Waffle innovation trumps pizza startup model?

Do startups need waffles? Judging by the large turnout at Startup Digest‘s Startup Waffles event in the courtyard at Lightspeed Ventures this morning, the answer is a definite affirmative. We all know about the startup-pizza link: the whole point of the first round of financing is to defray the Round Table or Amici’s bill.

If we do a cost/benefit analysis, we wonder if waffles top pizza in some meaningful category like team endurance or the all-important lines-of-code-per-slice (or waffle) productivity metric. Will future venture funds differentiate themselves by introducing “waffle” versus “pizza” portfolios? Are we witnessing a major innovation in funding models? Does Google plus Waffle=Gawfle? Or is it Woogle? We have no idea, but we’ve already started writing the business plan.