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What's a business that when you first heard it, thought it was the dumbest idea in the world, and it turned out to be hugely successful? (alien.top)

submitted 10 months ago by Low-Helicopter-2696@alien.top to c/entrepreneur@indiehackers.space

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Airbnb sounded like a horrible idea to me. Who the heck would rent out a single room? Sounded like a recipe for murder.

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[–] LP526@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago (12 children)

Netflix back when it was all done by mail. Why wait for a DVD to be mailed to you when you can just go to the video store right away?

[–] jhairehmyah@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago (8 children)

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Video rental stores were expensive, as much as one rental a month would equal a Netflix subscription. You were at the mercy of their inventory which you couldn’t check ahead of time before wasting a drive and was often only one copy each of older favorites plus new releases and didn’t have a lot of fringe options or foreign releases. Getting a movie in a mail and keeping it until you watched it, with no late fees, no “by 9pm” bullshit, etc, was awesome. Netflix was the perfect improvement over the video store!

I watched so many odd movies, old classics, and foreign films thanks to Netflix DVD by mail. In many cases, some of those haven’t made it to digital distribution and now aren’t available except through the purchase of an out of print DVD or pirating.

Netflix’s DVD by mail service exists but it isn’t maintained, and some of these important old DVDs are getting broken and not replaced.

[–] LP526@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

I was about 10. The economics weren’t front of mind for me.

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