxury item.

The obvious parallel is bottled water—a ubiquitous commodity sold half way around the world—except this has absolutely no utilitarian value and is even more critical to life.

I can imagine, when this is a billion dollar business, huge freight ships loading shipping containers of air for the privileged who feel like the air they have polluted is below them; socioeconomic groups will be defined by the very air they breathe: the poor will choke on the smog filled haze, while the rich will breathe their bottled air from the few places where it is still clean.

jwr• 15 years ago

The fact that there is a question mark after the title tells me a lot about the state of mind we're in.

iloveyouocean• 15 years ago

I am certain that we are now witnessing the birth of Web 4.0. If there is a bubble, then I am sure 'Share the Air' has already captured it for sale.

Brilliant.

This is a lot like my idea to buy up meat from endangered animal species and keep it on ice until the species reach extinction. Can you imagine how much I will be able to charge for extinct animal meat?

tomjen3• 15 years ago

Thats actually pretty smart, since you will hasten their demise at the same time you increase your holdings and if cloning extinct animals is ever successful, you will own them all.

It is properly illegal, but these days what isn't?

ktsmith• 15 years ago

This is exactly what Mitsubishi is being accused of doing with bluefin tuna: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/revealed-the...

BerislavLopac• 15 years ago

I'm sure this is a prank, people will share air when the pigs fly! Oh, wait... http://sharetheair.com/ ;)

_exec• 15 years ago

    "We would like to introduce you to our mascot -- Wendell, The Flying Air Quality Pig. Wendell will appear periodically on this website to help explain some things about air quality. We could have paid for a professional spokesman, but Wendell works pretty cheap, just a few bytes here and there."

TamDenholm• 15 years ago

It astounds me that people buy bottled water where tap water is perfectly fine to drink so buying air isnt all that far away from that in my opinion.

notahacker• 15 years ago

Now if she'd focused on the location based app to tag where she'd breathed, and mentioned the selling of bottled air at the very end as an irrelevant little monetisation detail, she'd have got the investment.

pge• 15 years ago

I'm reminded of the Ali G "Ice Cream Glove" routine, in which he markets an idea to a number of investors (including Donald Trump). It's a great parody of VC pitches, particularly the "market sizing" (I use that term loosely) - "I googled 'ice cream' and I googled 'gloves'..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8-nnvtHvd0

theprodigy• 15 years ago

I was definitely going to bring up Ali G's ice cream glove the investor reactions were hilarious. At the end one investor was interested in it.

tgrass2• 15 years ago

Considering ShareTheAir108.com was registered by a member of YC funded Messageparty (Jarod Reyes)...

AND Messageparty tweeted that their launch was imminent an hour after Jarod Reyes started pumping the Rachel Sequoia video on tumblr and twitter (without mentioning he was running the ShareTheAir site...)

I'm putting my money on this being a brooklyn.makery.org production.

tgrass2• 15 years ago

Sorry, Amanda Peyton says no to my theory. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2383677

Is This The Greatest VC Pitch Prank Ever Pulled?

Related Stories