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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?
#2Yes I worked for a guy in 1998 who basically invented both salesforce and AWS and wanted me to join him as the technical lead. I thought he was nuts and told him no. Due to the geographical location of the company he couldn't find anyone else to do it and went back to fixing PCs.
Now I look back with regret.
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#3Facebook. I was convinced this was a terrible idea until about 2007 or so, despite being on it since 2004. Still think it's kinda a terrible idea, but a billion people disagree with me. (Or perhaps it's more like a billion people agree with me but use it anyway.)
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#4Twitter. 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?)
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#5Twitter. 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?)
Well someone had to say it...
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#6Twitter. 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 too thought it was idiotic. Now I realize that because brevity is the soul of wit is the reason it succeeds. Sometimes less is more and the pearls of wisdom of society at large certainly qualify.
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#7Facebook. I was convinced this was a terrible idea until about 2007 or so, despite being on it since 2004. Still think it's kinda a terrible idea, but a billion people disagree with me. (Or perhaps it's more like a billion people agree with me but use it anyway.)
I also thought it was going to be a fad. What is interesting is that everything people use Facebook for day-to-day existed back in 2005. We used email for sharing life updates, various tools for photo sharing, AOL Instant Messenger for chatting, mailing lists for groups, email and evite for organizing events, etc. The novelty of Facebook was profile browsing and poking each other. And if Facebook had just remained that it would have been a fad. What is impressive about Facebook, is how they managed to little-by-little get everyone on their network, and little-by-little beat out the tools people were using before Facebook.
Interesting, now, in 2015, Facebook is a worse tool for me than it was in 2009. Any tool that my boss is on, my aunt is on, my old high school classmates is on, etc, has lost any coherence to it. I now have to obey standard internet security: anything posted on the internet or on Facebook in my real name has to be treated like it is on my resume. Because, de facto, it is.
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#8Instagram. 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?
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#9Twitter. 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?)
Twitter is mostly made up of abandoned/inactive accounts, and it hasn't turned a profit. Despite popularity, I don't think it qualifies as a success.
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#10Not really a start up, but I thought Wikipedia was an extraordinarily dumb idea at first. An encyclopedia that anyone can edit - what could possibly go wrong?
I completely missed the value of having decent moderator tools (which no site had back in the early 2000's), and a passionate group of moderators who cared very deeply about the integrity of the site.