Topic: The 18 Most Ridiculous Startup Ideas That Eventually Became Successful (Read 3175 times)

And once people knew how to read at a reasonable level, the printing press became the propaganda outlet of powerful people.

Not really a startup, but I like Dan Pink's description of Wikipedia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y&feature=player_detailpage#t=967s

For the most part, the motto here is:
"Do one thing, do it well." 

That applies to the original Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Dropbox, iOS, Github and Firefox. 

Amazing quotes.  Unfortunately, you know what people say about quotes on internet, right?

Cool list. I seem to remember thinking that Skype was the most ridicilous idea ever - who would want to make phone calls using a computer?

I thing for example the invention of the printing press threatened the power of the powerful people of that time a lot more than Bitcoin does today.

But it was a stunning success.

Some years from now, Bitcoin will be on that list.

love it

Bitcoin: Lets make a pseudo-anonymous p2p currency which you can order drugs online with.

oh wait that already happed.

Bitcointalk: Lets hoard Bitcoins to take down the Man.

no I can't see how this can possibly fail. 

They threatened the existing establishment of their time.

Except none of those inventions really threatens the central bankers like Bitcoin could.

This type of post is a logically fallacious...
Because is must be balanced...
By the 18,000,000 "ridiculous ideas" that failed miserably.

"Lets give these finance/investment banker type people low latency direct access to our exchange for the good of bitcoin" MtGox, 2013

I think I did mine backwards

"I applied the laws of air resistance to insects, and I arrived with Mr. St LaGue at the conclusion that their flight is impossible." ~ Antoine Magnan, French entomologist - 1934

   

  This reminds me of :

a statement by Dionysius Lardner, who was odly enough a scientific writer who popularised science and technology, and edited the 133-volume Cabinet Cyclopedia.

Epic Someone needs to make an even longer version and we can post this to some of the news networks.

(Sorry for large image)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/12/ridiculous-startup-ideas_n_3071538.html?ir=Technology#slide=2330831

Similarities?

Google
We are building the world's 20th search engine at a time when most of the others have been abandoned as commoditized money-losers. We'll strip out all of the ad-supported news and portal features so you won't be distracted from using the free search stuff.

Amazon
We'll sell books online, even though users are still scared to use credit cards on the web. Their shipping costs will eat up any money they save. They'll do it for the convenience, even though they have to wait a week for the book

Facebook
The world needs yet another Myspace or Friendster, except several years late. We'll only open it up to a few thousand overworked, anti-social Ivy Leaguers. Everyone else will then join since Harvard students are so cool.

Twitter
It is like email, SMS or RSS. Except it does a lot less. It will be used mostly by geeks at first, followed by Britney Spears and Charlie Sheen.

Instagram
Filters! That's right, we got filters!

PayPal
People will use their insecure AOL and Yahoo email addresses to pay each other real money, backed by a non-bank with a cute name run by 20-somethings.

LinkedIn
How about a professional social network, aimed at busy 30- and 40-somethings. They will use it once every 5 years when they go job searching.

Mint
Give us all of your bank, brokerage, and credit card information. We'll give it back to you with nice fonts. To make you feel richer, we'll make them green.

Dropbox
We are going to build a file sharing and syncing solution when the market has a dozen of them that no one uses, supported by big companies like Microsoft. It will only do one thing well, and you'll have to move all of your content to use it.

iOS
A brand new operating system that doesn't run a single one of the millions of applications that have been developed for Mac OS, Windows, or Linux. Only Apple can build apps for it. It won't have cut and paste.

GitHub
Software engineers will pay monthly fees for the rest of their lives in order to create free software out of other free software!

Firefox
We are going to build a better web browser, even though 90 percent of the world's computers already have a free one built in. One guy will do most of the work.