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rachel sequoia share the air air jar vc pitchA girl named Rachel Sequoia recently pranked a bunch of venture capitalists and startup entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley by presenting her startup, "Share the Air." Her business plan is collecting jars of air from exotic locations around the world and selling them for thousands of dollars.

Sequoia -- if that's actually her real name -- should have set off some bells and whistles with her presentation at the Venture Capital Fundraising Club event. Her hand-drawn presentation featured numbers that didn't add up, a jar of air from Atlantis (isn't that underwater?) and a special "vaccuum-sealing" process for the air jars (when vacuum-sealing would actually take all the air OUT).

Judging by the looks on their faces when Sequoia earnestly asked for $500,000 to fund air collection teams (trained professionals!) and special crystals to bless the air, the VCs and entrepreneurs totally ate up Rachel's pitch. In fact, she won the competition for best pitch of the night. It seems like they may have gotten the joke and taken it in good humor, but who knows? Maybe they thought Rachel was a real -- if scientifically misguided -- young businesswoman.

Despite the huge holes in this almost-certain prank, it even fooled the normally-unfoolable folks at Reddit's /r/skeptics forum. They were skeptical of the bad science behind the presentation of course, but they thought she was seriously ridiculous instead of recognizing her as a clever prankster.

Share the Air has a website up at sharetheair108.com, where you can sign up for an email alert when the (probably fake) business (probably never) launches.


UPDATE: Now we're wondering if Share the Air was a sneaky viral promotion for Rachel Sequoia's crazy hippie music videos.