Most ridiculous start up ideas that became successful

The best startups seem obvious in retrospect. This is because by the time we found out about them as users, they had already reached critical mass.

It is possible to create a good startup with a good idea, but great startups are often the result of ideas that would have seemed ridiculous if you had heard them prior to seeing them working. If you were a venture capitalist pitched one of these ideas, what would your reaction have been?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Craigslist - it will be ugly. It will be free. Except for the hookers.

Ang Lee: A never-ending dream

In 1978, as I applied to study film at the University of Illinois, my father vehemently objected. He quoted me a statistic: ‘Every year, 50,000 performers compete for 200 available roles on Broadway.’ Against his advice, I boarded a flight to the U.S. This strained our relationship. In the two decades that followed, we exchanged less than a hundred phrases of conversation.

Some years later, when I graduated from film school, I came to comprehend my father’s concern: It was nearly unheard of for a Chinese newcomer to make it in the American film industry. Beginning in 1983, I struggled through six years of agonizing, hopeless uncertainty. Much of the time, I was helping film crews with their equipment or working as editor’s assistant, among other miscellaneous duties. My most painful experience involved shopping a screenplay at more than thirty different production companies, and being met with harsh rejection each time.

That year, I turned 30. There’s an old Chinese saying: ‘At 30, one stands firm.’ Yet, I couldn’t even support myself. What could I do? Keep waiting, or give up my movie-making dream?

My wife was my college classmate. She was a biology major, and after graduation, went to work for a small pharmaceutical research lab. Her income was terribly modest.

The best college essay ever

In order for the admissions staff of our college to get to know you, the applicant, better, we ask that you answer the following question.

Are there any significant experiences you have had, or accomplishments you have realized, that have helped to define you as a person?

Response:


I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.

I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.

Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.

I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat 400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.

I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.

I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.

But I have not yet gone to college.

PS - This satirical essay was written in 1990 by high school student Hugh Gallagher, who entered it in the humor category of the Scholastic Writing Awards and won first prize. The text was then published in Literary Calvalcade, a magazine of contemporary student writing, and reprinted in Harper's and The Guardian before taking off as one of the most forwarded "viral" emails of the 1990s.

Though it was not Gallagher's actual college application essay, he did submit it as a sample of his work to college writing programs and was accepted, with scholarship, to New York University, from which he graduated in 1994. Since then he has worked as a freelance writer. His first novel, Teeth, was published by Pocket Books in March 1998. And this particular essay of his has become an urban legend.

A leap of death

I saw, I tried, I waited; it never came to me. Later I saw that times had changed. It was hard, but I had to change too. I had to let go.

The world is a better place if you know the tricks to mathematics and science. If you know that 2,4 Dinitrophenylhydrazine can separate carbonyl compounds from the rest. If you know that a projectile fired at 45 degrees to ground reaches the farthest. You can differentiate rates of change and integrate to calculate the continuous sum of functions.

You freak people out by making TNTs in the backyard. That is from a 98 percent concentration of fuming nitric acid, added to three times that amount of sulphuric acid and (in an ice bath) adding glycerine—drop-by-drop—with an eye dropper to get nitro-glycerine (which works better) than pounds of TNT. This is all to say that logic and knowledge are respected everywhere. If you master them, you can tame the world.

While at the edge, I opened my eyes and embraced the cool wind that had been calling me since an hour. I didn’t know if it was a great height, but it would surely qualify as a life-taking bungee. I would not have waited before taking the leap of death. The delay was due to a mirror in the grey skies. I swear I saw it, and I saw my reflection too. It was so clear, so vivid.

How It Started

Maths, physics and chemistry were my speciality. I had grown in a world of four dimensions—geometrically, logically, intellectually and ‘actually’. Differential equations and linear algebra were my allies. I could solve daily life problems in specs of a second.