Your Holiday Reading List
As we approach the end of the year, let’s take a break from the struggles of 2023 and explore some of the more outrageous success stories and strategies we’ve read about over the years. These entrepreneurs and business leaders prove that just because the idea is crazy, it doesn’t mean it won’t work.
BOTTLED AIR
VitalityAir founders Moses Lam and Troy Paquette have made $300K/year capturing, compressing and commercializing fresh air. That’s right, not only have they found a way to take clean pristine air and move it from one part of the world to the other, but they’ve found a market for it: tourists who have visited Banff and Lake Louise and want something other than a keychain or T-shirt as a memento.
POTATO PARCEL
Looking for the perfect gift? Why not send a potato with a custom message or personal photo on it? Yes, a potato. Potato Parcel delivers customized messages written on potatoes to anyone everywhere in the world. And as crazy as it may sound, Potato Parcel has made over $700K, appeared on Shark Tank and creator Alex Craig and his investor Riad Bekhit even struck a deal with shark Kevin O’Leary.
MILLION DOLLAR HOMEPAGE
Back in 2005, 21-year-old student Alex Tew from Wilshire England created The Million Dollar Homepage as a way to fund his university education. The webpage, consisting of a million pixels arranged in a 1000 x 1000 pixel grid, boasts image-based links that were sold for $1 per pixel. Alex sold all one million pixels of internet ad space and ended up making, you guessed it — $1 million!
LUCKY BREAK WISHBONE
Tired of fighting over who gets to break the wishbone at Thanksgiving dinner? Want to make a wish but don’t eat meat? Ken Ahroni invented the Lucky Break Wishbone so everyone could have a chance at making their wishes come true. The plastic “turkey-less” wishbone, which even had PETA promoting it, generated over $700K in revenue. Sears liked it so much that they created a knock-off version. Ahroni fought them in court and won.
AIRBNB
It’s hard to believe but Airbnb, recently valued at $84 billion, had a difficult time convincing investors to sink money into their startup. So to raise money, the founders purchased huge quantities of bulk cereal, pasted together cardboard boxes and sold their own breakfast cereals. Branded as limited-edition, politics-themed cereals, Obama O’s, Cap’n McCain, and Breakfast of Change sold for $40 each and earned the founders more than $30,000.
What good is a discussion website if there’s no one to participate? When Reddit launched in 2005, it had so few visitors that the cofounders created thousands of fake user accounts and responded to themselves to give the appearance of traffic. Their fake-it-’til-you-make-it approach worked and actually allowed them to create the tone and shape the direction of the site. In 2019, Reddit boasted an incredible 430 million monthly users.
PAYPAL
When online payment service PayPal first started out, it operated at a huge loss to generate traffic, paying new users $10 to join, and even more money for referring their friends. That early investment paid off when they hit one million users in just over a year of existence. Today, they make transactions totalling as much as $386 million per day.
INSTACART
Available in 14,000 cities across North America, Instacart is known for delivering groceries extremely quickly. Unfortunately, founder Apoorva Mehta wasn’t always as prompt with deadlines and applied to startup seed accelerator Y Combinator two months after the deadline passed. To get the attention of Garry Tan, one of the YC founders, Mehta sent him a six-pack of beer delivered from Instacart and 30 minutes later, he got a call from Tan inviting him to meet the partners the following day. In September 2023, Instacart went public and was at valued at $10 billion.
BLOOMNATION
When David Daneshgar and two friends wanted to start BloomNation, an online marketplace connecting florists with customers, they struggled to raise the $30,000 they needed. So Daneshgar, a former World Series of Poker winner, took $1000 and entered a poker tournament with a $30,000 grand prize. At the end of the final round, Daneshgar declared: “It’s flower time!” and the trio launched BloomNation soon afterwards.
SALESFORCE
How far would you go to gain an advantage over your competition? Mark Benioff, one of the founders of Salesforce, once organized a fake protest at a Siebel Systems conference, complete with picket signs, chanting, and a fake TV crew, drumming up a lot of attention for Salesforce at his rival’s expense. Another time, Benioff rented an airport’s entire taxi fleet before another Siebel event was held nearby and had his employees pitch Salesforce on the way to the event.
EXPERT SUPPORT FOR YOUR RETAIL PROJECTS
For those ready to embark on their own unique business venture or seeking to add a creative twist to an existing project, remember that our team is just a call away. We’re here to help turn your bold ideas into reality, with expert advice and tailor-made solutions for your projects, retail displays, fixtures, or environments. Reach out for a project plan and quote, and let’s make the upcoming year your most successful yet.
