Comment by lucasyvas

5 months ago

You could make money off of this if you are able to pair willing manufacturers to realistic and popular ideas that get generated. It could become a real market place.

Hilarious project.

Edit: I did both Mouthwash Ramen and Time Machine to the Present. I’m now addicted to this, thanks.

42 comments

lucasyvas

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haolez  5 months ago

I know of a company that is huge in laser for physics and started like this in the 80s (through magazine catalogs).

They would list all kinds of lasers. When they got some offers for one of them, they'd sell it and schedule the delivery in 90 days. Then, they started the project from scratch. Crazy stuff and borderline legal :D

  • magicalhippo  5 months ago

    We do something similar at work. Except usually the dev department doesn't know until handed the project from sales and so the project goals might be entirely unrealistic given the deadline.

    What do you mean that feature doesn't exist? Well, I sold it to the customer, they have to go live in two weeks and their workflow depends on this feature.

    • DowsingSpoon  5 months ago

      While I've fortunately never had this happen to me, I'd be tempted to say something like, "Wow. Well, I sure hope you don't get fired over this. Good luck. We'll scope it out and let you know how much time we'll need."

      8 replies →

  • ttoinou  5 months ago

    Some smart stealer was posting bikes of his neighbors online second hand marketplace and waited to get contacted for specific model to steal them. Genius evil

  • nilamo  5 months ago

    A previous boss did this in the early 2000s. Put up a bunch of single page descriptions with "coming soon" labels, include an email subscription to "stay on top of news", turn on AdWords to get some traffic... and then start working on what people were actually interested in.

  • gundmc  5 months ago

    Engineering-to-Order! Not all that uncommon of a model in some industries, but problems arise when Sales doesn't have good communication with Engineering about what is actually possible for what price on what timelines.

  • bitwize  5 months ago

    Kinda reminds me of how Swingline didn't actually sell red staplers -- until they realized there was a demand.

  • joquarky  5 months ago

    Back in the 80s and 90s rhey would advertise products on TV with "6 to 8 weeks for delivery".

    Now I wonder if they did this to batch up a manufacturing run once enough orders were received.

    • james_marks  5 months ago

      Totally. You also get batch efficiencies shipping 10k orders in a day vs dribbling them out over weeks, and you can use sub-standard shipping methods that are cheaper because… the carriers themselves are also batching the work.

  • cfn  5 months ago

    This is the story of all the niche software products out there. Put together a smoke and mirrors demo, get a customer, build the product.

i7l  5 months ago

This is what Amazon has been doing for years with Marketplace: check what's popular and then compete on price.

YZF  5 months ago

If he can find a manufacturer to build the flying motorcycle that can go mach 0.8 with the price tag of $18 I'm in...

giancarlostoro  5 months ago

Someone email me when I can buy Barbed Wire Toilet Paper. That one is my favorite. Its so devious. Imagine needing TP but all you find is one roll. Rolled in barbed wire.

theendisney  5 months ago

Seems easy enough to put some constraints on it. You would probably need a subscription for generating and a fee for requesting a quote. (With a deadline) I can think of a lot of things i would like to know the price of. Some for 1, some for 1000 units. Im not in a hurry, may send me better offers regularly.