Business ideas that brought in millions. Crazy and incredible business ideas that brought their owners millions

Have you ever looked at a product or business and thought, “Why didn’t I think of that?” While people spend their days dreaming of getting rich instantly, only a few are lucky enough to realize their million-dollar idea.

Some enterprising people have become rich from everyday things such as clothes or food. Some came up with more amazing ideas. It can be a simple solution or completely unique. In any case, these ideas will surprise you and, most likely, make you jealous of their owners.

Now we will see 10 of the most amazing ideas that brought in more than one million and how the people who came up with them made their ideas come true.

(Total 10 photos)

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1. Doggles for dogs

These glasses are the brainchild of Roni di Lullo, who came up with this great idea while walking in a dog park in 1997. Her border collie Midnight was bothered by bright daylight and couldn't catch a frisbee properly. “I had my sunglasses on, and I thought, why doesn’t the dog have them,” Roni said.
So Di Lullo began making sunglasses for her dog. At first she tried to fit regular glasses with a variety of straps. Then she saved up some money and made a new model that fit the dog's face exactly. This is how glasses for dogs were born. Now dogs can lean out of cars without fear, since the glasses protect not only from harmful UV rays, but also from dust and dirt.
Di Lillo's company, MidKnight Creations, with annual revenues of about $3 million, now also makes backpacks, swim vests and cat toys.

2. Runaway alarm clock Clocky

Gauri Nanda loved to sleep and loved to press the end button on her alarm clock in the morning... many times. And when it came time to do a test project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a running alarm clock immediately came to mind. Equipped with two wheels, after pressing the end button, the alarm clock slides off the bedside table and rolls along the floor, forcing the sleepy owner to get out of bed.
As soon as Nanda completed her training, she found her prototype, borrowed money from her family, and began selling new alarm clocks on a large scale. At the moment, the runaway alarm clock is sold in thousands of stores in more than 45 countries around the world and has already brought its inventor about 10 million dollars. There is also a Tocky version, which has no wheels and uses internal torque to move.

3. Billy Bob Teeth

These false teeth were invented to turn anyone into a “hillbilly.” Jonah White first saw them at a football match in 1994. The man with “horrible teeth” was talking “some nonsense,” White says. It turned out that it was his friend Rich Bailey, and the teeth were not real - he made them in dental school. White saw an opportunity and asked Bailey to make him a kit.

At the time, White was living in a shack behind his parents' house and working odd jobs to pay off his debts. Soon, White and Bailey began retailing Billy Bob's teeth, but after a couple of years, Bailey left the company to pursue a career as a dentist.

White's company now produces sandals, hats and other Billy Bob items. He also moved to a new home thanks to more than 50 million in profits from the company throughout its existence.

4. Knork knife fork

If you're tired of using both a knife and fork when eating, then Knork has something interesting for you... a fork and knife in one cutlery.
This idea came to Mike Miller back in eighth grade, when he was trying to eat pizza with a fork. While he was trying in vain to tear the pizza, he noticed how easily the worker cut it with a special knife. And then he thought that a fork with such a knife on one of the edges would do just as well.
However, Miller didn't even think about developing his idea until he entered college in 2001. He borrowed $10,000 from his grandfather, started his own company, and developed a prototype using his mom's forks and a sharpening wheel in the garage.
A few years later, Knork products flooded into store shelves and online catalogs. Now the Knork company is developing and moving to full-scale production. In 2011, Knork Flatware had approximately $2 million in sales.

5. SENDaBALL balls

SENDaBALL balls can be perceived as one of the types of postcards. It all started when Michelle Sypolt Cabbage saw a bunch of balloons in a store, wrote “Give a balloon to your child” on them, put a stamp on them and sent them to her friend.
Over the next few years, Cabbage and her sister Melissa Sypolt Moroko sent balloons to friends on various occasions. One day, in line at the post office, a man asked Michelle to send him one balloon too. And then the sisters saw an opportunity. In 2003, they created a website and opened a store in their garage, where it remains today. To date, the total profit from the sale of SENDaBALL balls has been $1 million.

6. HeadBlade

Todd Green puzzled for a long time and came up with HeadBlade. After his hair began to fall out at age 20, he decided to shave his head. And then he realized that for such an activity there must be a special razor. “If I could just hold the blade in my hand, it would be much easier to shave,” says Todd.
So, in 1998, he built a prototype that fit comfortably in his hand and found someone to help him improve it. Green took all his money, borrowed from family and friends, and then started the company. He found a manufacturer, made a website, and learned e-commerce and marketing.
Things got even better when Time magazine named Green's invention one of the best of 2000. Now HeadBlade is sold in 15-20 thousand stores across America and generates annual revenue of 7-10 million dollars.

