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Ask HN: What is the stupidest startup idea you ever had/heard?
21–30 of 91 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the stupidest startup idea you ever had/heard?
#22"Make a web page where all the students of our college can post their pictures and talk to each other!" (proposed to me by a classmate in May of 2000)
Re: Ask HN: What is the stupidest startup idea you ever had/heard?
#23Looking for some "ideas that seem bad" here? ;) http://paulgraham.com/swan.html
Re: Ask HN: What is the stupidest startup idea you ever had/heard?
#24Fish Tank Analyzer:
1) Train fish to swim towards some chemical/compound whatever you want to detect
2) Put valves at different places in the tank, where you can put in the diluted sample
3) Detect the "swarm opinion" via webcam and computer vision
I never found a good application for this...
Re: Ask HN: What is the stupidest startup idea you ever had/heard?
#25Mine: replacing business cards
At some point I had the idea for an RFID bracelet. Ideally, it would be targeted to trade shows. I went to one previously the best tech they had was these cards that you had to go and manually scan at each booth.
Anyhow, the idea was that each bracelet would have an RFID card, and an RFID reader. When you shook hands with someone, it would read their ID #. So, you're not only physically meeting someone, but logging them as someone you met. When you got back to your hotel that night, you plug it into your computer and it pulls up everyone's bio (picture, name, company, email address, etc).
Re: Ask HN: What is the stupidest startup idea you ever had/heard?
#26The stupidest idea I have heard was Twitter. After that, I changed the way I thought.
Considering the amount of stupidity on Twitter, I'd say you weren't too far off the mark.
That's just a reflection of the average human, not Twitter.
Twitter just allows them to communicate publicly.
Re: Ask HN: What is the stupidest startup idea you ever had/heard?
#27My gf wants to make a mobile app that helps homeless/impoverished people share good dumpster eating locations.
Re: Ask HN: What is the stupidest startup idea you ever had/heard?
#28Twitter. I'm not joking either. It is the stupidest startup idea I've ever heard and yet...
Seriously I'm probably the worst person to ask. Almost every startup idea sound ridiculous to me.
Re: Ask HN: What is the stupidest startup idea you ever had/heard?
#29Mine: It's based on a Seinfeld episode where George makes up a fake charity and gives cards to people "A donation has been made in your name to Human Fund". Say you want to gift someone but you don't know what they want / don't want to buy more stuff / etc. So you buy a card that has a message ("Happy Birthday!" or whatever) and a number of credits associated with it and you give it to someone. The person, then, can…
That's not really a terrible idea. Well, except I'm too selfish and would be pissed if I had to give my birthday gift to someone else. I bet corporations would love that though. It LOOKS like they're giving the employee a birthday present but it's actually a tax deductible donation. Win-win.
Re: Ask HN: What is the stupidest startup idea you ever had/heard?
#30Square for homeless people. You can never again say "No, I don't have any change."