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Comment by mywacaday | Hacker News Reader

Are there any good examples where the opposite is true, i.e. a relatively terrible idea executed so well it succeeds?

If it succeeds, there's a pretty serious question about whether it was actually a terrible idea. I'd be doubtful about the premise accordingly. I think the successful outcome is inherently invalidating of the notion it was a terrible idea.

I've been reading about business history for decades, I enjoy it. I can't think of an example that matches that setup. Ideas like the pet rock or chia pet or electronic dancing flower pots jump to mind, however my thinking is immediately that: well, they weren't such terrible ideas then, lots of people wanted to buy those things.

A combination of disposable income and endless desire to be amused/entertained, is a potent consumption formula. The pet rock for example was a relatively inexpensive tchotchke of very temporary curiosity and amusement. People love to be amused, entertained and to have trinkets to talk about or show off. A lot of seemingly bad ideas fall into that space.

That's true. "Terrible" is in the eye of the beholder.

Many, many companies make bank, by taking classic ideas, and executing them well.

It's like Joe Cocker made many obscure songs into mega-hits.

If other companies are making lots profit doing something then it isn't a terrible idea. A terrible idea is trying to build something that will never make lots of money, like the pet dating sites or so.

Like the songs that Joe Cocker often covered, the ideas may be languishing, with little-to-moderate success.

Until done properly, or combined with other ideas or good marketing.

Until they make money, they are derided as "terrible ideas."

Of course some ideas are hard to recognize as good, but you can't say that there aren't any terrible ideas out there. Trying to implement a terrible idea will never work out no matter how well you execute, unless you make it into a MLM scam but I wouldn't call that success.

I could make a case that Airbed and Breakfast was somewhat of a "terrible idea" at the beginning... now with an $80+ billion market cap... they executed well.

Why do you think it was ever a bad idea? From the Airbnb wikipedia page, it seems apparent that, right from the beginning, the plan was to tap into the market of people who liked the idea of playing a professional Host but did not have the capital or desire to run a full fledged hotel/BnB; some of the margin gained by these lower costs of operating could be passed on to guests, thereby attracting them to the service.

However, HOWEVER, there are/were some gigantic risks Airbnb was taking, I will agree with you on that -- the risk of people staying at random strangers' houses and the wide spectrum of horrifying experiences that can lead to. There's an excellent Bloomberg article that does a deep dive into Airbnb's somewhat-shady "Trust and Safety team"[1][2].

The point I'm trying to make is that although the idea came with certain inherent risks, skillful execution can mitigate those risks significantly. Similar risks were also attached to Uber's idea of random strangers offering rides to people, and those risks were somewhat mitigated as well.

[1] archive.md link: https://archive.md/nyBFY

[2] original article link: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-15/airbnb-sp...

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