35 Ideas That Sounded Ridiculous But Somehow Actually Worked
I would be a terrible investor. You could pitch me something that eventually goes on to make a billion dollars, and I’d most likely pass because I found every way it wouldn’t work. Being able to spot a bad idea and being able to spot a profitable one are completely unrelated skills.
People shared ideas in this Reddit thread that sounded ridiculous on paper but actually worked, and I can see myself confidently dismissing several of them. Some became things we use every day. Others worked once under circumstances where I would have preferred to be nowhere nearby.
Congratulations to everyone who ignored the very reasonable person who cast any doubts.
1. Paying $30 To Have $7 Worth Of Food Delivered
In 2006 I thought of having a delivery service for all restaurants, but figured that to pay the driver for their time + gas + wear and tear, you’d have to charge the customer so much it would never work. Didn’t realize drivers are willing to work for pennies and customers are willing to spend $30 for $7 worth of food. My bad.
2. The Shoes From Idiocracy
When they were working on the movie idiocracy, they asked the costume designer to find goofy yet futuristic looking shoes to have people wear. They found a small company and decided that their shoes looked so stupid that Nobody in their right mind would ever wear them.
After some time they were asked what would happen if the shoe brand suddently took off, and they answered that theres no way people would seriously buy these.
The brand was crocs
3. Snoop Dogg And Martha Stewart Teaming Up
Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart colab.
4. Selling Rocks As Pets
Have you ever heard of the “Pet Rock” phenomenon? It sounded absurd to sell rocks as pets. On paper it was a headache, but in reality in the 70s people went crazy about it. Sometimes the craziest ideas spark the most!”
5. Driving Down Every Street With A Camera
Let’s drive a car with a GPS and a camera down EVERY STREET ON EARTH!
6. A Video Game About Everyday Chores
The Sims computer game. It sounds like the stupidest idea ever – who would want to control a Sim character doing all the mundane stuff we do every day. How boring. But I played a ton of the Sims, then the subsequent versions.
7. Getting Rental DVDs In The Mail
A movie rental company that mails you DVDs. I thought it was the [worst] idea when it first came out when I could drive 5 minutes to Blockbuster and get whatever I wanted then.
8. Baking Bread, Then Cooking It Again
Toast.
“Hey let’s take something we already finished baking and heat it up again.” The person who first came up with it must have sounded crazy.
9. Hanging Circular Saws From A Helicopter
Trimming trees with 10 circular saws attached to a metal bar, dangling from a helicopter.
10. A Screen Somewhere Between A Phone And A Laptop
I feel iPads and tablets in general. Who knew there was a market in-between cells and laptops. Its like a new spoon that’s bigger than a small spoon, and smaller than the big spoon.
11. Two Plumbers, Giant Mushrooms, And A Lot Of Turtles
Ok ok ok ok…! hear me out!
It’s a video game, about two Italian plumbers, that stomp on turtles! They travel through giant sewer pipes, break bricks to release mushroom, which they eat to become bigger!!
12. Bottling Something People Already Get From The Tap
Selling bottled water in places where tap water is both free and better regulated used to be a joke.
13. Inflatable Tanks
The fake inflatable tanks in WW2.
14. Getting Into A Stranger’s Car
Arguably, ride share. What?! Strangers drive you and they don’t even have a medallion!
15. Renting Your Bedroom To A Stranger
Some guys thought people would be interested in renting out their bedrooms to strangers.
Airbnb was thus born.
16. A Game About Digging Up Blocks
“Nobody’s going to play your silly little java game with outdated graphics about digging up blocks”
17. Taking A Shower By Candlelight
Once upon a time I had a headache. My then-boyfriend said to take a shower by candlelight.
My first thought was, “Showering in near darkness is a stupid idea” followed immediately by “I want to try it.”
And it worked. I went ahead and married him to retain access to his good ideas and his pancakes.
18. Turning Cat Poems Into A Broadway Musical
CATS, the Broadway musical. A nonsense fever dream about catpeople competing to die and be reborn (yes, that is the plot, insofar as CATS has one), based on a book of silly short poems by T.S. Eliot that are not really related to each other except all being about cats. Just catpeople introducing themselves and rubbing on each other for several hours, then one of them “ascends” aka dies.
To date, CATS has made over a billion dollars worldwide.
19. Making Movies Out Of Children’s Toys
Okay, how about…
You take a popular children’s toy and make a movie out of it?
