The Worst Business Ideas Ever- Part 1

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Last week, we sought your help in finding the worst business ideas ever thought up by the human mind. Well, you delivered. Over the past week, I’ve sifted through some of the most insanely idiotic things I’ve ever seen. I shared many of these ideas with my coworkers, who were convinced I was just making shit up. I wasn’t. These are real ideas submitted by real people. Respect the hustle.

Mutant Puppies

Please keep me anonymous. A buddy of mine is almost finished with medical school and will soon face astronomical student loan debt. Last summer he had the idea that he should find a donor to give him $1 million to take a year off and research his breakthrough idea. His idea? Find a way to manipulate the genetics of animals so that their brains would develop normally but their bodies would remain babies forever, for the entertainment of their owners. So like a puppy that gets smarter but still looks like a puppy it’s whole life.

That’s pretty bold thinking you can alter the genetic code of a mammal for $1 million. Maybe it’s not that difficult. I wouldn’t know, because I’ve never attempted to play God like that, man. Either way, your friend has given me nightmares that will likely plague me for years to come.

ZZZ Zone

My friend pitched me an idea he had to open up a space for nothing but napping. He wanted to call it ZZZ Zone. Who the fuck would want to pay to nap with or around other strangers? And who would drive (or walk somewhere) to do so?
I laughed because he’s currently unemployed, he basically pitched me his living room. He’s just trying to make money doing what he loves, hopefully it works out for him and he’ll never (literally) work a day in his life.

We had one of these places in college. It was free and on campus. I think they ended up shutting it down because people ended up hooking up and doing weird shit in there. Rumor has it, they caught some dude jackin’ it in there. Tell your friend his idea won’t work because people will end up jackin’ it all day, and you can’t have that. Plus, everyone knows you sleep in your car during your lunch break. It’s free, and you don’t have to worry about some dude jackin’ it.

Sandals For Felons

I have a friend from college who wanted me to help him launch a type of sandal. The only difference ; the mark it would leave in sand would look reversible so that you wouldn’t be able to tell which ‎way the person wearing the sandals was coming from. I don’t know why someone would consider that being cool, or why someone wearing sandals is trying to be stealth. Anyways, this is arguably the worst idea I’ve heard of.

Alright. I’m no shark, but it seems like there wouldn’t be a lot of demand for something like this. In fact, I feel like this product would only appeal to the criminal element in beachfront communities. I award your friend no points, and may God have mercy on his soul.

“Slappy Hands”

My husband is constantly pitching me invention ideas. Most of them are ridiculous, but the one he is stuck on is quite possibly the worst of them all: Slappy Hands. He insists that Slappy Hands are the next big thing that the market needs. What is it, you ask? Slappy Hands are for the male who hates getting aftershave on his hands. They are fake hands that you can fill with aftershave. A squeeze will release some of the aftershave into the Slappy Hand and you can then use the Slappy Hand to put the aftershave on your face, thereby eliminating the sticky feeling of aftershave on your own hands. As a woman, I don’t understand the need for this invention, or why it matters if the aftershave touches your hands since you are, in fact, slathering it on your face. But maybe that’s just me.

I think I know where he’s coming from. The shaving routine can be a real pain in the ass, and he’s just trying to eliminate the hand-washing that follows. That’s lazy as hell, but I respect it. That doesn’t mean it’s not one of the worst ideas of all time, though. It is. It truly is.

Intrusive, Yet Respectable, Dating Site

Online Dating using resumes. All users have to submit a resume including:
previous relationships and duration of each relationship
results achieved/dates/activities/milestones
Sexual preferences (male/female, positions, things you want to try, etc)
causes for ending

Basically a 1 pager of all the bullshit that people find out throughout the course of actually dating someone.

Cover letters optional.

I like this idea in theory, but the problem is that people commonly lie on résumés. I just don’t see someone being forthright about the way the previous relationship ended. Think about it. You think “James” in Plano, Texas, is going to admit that his longtime girlfriend left him after finding multiple Fleshlights under the sink? Doubt it. Even though she was in the wrong, and was a total closed-minded bitch, “James” probably won’t put that on his résumé. Keep your head up, “James.”

Land Mass #SMDH

So no bullshit, a buddy of mine who will remain nameless, pitched me this idea in college. The story starts where all great stories start, in living room of our fraternity house, one afternoon shortly after Hurricane Katrina had just haymakered the entire gulf. This guy comes flying in the front door, wild eyed and seemingly exhausted like he had just ran home.

“Dude, I got it. Think about this for a second…”. Anytime your friend starts out a sentence like that I think everyone gets the feeling of how if they don’t listen to what follows, they are going to miss out on a huge opportunity to rag on this guy forever. Such was the case here.
He continues with a question, “What stops hurricanes?”
“I donno, land mass, I guess?”
“Exactly! So why not build an island, that can move around the ocean and get in the way of hurricanes?”
I could literally feel my brain cells dying as he spoke. “Because for starters, hurricanes are hundreds of miles wide and it’s a physical impossibility to build something that large and then move it in the path of a weather event.”
His makes this face that looked like a mixture of disbelief and I just sucked on a lemon. “You’re telling me, that we can put a man on the moon, but we can’t do this?”
“Yeah man, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Just out of curiosity, what do you plan to do with your movable island when it’s not hurricane season?”
“Put a resort on it!” His response was said with a ‘well duh’ tone like I was supposed to have already figured that out by now.

Normally, I would have felt bad about taking the wind out of somebody’s sails like that but I’ll be damned if he didn’t totally ignore me and go on to tell 3 or 4 more people. More power to him.

This is by far the dumbest idea anyone has ever shared with me.

I’m done. Shut it down. Let’s go home..

Submit your own terrible business ideas by emailing me.

Image via Shutterstock

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Dave

Lawyer. Writer. Dude doing business. I'm the meatloaf guy from tv.

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