7. Thymus bones.

In America, on Thanksgiving Day, there is a tradition of breaking the fork bone from the turkey eaten; whoever has the largest piece left will have his wish come true. But you can’t have enough bones, because turkey isn’t a cheap pleasure either, and there’s only one bone. Plastic thymus bones may seem like a very simple idea, but it's an idea that has made millions. Ken Aroney came up with the idea during Thanksgiving dinner in 1999. He realized that there was only one bone on the table and it could dry out before everyone decided who would break it. He decided that an artificial bone would solve family disputes and allow everyone to make a Thanksgiving wish. He did some research and found a "secret formula" that allows the artificial bone to break like a real one.
By 2004, sales were carried out in only 10 stores, but now Forks are sold in more than 800 stores across America and have brought in $4 million in profit since their introduction.

8. Uglydoll monsters

The Uglydoll monsters may not look very good, but they have brought in good profits - more than $100 million since their appearance on store shelves.
Uglydoll is not only a success story, but also a love story. It all started in 1996, when Sang-Min Kim and David Horvath met at Parson School of Art and Design. Then, when Kim left for Korea, they had to separate for several years, but they continued to communicate, conducting active correspondence. In one of these letters, David drew a little orange monster named Wage. Kim responded by sending him a hand-sewn Wage toy as a gift. When Horvath took the toy to an Asian pop art store in Los Angeles, the owner asked for more. The new dolls, which Kim spent months sewing by hand, sold out in one day.
And in 2002, Kim and Horvath not only opened their company, Pretty Ugly, but also got married.

9. Goose Police

In 1986, David Marks was working at a golf club in Greenwich, Connecticut, and was wrestling with 600 Canada geese that lived on the property. No matter what he tried to drive them away, nothing worked. Until he decided to use a border collie. He bought a dog, trained it and soon there were no more geese. The news quickly spread throughout the area and now other golf clubs are asking him for help. Marks decided to create a goose police and began ridding golf courses of pesky geese.
Eventually, Marks quit his job to focus entirely on his new business. The company has grown and now has 11 territories throughout the country. David now has 38 dogs under his command, and the company brings in $2.8 million a year.
“Who would have thought that I would make millions playing with dogs,” says Marks.

10. FitDeck fitness cards

This card game is not played at a table, but is designed to get players into shape. The deck contains 50 exercises that do not require machines. These cards are the brainchild of Phil Black, who came up with the idea after a college card game turned into a push-up competition.
Black did not immediately create his own company. He first served in the Navy and then graduated from business school. After Phil graduated, he took an office job at Goldman Sachs, but quit after six months. He used his savings and his Navy SEAL training to create FitDeck cards. There are currently 37 different decks.
Black claims to have sold "hundreds of thousands of decks" and earned "several million dollars" to date.

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There was no universal way to get rich, there is no one, and there is unlikely to be one. As practice shows, even the most idiotic ideas can succeed, while brilliant ones will not bring the creators a penny.

We are in website We present to you 13 people who have made millions through their own creativity, observation and simply being in the right place at the right time.

1. Joy Mangano. Mop mechanism

Joy Mangano created the Miracle Mop, a unique, touchless wringing mechanism. The woman sold her invention through a television store and already in 1995 she received her first million. Since then, Joy has invented and patented more than a hundred different utilities, including hangers with non-slip hangers, fragrances, an organizer bag, and so on. And in 2015, a whole film was made about this woman with Jennifer Lawrence in the title role.

2. Guy Laliberte. Cirque du Soleil

Guy Laliberte was a street performer. One day he came up with the idea of ​​organizing his own circus, and so in 1984 the famous Cirque du Soleil, famous for its original productions with stunningly complex numbers, appeared. This idea brought its creator several billion dollars and allowed Guy to become one of the space tourists.

3. Richard James. Spring

It is impossible to imagine our nostalgic 90s without the rainbow Slinky spring! It was invented by Richard James in 1943. He worked as a marine engineer and designed a device for measuring the power of ships. A spring that accidentally fell and “walked” along the ground laid the foundation for a large and successful business. Initially, the spring was made of ferrous metal, and then acquired color and even various shapes.

4. Gary Dahl. Pet Rock

Pet Rock's success began with a joke. The future founder of the company decided that it would be fun to have ordinary stones as pets! This idea took off in 1975 and brought Gary a million dollars. The stones were sold in cardboard boxes with holes and lay in a straw nest. The manual that came with the kit explained how to care for your pet, walk it, and what to do if it gets sick or dies... Since 2012, Pet Rock has been gaining popularity again.

