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Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?

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Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?

#81

Post by nmela »

nstart wrote: post #71

Snapchat. Thought it was a pretty dumb idea till recently. I'm now an active user. To be fair though, I still think the messaging feature of it is fun only as the occasional gimmick. The value tapers off as soon as you pass a certain age (at least that's what I feel). But when they introduced stories, and "live stories" in particular, their value just skyrocketed. It suddenly became genius. Being able to follow a ful…

Im with you on the Snapchat development. Once many people got on there they leveraged it in really cool ways. It's very interesting how they turned an app which people used for nudes and what not into one that advertisers now pay toooons of money to certain content creators.

Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?

#83

Post by Noctem »

nstart wrote: post #71

Snapchat. Thought it was a pretty dumb idea till recently. I'm now an active user. To be fair though, I still think the messaging feature of it is fun only as the occasional gimmick. The value tapers off as soon as you pass a certain age (at least that's what I feel). But when they introduced stories, and "live stories" in particular, their value just skyrocketed. It suddenly became genius. Being able to follow a ful…

Came here to say roughly the same thing about Snapchat. I didn't expect it to rise very far above a niche sexting app, and I was surprised when I started seeing a lot of people using it for more innocent purposes.

The concept still doesn't appeal to me as much as a lot of people (though I still use it), but I was clearly wrong about its potential for mass appeal.

Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?

#84

Post by notahacker »

dudul wrote: post #4

Twitter. 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?

Formerly respected news outlets reproducing others' 140 character comments as a substitute for actually asking subject experts specific questions.

I understand the rationale for reproducing Twitter comments when they come from someone directly connected with the story. I can even see how comments from people claiming to be involved or particularly pithy statements might make it into a "breaking news" feed. What I don't understand is why news outlets with loftier ambitions than Buzzfeed think tweets like these: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-33656579 is substantial enough to constitute a commentary piece.

(Or worse still, the obituary complete with "@randomdave said 'RIP U were a legend'")

Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?

#85

Post by why-el »

iamben wrote: post #59
why-el wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we are talking about genius ideas, where is the idea now? (Apologies if this was supposed to be obvious and I did not get it).

In the UK - Deliveroo, Just Eat, Hungry House... There's probably more. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/deliveroo https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/just-eat https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hungryhouse-co-uk

I was actually curious about parent's friend's idea. To be fair all these apps haven't yet figured out the whole market, so perhaps instead of genius we can call them 'implementable'.

Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?

#86

Post by notahacker »

beeboop wrote: post #60
roflmyeggo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been a lot of startups over the past decade centred around the sharing economy that have helped to prove that humans can be civil in these situations where one might think that we would default to nefarious activity - Airbnb, Local Motion, etc. to name a few. Humanity is continuing to prove itself as capable of dealing with each other harmoniously and we are seeing great businesses emerge that are benefitt…

If you think Wikipedia is civil, I recommend looking at the talk pages for contentious articles. It's overwhelmingly full of pedantic bickering and passive aggressiveness. It also suffers from a lot of bias in articles where there's a vocal minority on the internet willing to spend hundreds of hours militantly editing and moderating. It's essentially a shouting match on the internet with the loudest group winning.

Even worse are the articles on subjects which few people other than a couple of authors actually care about at all (notably English language articles on political issues in non-English speaking countries and fringe issues which aren't quite fringe enough to get their pages deleted) There's no argument taking place, but that's why the content is so bad. A couple of UK politicians editing their articles hit the headlines in the election buildup, but I found an article on a more obscure MP which was almost entirely, and very openly and honestly, written by the politicians' partner.

Wikipedia is more successful than most people could have imagined in generating quantity, and better than most would have thought in suppressing outright vandalism, but quality is far behind what people are lead to believe from rather superficial studies comparing heavily-trafficked pages against only slightly better-written and more outdated conventional encyclopedias. But there was a time when encyclopedias were expected to be authoritative, as opposed to where Wikipedia has excelled, which is regularly being the first remotely useful result in Google.

Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?

#87

Post by notahacker »

WaltPurvis wrote: post #11

What about the opposite, something that seemed like genius but turned out to be a terrible, terrible idea? Secret, for example.

Did anyone apart from the VCs hoping for another Snapchat think it was that good? Even the founders, infamously, cashed out early.

Same applies to the little-lamented Color, which was universally panned on here for more than just the excess represented by a $30m initial fundraise.

As for companies I thought could be huge and didn't really make it, a 4x return on Hunch was pretty unspectacular. I think there's a huge company waiting to happen in the [meta]event search space, but that's not borne out by the companies that have tried it.

Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?

#88

Post by NeutronBoy »

iamben wrote: post #59
why-el wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we are talking about genius ideas, where is the idea now? (Apologies if this was supposed to be obvious and I did not get it).

In the UK - Deliveroo, Just Eat, Hungry House... There's probably more. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/deliveroo https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/just-eat https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hungryhouse-co-uk

In Aus, Menu Log and Delivery Hero are the main two with similar functions. They actually work with restaurants to integrate their existing online ordering systems into an integrated mobile app.

Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?

#89

Post by dormant1 »

why-el wrote: post #85
iamben wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK - Deliveroo, Just Eat, Hungry House... There's probably more. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/deliveroo https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/just-eat https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hungryhouse-co-uk

I was actually curious about parent's friend's idea. To be fair all these apps haven't yet figured out the whole market, so perhaps instead of genius we can call them 'implementable'.

I have seen an integrated system in Australia. Delivery Hunter. Actually involves a delivery service if restaurant does not have one.. We all thought it would fail but it is getting bigger and bigger.

Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?

#90

Post by codingdave »

lexcorvus wrote: post #57
mtimjones wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you own TWTR? I think eventually Twitter will be acquired and integrated into a different social network. As for the OP's original point, they've never turned a profit, and I'd estimate that half of their accounts are inactive/fake.

I don't own TWTR, but that's irrelevant. All of Twitter's early investors are very pleased with their investment, while those who missed out or (worse) passed are probably wringing Twitter's hands. Anyone who invested $10K in one of Twitter's early rounds is now set for life. (If I could have gotten in on one of those rounds, I certainly would have invested myself.) Current profitability is irrelevant. What matters i…

So less than 2 weeks later, anyone who had shorted 10K based on your sarcastic comments to do so would also have been quite pleased.

Thanks, man. It was a brilliant call.

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