Why not leverage quirky ideas?

When looking for business ideas, you can follow trends, analyze data sets, unbundle existing offers, look at social media channels to find demand, and many more. You can conduct customer interviews, build an audience, or read dozens of newsletters. Or you can just go batshit crazy and follow that weird idea you believe in.

There is a competitive advantage of being "quirky". This can apply to your whole business model or just elements thereof. Maybe this quirky idea of yours won't be a million-dollar business. But for side projects and bootstrappers, just a handful of true fans can be enough. And being labeled "crazy" can be a sign that you're on to something. It's all just a question of point of view. In retrospect, whole new industries come from crazy people.

Here are more examples:

• 6 Crazy Startup Ideas That Hit It Big (from 2014) lists some now well-known companies which were considered crazy in their times: Facebook, Craigslist, PayPal, and Amazon.
• 7 Strange Startup Ideas That Succeeded in a Big Way (One Raised $35M on Kickstarter) I'll just give you this as bait: "DiedInHouse.com is the first of its kind, web-based service that helps you find out if anyone has died at any valid US address."
• Brilliant SME ideas gives you three more niches. The "Professional Wedding Guest" service reminds me...
• ...that In Japan, You Can Rent a Person To Do Nothing.
• And finally, two more examples I found in an edition of Marie Dollé's newsletter: digital scent products and digital taste research.
• Marie also has an issue on WEIRD as a Service.

Alas, there is a narrow path between these ideas and losing the ability to take anything seriously. Just look at The Absurd Logic of Internet Recipe Hacks.

If you liked this, feel free to subscribe to my newsletter. And I'm looking forward to sharing more ideas with all of you here on Indie Hackers.

Now, what is that idea you had recently that made you think "nah, that's way off"?