5. Byron Reese. Letters from Santa

Byron founded SantaMail in 2001. He found an address at the North Pole (a city in Alaska) and, at the request of parents, sends letters from Santa Claus to children. The stamp on the letter and the stamp will convince even the most distrustful that the message was really sent by Santa himself. The cost of the service is about $10.

6. Roni Di Lullo. Glasses for dogs

The idea to create Doggles came to Roney in 1997, after he noticed that his dog squinted in the bright sun. Tests were carried out and an ideal anatomical design was developed that matches the shape of the dog’s head, does not interfere with it and perfectly protects the eyes. Roni now not only earns millions, but also continues to create useful things for pets.

7. Ken Aroni. Wishing Bones

At Thanksgiving, it is a tradition to break the turkey's fork bones. Whoever has the largest part in his hands will have his wish come true. Ken Aroney thought that everyone should have the opportunity to make a wish on the holiday, and organized the production and sale of “bones” in 1999 for $3 apiece. Already in 2006, Aroni became a millionaire.

8. John White. Billy Bob Teeth

In 1993, John White came up with the idea to create false teeth that could turn anyone into a hillbilly. This funny idea turned into a large company that has already sold more than 20 million copies of Billy Bob teeth in various designs and other things. By the way, the popular “toothy” nipples for babies also belong to this company.

9. Joe Pelletier. Billy largemouth bass

The funny Big Mouth Billy Bass, which hangs on the wall as decoration, was invented by Joe Pelletier in 1998. The fish is attached to the board, and when turned on, moves its tail and sings songs, opening his mouth. Billy has several compositions in his repertoire, and he has become a unique element of mass culture - he can be seen in

According to Paul Graham, investor and founder of Y Combinator, the best way to have a winning business idea is to not think of any. Instead, you should check what problems you can solve.

“The best startup ideas tend to exhibit three things in common: they're something the founders themselves want, something they can build themselves, and something worth doing in a way that others will understand,” Graham said in a November blog post .

"Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google and Facebook all started this way."

Now that the work year is in full swing, there are many dissatisfied employees racking their brains to come up with that one business concept that will make them rich.

Here are the stories of five great ideas that actually managed to turn into very successful companies:

Friends Adam Balon, John Wright and Richard Reed seemed well prepared after graduating from Cambridge University.

Two became management consultants. The third took up advertising. They all made good money and enjoyed a comfortable life in London.

But there was a general nagging feeling that there was something more to life. On a snowboarding vacation in 1998, the three did something other than throw around ideas for a new business.

They realized that there was a gap in the market for a new type of product—smoothies, one that was made from natural ingredients and openly based on ethical values.

After spending six months mixing different fruit combinations at home, the three set up a stall at a music festival to test the idea.

They left the decision of whether or not to continue entirely in the hands of consumers. The sign above the counter said, “Should we give up our jobs to make these smoothies?” One basket said “yes” and the other “no”. Customers had to make their decision by throwing empty bottles into either of two trash bins.

Luckily, “yes” won. Balon, Wright and Reed began writing and rewriting their eleven times, which was rejected by a number of potential investors and banks.

A desperate email with the subject line “Does anyone know anyone rich?” was sent to everyone the founders knew, which led them to Maurice Pinto, a wealthy American businessman who contributed £250,000.

Innocent Drinks achieved its first million turnover in its second year and the company now sells approximately two million smoothie packs a week, controlling 75% of the UK market share. In 2009, Coca-Cola took an 18% stake in the company for £30 million. A year later, the drinks giant paid £65 million for a 58% stake.

Reed said: “If you are 70% confident in an idea, then go for it. Because if you wait until you are 100% confident in the business... you will never be able to make a decision and you will never get anywhere.”

Australian entrepreneur Mark Harbottle made a rather strange decision in 1999 when he decided to partner with Matt Mickiewicz, a Canadian who was ten years younger. But this decision paid off in spades.

“I was 26 and he was 16, (but) age was not taken into account,” Harbottle said. “I saw that he was a smart kid who knew what he was doing. He made several thousand dollars a week through his website. Matt put up several thousand dollars to finance this project, and I put up $400.”

The web developer's business, Sitepoint, was hit by a severe advertising recession during the dot-com bust. Harbottle and Mickiewicz came up with the idea of ​​providing high-quality content to web developers in printed form.

“Our clients were printing information offline, so we were thinking about doing something in that space,” Harbottle said. “The idea was born from this. You could call it crowdsourcing, in some respects. And the idea was focused on determining what customers want and it was necessary to respond accordingly.”