Sounds ridiculous and yet you have The Lego Movie, Barbie, the entire Trolls media franchise… oh, and wow, the American Girl dolls have so. many. movies. I’m not saying everything is an amazing watch, but if you’re talking about successes then you can’t deny there have been a lot of them.
Plenty of failures too though, for sure.
20. An Encyclopedia Anyone Can Edit
As someone who spent a lot of time around 2005 trying to describe it to some very skeptical people, I would definitely say Wikipedia.
21. Fighting Fire With Explosions
Putting out oil well fires by blowing them up.
22. Building A Glider In The Jungle
A plane has crashed in the jungles of New Guinea. Three survivors have found a village and managed to get communication. There’s no way to get an airplane room to land and take off and helicopters can’t make it into the valley. I know! We’ll airdrop medical personnel, supplies for a glider, assemble it, and slingshot it into the air! Then, we’ll catch it with a tow-plane. It worked.
23. The Thailand Cave Rescue
The way they extracted those kids from the cave in Thailand. The diver and anesthesiologist (first off, how lucky to find somebody with that overlap in skills) who was consulted and joined the effort said it was a terrible idea. It was only when presented with the other options that he realized this terrible idea was truly their best option.
They rescued all the kids and their coach successfully.
24. Putting A Computer In Your House
Personal Computers. In the 1970s, the idea of having a personal computer at home was met with skepticism. Many believed that computers were massive machines meant for businesses and institutions.
25. Making A Movie About The Financial Crisis
So I’m going make a movie about the 2008 financial crash.
-Um, OK…
I’m going explain all the jargon and why it happened
Um, OK, but won’t people be bored?
Not if I have Margot Robbie explaining it from a bubble bath
OK you have my attention
It will be great and it will have Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, Selena Gomez and Brad Pitt
(Some movie executives, probably)
The Big Short is excellent; I have seen it three times now.
26. Parachuting Cats Into Borneo
Dropping a whole bunch of cats by parachute over Borneo to stop the spread of plague.
27. Taking Coal To A Coal-Mining Town
In the 1700s, this guy named Timothy Dexter had a few of these.
- [Bed warmers] are useful in cold climates, but he took a shipload of them to the Caribbean for sale. They were sold to the molasses industry as ladles and turned a handsome profit.
- He took a load of mittens to the same place. Some Asians bought them to sell onward to Siberia.
- Newcastle was a major coal-mining area. He took a shipload of coal there for sale, arrived during a major miner’s strike, and turned a big profit.
- He did the mittens thing again, this time to the South Seas, and arrived just in time to sell them to some Portuguese traders on their way to China.
28. Selling Pieces Of A Wall People Were Tearing Down
The guy who bought sections of the berlin wall. People were tearing it down and he wanted to buy some of it. The government was like, lol sure you pay us for something we are tearing down anyways. He has been selling pieces of the wall as souvenirs and is fairly wealthy from it.
29. An Overnight Delivery Service
Rumor has it that the founder of FedEx received a C in college on a paper describing his proposed business. According to the rumor, the professor thought no one would use the service when the Post Office already provided that service at lower cost.
30. Charging A Much Larger Naval Force
During the Battle of Leyte Gulf in WW2, the American Navy was escorting the invasion force to the Philippines when they spotted what appeared to be the main Japanese fleet. The larger ships changed course to pursue, leaving the invasion force guarded by destroyers and escort carriers.
Turns out that was a trick. The real Japanese fleet then turned up to attack. On paper, the Americans were in serious trouble.
Instead of running, the American destroyers charged the Japanese and fought so ferociously that the Japanese, thinking that the American force was larger than appeared, withdrew despite the fact that they were winning.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_off_Samar
31. Giving Everyone A Very Short Character Limit
Let’s restrict users to very short messages for no particular reason. Looks ridiculous on paper but really took off (and then eventually devolved into an alt-right dumpster fire, but that’s another story)
32. The Hula Hoop
Hula Hoop
33. A Train That Balances On One Rail
Louis Brennan, inventor of the gyro monorail. His monorail was a single track train which used a gyroscope-based balancing system to remain upright. The designs look insane on paper but it was crazy innovative, safe for passengers, and was apparently even faster than the regular trains (of those days).
34. A Ship Powered By A Fire
“What, Sir? Would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you excuse me, I have no time to listen to such nonsense.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte, regarding the steam engine
35. Trains, According To A Very Skeptical Reviewer
Trains
Can they go uphill? No
Can they go downhill? No
Can they go round corners? Not really
Can they go across the ground? No they need special tracks to run on
Can they travel through snow? No
Can they travel if the rails get really hot? No
Can the driver decide which way to drive? No