"Edible Business Cards"
was my response to being in Silicon Valley
during the Spring of 2000
(that simple, happy time).
I was doing a semester sabbatical at
Stanford, and all around me people
were going crazy, simply crazy.
After a few weeks of blatant eavesdropping on
frenzied Palo Alto dinner conversations,
I realized that these people were not actually
talking about technology per se,
but rather were in frenzied discussions
about business strategies,
exit strategies, strategy strategies.
All the talk seemed to be about
common versus preferred stock,
how to structure tax deferred option plans,
and an exotic menagerie of three letter acronyms like
IPO, CEO, COO.
It got to the point where
people were ordering a CFO with their BLT.
It seemed that everyone was in love with
the idea of the idea, rather than with the
idea (got that?).
But at some point I realized
that I too might be in trouble.
After all, as a fascinated witness to this phenomenon,
wasn't I, in truth, becoming interested in
the idea of the idea of the idea?
Maybe I was worse than these people!
To help me cope,
I figured I needed to take the
whole thing to the next level of absurdity.
I wondered what would happen if
a really deranged person got bit by
this "Internet Startup" bug, and
set up their own e-business.
The result was
Edible Business Cards!