facebook. Thought it was the dumbest idea in the world to replicate what livejournal and myspace did early on
Actually, I take it back, I thought twitter was just really dumb, even dumber than FB
Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
61–70 of 90 posts
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#62Instagram. I still don't get it. Vanity filters sure, there were dozens and there must now be hundreds of such apps, but a separate social network just for that?
Flickr had a lot of strong social elements to it in 2005. I guess sharing photos is something computers are really good for. This article seems to do an okay job of outlining the history:
http://gizmodo.com/5910223/how-yahoo-killed-flickr-and-lost-...
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#63The Selfie Stick comes to mind. It's the simplicity of the idea that I find genius. Back when I first saw it, I couldn't see the appeal of it. I was biased though, since I did not have much trouble with making selfies and didn't care much about them.
Then I went on vacation to the US and was considering buying one... A few good YouTube videos showing how to use them creatively helped as well. These videos weren't made by the company itself, but by passioned YouTubers who didn't have a camera man.
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#64Twitter. To this day, I find it idiotic. I thought society reached rock bottom when politics started using it to convey their message (is there anything sadder than a political agenda that can be expressed in 140 characters?)
> (is there anything sadder than a political agenda that can be expressed in 140 characters?)
Sadder? Or anger inducing? I'm convinced the reason twitter succeeded is that it wound up being an echo chamber for the outraged. A perfect platform for trolls. You can't explain anything sufficiently in 140 characters, so dialectic is out. The fallback is usually rhetoric (appeals to emotion), with anger being the most effective.
The end result is you have an internet shouting match where everybody is trying to piss off everyone else and nobody can clarify anything. It's the digital embodiment of CGP Grey's video "This video will make you angry[0]".
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#65Pretty much every single unicorn except for Amazon and perhaps Uber. eBay, AirBnB, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat all seemed like strange ideas. Perhaps transformational businesses are supposed to sound totally nuts until you speak with the founders.
Transformational businesses are nuts until someone executes fantastically well.
(Without the fallacy of the genius idea, this thread would be "Ask HN: What's the worst startup idea you've heard, which someone executed amazingly well?")
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#66Twitter. To this day, I find it idiotic. I thought society reached rock bottom when politics started using it to convey their message (is there anything sadder than a political agenda that can be expressed in 140 characters?)
I don't think it's so much about conveying an important message more than being able to engage the masses at a pretty ridiculous speed. Besides, most politicians only post brief messages linking to bigger and more in-depth articles.
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#67Selling shoes online. There's a bit of a story behind that one because my one time Canadian accountant came to me with this idea and I told him I thought it was crap but also (fortunately) told him to ignore me because nobody knows what will and will not work online. He went through with it and does very well indeed.
I know two different guys that sell shoes online. The one moved to Amazon fulfillment and grosses over $15k a month. It's a lifestyle business for him.
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#68I think Twitter ranks way up there. Who the hell would care about a public messaging solution for people posting status updates - "Cooking #dinner" - with a 140 character limit.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#69I was a PFY working for a dot-com shop in the mid-'90s. I (in large part) invented an internal, web-based system that we used to track employee time against external (billable) and internal (non-billable) projects and tasks. Our salespeople would use the system as a common directory of customer contacts, share notes on business development, and generate estimates. Our accounting department would use the system to generate invoices with different payment terms and forecast receivables.
I left the place right before Y2K, a flaming wreck of burnout, dead set on going to college for a CS degree. My friends and coworkers at the time were emphatic that I should take the system I had designed, reimplement it, and sell it. Of course, this was way before cloud and SaaS and all that stuff. I thought it was the stupidest idea I'd ever heard; I couldn't imagine any other company needing and using the same (or a similar) system. And regardless, I was so burned out from it that I couldn't bear the thought of turning around and doing it all again. What can I say... I was young. :-)
Niku was founded in '97, which CA renamed Clarity in '05 after purchasing the company for $350M. Salesforce.com launched in late '99 and currently has a market cap of about $50B. If I were a little smarter (or more hardworking), or if I had met a few different people along the way... who knows? Or maybe I wasn't so unique in creating something like this, and the Niku, Salesforce.com, and others were the ones who simply saw the opportunity for what it was.
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#70Twitter.
I was in an Austin Ruby meetup when these guys came in who had a music startup (this was when everyone and his dog had a music startup). They were hiring for the startup, and they presented this side project they had. They described it as "basically your myspace status, only that's all there is".
Thought the music startup was dumb and Twitter made it look smart. They were hiring. I could have been a really early hire…