Ask HN: Are there crazy startup Ideas that turned successful? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are there crazy startup Ideas that turned successful?

4 pointsSunghoYahng7 comments

The statement "Start-up ideas that succeed big usually look crazy at first" is a sentiment that many gurus, including Paul Graham, seem to enjoy preaching.

But is it really true? In other words, are there enough cases to suggest this is not just an exception, but rather a tendency?

Here's what is not meant by 'crazy': 1) The goal was too ambitious 2) It seemed insignificant

In this context, 'crazy' should be defined as something that appears 'ridiculous' or 'absurd'. If 'crazy' implies 'too ambitious', the gurus' statement becomes meaningless, boiling down to "successful start-up ideas look ambitious at first".

The examples that come to my mind are Twitter (character limit) and Uber & AirBnB (sharing with strangers).

Are there more cases out there?

I'd put Twitch up there.

The idea that a huge number of people will watch other people play video games and you can sustain an economy by donations and subscriptions was probably crazy at the time.

I'm not even talking about watching professional gaming tournaments. Starcraft already set the precedent for e-Sports watching. I'm talking about someone with a webcam in a basement type of content that garners a massive number of viewers.

In the case is Twitch there was already Justin.tv; so they had most of the technology and it was mainly a pivot to a different market.

The technology started out for streaming Justin's daily life.

Oh, I forgot this major case. That's indeed the case of seemingly crazy ideas.

Certainly yes...but there are good reasons why 0.01% of a startup's value is said to be in its idea, and 99.99% of its value in its execution.

Please tell me what's the examples

Since you mention "sharing with strangers", and Zuck had already gotten in very deep trouble with Harvard for his FaceMash web site - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook

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