“We printed the book on order, and it became a real success. We now have about sixty books.”

SitePoint may have changed its business model to become a traditional publisher, but it was its continued online growth that was to give rise to the launch of 99Designs.

A large community of developers and designers gathered online in the SitePoint forum, where they regularly played what Harbottle calls "Photoshop tennis" to work on logos for fictional projects, have a little friendly competition and hone their skills.

The dynamic changed when a small business owner asked the community to create branding for him.

Mickiewicz recalls, “It was a revolutionary way to outsource graphic design work and literally thousands of times better than the best alternative.”

“After a while, when it became clear that this organizing model had sustainability, we began charging $10 per “competition watcher” to post a request for design work on our forums, and we quickly began generating thousands of dollars in revenue.” .

The site allows firms to submit design work online for freelance designers to compete with each other to create the best solution and claim a commission.

Five years after launch, over $45 million has been paid out to the 99designs community. The company has 70 employees in Australia, the US, Germany, France and London and earned $35 million in 2011.

Where can I get money to start my own business? This is exactly the problem that 95% of new entrepreneurs face! In the article, we revealed the most relevant ways to obtain start-up capital for an entrepreneur. We also recommend that you carefully study the results of our experiment in exchange earnings:

American entrepreneur James McCann had a fairly ordinary career as a bartender and then a social worker.

To be fair, it's worth noting a fact that this short biography doesn't point out. A little later, he shook up the entire retail model and became one of the first online pioneers.

McCann opened his first flower shop, called Flora Plenty, in 1976. But it wasn't until he bought the easy-to-remember phone number 1-800-FLOWERS in 1986 and, radically for the time, changed the name of the business to match that his business really took off.

According to his autobiography, McCann decided he would build a nationwide flower delivery service while listening to the radio while he shaved.

The company was the first to use a toll-free phone number in its name, and was one of the first retailers in the world to have an online presence after reaching an agreement with CompuServe and AOL in 1992.

Many of the moves McCann made in the early 1990s have now become standard in retail throughout the world. Many new businesses are considering adding their name to their phone number, while more and more businesses are realizing that a website is an integral part of sales.

In 1999, the company's name went public and it added .com to its name. Revenue reached $668 million in 2010.

Joe Jebbia and Brian Chesky rented a loft apartment together in San Francisco in 2007 when they realized that attendees at their city's premier design conference would have a hard time finding a room for the night.

With nearly every hotel room in town booked, Jebbia and Chesky, who were struggling to pay their rent, took their chance.

They opened the doors to their apartment, offering strangers the chance to sleep on the floor on two air mattresses and eat a home-cooked breakfast.

As Airbnb's website puts it: "Two air mattresses, a thousand dollars, three new friends, and many gestures of encouragement afterwards helped entrepreneurs realize an opportunity."

With the addition of tech pro Nathan Blecharczyk, the team decided to change the hosting model by allowing people to add their own places to stay online. Thus began a new business - Airbedandbreakfast.com, which received income by paying from 6 to 12%, depending on the booking price.

Initially targeting large-scale events where housing would be scarce, the trio raised cash for the venture in an unusual way - by selling a $30,000 special edition breakfast cereal they created based on then-US presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain .

In 2008, the name was shortened to Airbnb, and users could book entire estates, boats, and even private islands, not just a daybed, to spend the night.

Last June, the company revealed it had already booked its ten millionth night, with 75% of those bookings coming from outside its initial US market.

There have also been mishaps, such as the PR disaster when a woman wrote on her blog that her apartment had been trashed by an Airbnb renter. Chesky wrote a contrite response, admitting the company had made a blunder and introducing insurance as well as a 24-hour hotline to help resolve future problems.

Airbnb now has listings in 33,000 cities in 192 countries. The company also raised $120 million in venture capital and was valued at $1.3 billion.

Chesky told CNN: "Sometimes it takes a new pair of eyes to see a problem and see it as an opportunity, not just as a pattern of how things actually are or should look."

“I think being a young entrepreneur is a great opportunity to challenge the status quo and build the world the way you think it should be.”

Honey seller Bert Schavitz met unemployed waitress Roxanne Quimby in 1984, and they decided to make some money by making wax candles.

By the end of the first year, sales reached $20,000. Impressive, but not enough to support a decent sized business.

Their breakthrough came when the two began making natural soaps and perfumes on household gas stoves, while the accompanying lip balm became a best-seller.

When the company was incorporated in 1991, it produced half a million candles a year, as well as natural soaps and perfumes. She also had 40 employees as orders began pouring in from all over the United States.

