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Strange Startups

info • May 1, 2018

Strange Startups

The quote on our Cannon chalkboard changes every week, aiming to inspire those walking our halls as they strive to disrupt, change, and create the world around them. Last week’s echoes Edison and still rings true for entrepreneurs today.

“Don’t worry about failure, you only have to be right once.”
-Drew Houston

Fear of failure can crush an idea, a company, or a person before they truly explore the chance to create something new and different. It’s important to champion your idea, however zany, and follow it to fruition. Just look at No More Woof! who claimed to “analyze animal thought pattern and spell it out in human language,” or Blippy, who raised $13 million and was valued at $46.2 million based on the strength of technology that connected users’ credit card purchases to their Twitter accounts. Neither company enjoyed sustained success, but both stuck to their guns in spite of their..different ideas. These two aren’t the only strange startups that have enjoyed varying degrees of success (or lack thereof). From the brazen to the just plain bizarre, here are ten of the wackiest, weirdest, and wildest startups we could find.

Agester launched in 2007 as an online community centered on members guessing each others ages. Surprisingly enough this geriatric “Hot or Not” didn’t stand the test of time.

Buy something from the something store for $10 (everything costs $10) and you won’t know what you bought until it arrives on your doorstep. This surprise purchase platform panned out, and 10 years after their launch the Something Store is alive and well.

Ever want to tweet every purchase you make? Blippy made that possible. Unfortunately, they failed to gain traction and inadvertently let Google leak some users credit card information.

You’ve found it: your dream house. Before you hang up family photos, want to find out if some poor soul died inside? Diedinhouse.com will tell you if anyone died at your address, along with full reports on drug activity, fire incidents, sex offender registry, and other pertinent property information.

Game Crush was a social gaming site that allowed users to meet, match and play online games with others. Think twitch with a focus on pairing lonely gamers with dates. Though they raised an initial $700,000 in funding, struggles with site crashes and rampant nudity sent Game Crush to the sidelines.

Need quarters? Sick of going to the bank? Washboard offered a service by which they sent customers $20 of quarters for just $27/month. Despite a thriving customer base, Washboard didn’t make it.

No More Woof! crowdfunded their doggy-mind-reading device, raising about $22,664, and failed to deliver on any of promised technology. Bad Startup! Bad!

Breath of fresh air? This company will send it to you canned and ready. What started as a gag gift has turned into a burgeoning company with promising growth. With a massive market in over-polluted China and India, air is only going up.

Welcome to the bonus round. Here’s a kickstarter-funded idea from pet product company PDX Pet Design. 
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