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Startups: the Crazy Ones, the Misfits, the Rebels ... the Dumb
An anonymous reader writes Many companies emerged in 2014 offering new ways to help people connect, get stuff done, or find that special someone. Slack, for example, offers a chatty alternative to work email. Or Yonomi might actually make an Internet connected home feasible. But other new startups, looking for that new and original thing, peddled products that were gimmicky, legally unsound, or just not super useful.
On the other hand, sometimes things that seem gimmicky get revised down the road; Kozmo.com is my favorite example — the business model might not have been perfect, but the underlying idea wasn't so bad. Sometimes there's a large not-being-the-first-mover advantage.
I'm not sure of the business viability of a defunct company paying a PR person to submit a link to a Wikipedia article. Maybe he's the Flying Dutchman of advertising!
The only way I can see these people getting their crazy plans funded is through the 100th idiot effect amidst venture capitalists.
From _Matter_ by Iain M. Banks: "100 idiots make idiotic plans, and carry them out. All but one justly fail. The hundredth idiot whose plans succeeded through pure luck, is immediately convinced he's a genius."