Quimby told Inc., “In the early years, I had a sort of 'midnight of your soul' feeling at times. One day, I came home from the fair and found that the window in my salon was closed. There was snow everywhere."

“It was below 20 degrees and three o’clock in the morning. I didn’t make any money and the car had a hard time getting here.”

“I really believe that success is getting up one more time than you fell down. It doesn't come from one brilliant idea, but from a series of small decisions that accumulate over the years."

"And you shouldn't underestimate the amount of work that's involved, the amount of fear that entails."

“I'm not sentimental about products - they either work or they don't. We tried a lot of different things. One of them was a beeswax lip balm. It became clear very early on that people were buying lip balm ten times faster than they were buying wax furniture polish. Next came the moisturizer. It also sold better than polish.”

In 2009, Burt's Bees celebrated its 25th anniversary, with revenue reaching $250 million.

In search of businesses they like, entrepreneurs look through hundreds of ideas, indiscriminately discarding the most ridiculous ones. Completely in vain. Often, projects that seem crazy at first glance bring paradoxically huge income.

10 completely frozen businesses that generate cash contrary to common sense .

Good afternoon, readers of my blog. Very often on the Internet I come across the question - “How to make a million dollars?” There are about as many answers as there are questions – millions. To be honest, many people think that this is not realistic in the conditions of modern Russia, and if it is real, then it is due to some kind of fraud, deception or corruption schemes. I want to say this: throw this garbage out of your head. The era of the Internet and free access to information gives you incredible opportunities. You can earn money, and not bad money. Whoever is smarter will earn more than a million, fortunately there are all the opportunities for this.
Today I will tell you about ten of the simplest, and some even say stupid, ideas that brought their creators millions of dollars. To be honest, I consider such people to be geniuses. To some extent, they were lucky that such an idea was accepted and successfully implemented, but success is not accidental, sudden - yes, accidental no.

A million pixels - a million dollars

Sunglasses for dogs - a million dollar idea

To be honest, at first I even doubted whether to write about this idea or not. This is the typical American dream - to make money from stupidity. Well, just think – sunglasses for dogs. Yes, in Russia such a business would not have brought in even a thousand rubles, but in the USA it went with a bang. Roni Di Lulo is the founder of this interesting project. The idea came to her after she saw her dog squinting in the sun. Then Di Lulo decided to create a company called Doggles, which would produce glasses to fit the shape of a pet’s head.
The British daily Daily Mail listed Doggles as one of the 11 dumbest ideas that shouldn't have worked but made millions. The company now operates in 16 countries and has 4,500 partner stores. It's just incredible, I still can't believe it. And the most amazing thing is that Doggles has signed an official contract with the US Army and supplies glasses for military dogs. Then my world turned upside down.

How to combine serving in a monastery and earning millions?

The desire to improve your life and the lives of other mothers brings a million dollars

Young mother Christy Raine always suffered from the fact that she had to carry baby diapers in a separate bag. It was not convenient, they wrinkled, got in the way and caused a lot of trouble. The desire to simplify life for herself and thousands of other mothers like her prompted her to create Designer Diaper Bags. Her task was to create something compact, but at the same time stylish and beautiful. Christy and her husband thought out the design of the bag in such a way that it would hold 2-4 diapers, and not a large “traveler’s kit”. In 2005, net profit was $180,000, and Christie's company developed 22 more different models of such bags.

Ingenuity and creativity can also be sold

Have you ever encountered the problem of choosing a domain name? Very often for your project you want to choose something creative, interesting, and easy to remember. The selection process can take more than one day, or even a month. What about entrusting such selection to other people? The idea of ​​creating an agency to select names for domains seemed weak. Most people choose names themselves, why contact anyone. But, as it turned out later, the service was in demand, and quite a bit. Many companies lined up for a good name. Every year there are fewer and fewer interesting domains, which is why PickyDomains.com services are becoming more in demand. Today, choosing a beautiful name costs $50, and coming up with a slogan for it costs another $75.
The price is ridiculous, even for us. Some 50 dollars and you get dozens of interesting options that meet your criteria. Already, this project has brought the founders more than a million dollars.

Simple ideas - big money

By writing this article, I wanted to show that even the simplest, most absurd, unusual or stupid ideas can bring in millions of dollars. Do you think this is not possible now? Yes, I am sure that at this very moment, when you are reading this line, someone has invented and is implementing another “stupidity” that will make him a millionaire.
Believe in your strength, try to use all the opportunities and chances that life gives you. Even if they seem stupid at first glance, it’s worth a try, and maybe I’ll write about your idea next time.