18 Most Ridiculous Startup Ideas That Eventually Became Successful

 

Even the most well-known venture capitalists have startups they regret passing on.

For John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, it was Twitter. For Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, it was Airbnb, the home-rental website that’s now worth an estimated $2.5 billion.

“We made the classic mistake that all investors make,” Wilson recalled in a blog post lamenting the blunder. “We focused too much on what they were doing at the time and not enough on what they could do, would do, and did do.”

It’s hard to blame him. After all, a lot of successful companies sounded stupid when they first launched — see: Rap Genius – and the vast majority of new businesses flop, sometimes leaving investors with heavy losses.

But before you write off a fledgling firm, always keep in mind that you never know.

Here are the 18 most ridiculous startup ideas that eventually became successful, named and explained by Michael Wolfe on Quora.

(1)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.

(2)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

Source: Michael Wolfe on Quora.

(3)Virgin Atlantic

Airlines are cool. Let’s start one. How hard could it be? We’ll differentiate with a funny safety video and by not being a**holes.

(4)Craigslist

It will be ugly. It will be free. Except for the sex.

(5)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.

(6)Tesla

Instead of just building batteries and selling them to Detroit, we are going to build our own cars from scratch plus own the distribution network. During a recession and a cleantech backlash.

(7)SpaceX

If NASA can do it, so can we! It ain’t rocket science.

(8)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.

(9)Paperless Post

We are like Evite, except you pay us. All of your friends will know that you are an idiot.

(10)Instagram

Filters! That’s right, we got filters!

(11)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.

(12)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.

(13)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.

(14)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.

(15)Palantir

We’ll build arcane analytics software, put the company in California, hire a bunch of new college grad engineers, many of them immigrants, hire no sales reps, and close giant deals with D.C.-based defense and intelligence agencies!

(16)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.

(17)GitHub

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

(18)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.

huffingtonpost

Don Jazzy Unveils Mavin Energy

Brand ambassador for Samsung HTS and Loyamilk, Michael Collins Ajereh aka Don Jazzy, a Nigerian Multi award-winning record producer,musician, and current CEO of the Mavin Records label, and his younger brother James Collins have set up a diesel supply company called Mavin Energy Limted

Fashola Vows To Deal With Owner Of Stored Fire Crackers-Channels TV

The governor of Lagos state, Mr Babatunde Fashola has vowed to punish the owner of the store where fire crackers that exploded on Wednesday were stored.

Fireworks stored in the warehouse triggered the explosion in a commercial area of Jankara market and an 11 year old boy was confirmed dead at the site of fire cracker explosion which occurred at 9AM at Oroyiyin\Jankara axis on Lagos Island.

The explosion and inferno set ablaze 15 other adjoining buildings and injured about 40 people. The explosion gutted buildings, cars and property at the Oroyiyin – Jankara axis on Lagos Island.

The Governor who visited the explosion site described the incident as “unfortunate” while he heaped blames on owners of the store for being reckless business owners.

“In order to make quick business, we have lost a life, we lost property and all of us are in danger” the governor said.

Mr Fashola noted that there must be a lot of soul searching and reflection and choices to be made for people to go on and he called on people to make the choice on safety in all they do while government invests in infrastructure.

Lagos state is one of the states that has banned the use of fire crackers , popularly called bangers during festivities and the governor lamented that “we make rules, we break them.”

“All of these items are under one form of prohibition or the other and we have men and women at our various entry and exit points”.

How did they get in?, how did they enter?, who shipped them?, who imported them and who cleared them?. Who approved them to come in. Those are very serious issues. We must also ask ourselves, must we do every business?”, he asked rhetorically.

Folorunsho Alakija Africa’s Richest Woman

 

Mrs Folorunsho Alakija used to be a designer back in the day, don’t know if she still is.

Anyway, she went into the oil business many years back; she has an oil bloc that pulls in N157 million a day. Yes, you read right! She is the Vice Chairman of Famfa Oil and Gas limited and has emerged the richest woman in Africa according to Forbes November 2012 edition, with a net worth of $600million, which is about N94 billion.

