[bshimmin]

I absolutely love these "$EXISTING_BUSINESS for $TOTALLY_RANDOM_THING" startups, and this might just be my favourite. What does "Pandora for Lunch" even mean? Is it Pandora the streaming radio service or Pandora the jewellery company? Neither seems at all applicable to lunch!

[kumph]

The streaming radio service. You sign up, tell us about your diet, and every week we email you a calendar of lunches from awesome local restaurants. Easily modify the suggestions with our online interface, or just sit back and let the good food come.

As for the "X for Y" meme, I agree they tend to oversimplify. Nivi of AngelList provides compelling arguments why they are worthwhile anyway: http://venturehacks.com/articles/high-concept-pitch

[bshimmin]

That article does little to justify the "X for Y" meme. The reason for it is that "X" is famous and successful already and people are trying to capitalise on that, and because a three word summary is pithy and easy to remember.

As to your startup - Pandora is a streaming radio service which actually, you know, streams radio, as a service. Emailing lunch menus (or calendars, or whatever) is not as to lunch as streaming radio is to traditional radio, so your "X for Y" makes very little sense!

[kumph]

If you agree with the underlying premise that a good high concept pitch is essential to a startup, then those seem like pretty good reasons to adopt this sort of meme, at least if the comparison holds.

Anyway, I'm surprised you don't see how this particular comparison holds. Pandora auto-suggests and delivers musical content over the course of a few hours or so. Forkable auto-suggests and delivers "nutritional content" over the course of a week or so. Does that make sense to you?

[bshimmin]

Pandora delivers music that you can listen to; unless your startup delivers food that I can eat, I don't really see how the two are all that similar - unless you're suggesting people print out the emails and then eat them.

But hey, perhaps I'm too stupid for your startup (usually I just make a sandwich for lunch, so I'll probably cope either way!).

[kumph]

I see the where confusion is coming from. We do in fact deliver the food. I stated that in the above comment. It's also in our AngelList profile and I alluded to it in my first response ("let the good food come"). You don't seem stupid to me. But perhaps you are reading too quickly?

The image of people printing out emails and eating them is pretty amusing, though. :)

[bshimmin]

I've been known to print out the more objectionable emails from my clients and eat them...

OK, great, you deliver food. If your AngelList profile is your main publicly visible page at this point, you should - in my humble opinion - make it really clear what it is your service actually does: however slowly I read "we send you a calendar of lunches from awesome local restaurants", it doesn't suggest to me that you actually deliver food. The second paragraph does mention delivery. Make your copy accessible even to people who read quickly and don't care very much and you won't go far wrong (with your copy, anyway!).

[crdb]

Ha, I read that to mean streaming business meetings with strangers, to help you discover people outside your network and habits... it might be a cool solution to a problem I have, which is how to meet people who have a different worldview and background (one solution was just moving countries). A kind of anonymous Weave with recommendations...