The 61 year old former FADAN president is married and has four boys.

Nigerian inventor domiciles wind energy technology !

An electrical engineer, Sebastine Chinonye Omeh, the Managing Director of Hybrid Micro Machine Products Limited, from Ogrute town in Igbo-Eze North Local Government Area of Enugu State, Nigeria, has, at his research site in Eungu, concluded research into the use of wind-propelled turbines to generate electricity, thereby pioneering wind energy technology in Nigeria.

“We started with the smallest of 5 kilowatts after which we did 12 kilowatts, then 20 kilowatts, etc. And now we have 75 kilowatts. This one you are looking at now is the latest in our series, capable of generating 75 kilowatts of electricity, while mounted on a tower of 15 metres altitude,” Omeh disclosed.

The Managing Director admitted that the cost of the Research so far, had been enormous, such that one cannot sit down and calculate, especially the procurment of materials for the construction of the essential parts of the turbine, such as blades and towers, in addition to the purchase of a land space of more than 40 plots.

He said the total sum of money spent so far, stood at about one hundred million naira (#100m).

Omeh disclosed that, his passion for development of technology to address humsn needs made him venture into research on Wind Energy as a possible source of electricity – a decision he said, was borne out of concern over the epileptic power supply in the country from the other already known sources, such as hydro and thermal generation.

On the level of advancement made into the Research and costs incurred so far, Omeh declared that they have virtually concluded, developed and tested different models.

“This place where you are, the Hybrid Research Centre, was purposely set up for research and development of wind energy. The hopeless situation in Nigeria, regarding electricity generation and supply, touched me so deeply and challenged me to go into this research. The main job of an engineer is to solve man’s problems and we chose to begin with wind for the generation of electricity.”

Describing how this process works, Omeh began with the definition of wind energy as simply “the energy possessed by moving the air mass”.

He continued, “the energy possessed by wind is usually in the form of kinetic energy, but when in contact with wind turbine blade, is transformed into rotational mechanical energy. The mechanical energy is transmitted via the drive system to the wind turbine generator which performs the final conversion to electrical energy”.

He added that the technology is simple, but robust with the only source being the wind, which is clean, abundant, free and renewable.

Omeh identified two types of wind turbine as, the vertical axis wind turbine and the horizontal axis wind turbine; vertical and horizontal simply indicating the orientation (positioning/direction) of the wind turbine rotor axis.

Recalling how he eventually plunged into the research project, the managing director said, “our most immediate need then, was land, since such Research required a large space. Then again, was the need to move away from the noise of the city and its associated encumberances, such as all sorts of distractions.

We actually started in Lagos at NO 11 Timilehin Street, Leko-Ikpaja, Ikpaja Local Government Area.

We started the research there, but the size of land we have there, was not spacious enough and also we had close neighbours here and there, but the Wind Project does not permit such.”

He said that this led them to go out in search of a bigger space, revealing that the present site, which measures 3.2 acres (more than 40 plots), and quite removed from the Coal City Centre, away from noise, was the ideal place dreamed of.

Omeh, who graduated in electrical engineering at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1989, had, soon after graduation, decided to do himself and the society a favour through self-employment and engagement in activities related to his field of study.

Apparently elated by his achievements, born out of sheer courage and ambition, Omeh told SweetCrude Reports, friday, at his Research Centre located at kilometre 10, Enugu-Abakaliki Express way, Akpoja Nike, near Emene, Enugu, how he had begun, after floating his company, with the supply and maintenance of transmission equipment in the broadcast industry.

Broadcast organisations that have benefitted from his company’s servives include the Anambra Broadcasting Service, the Kogi Radio, the BRTV, Maidugri, etc.

According to him, “when we formed the company initially, we had a market in the broadcast industry. We promptly re-activated and resurrected a lot of the equipment that were abandonded due to obsolete parts and cloned some components that could replace the hard-to find obsolete ones.

Source - sweetcrudereports