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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.

discuss

order

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.

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.

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.

greesil|5 months ago

Ah I loved that catalog

i7l|5 months ago

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

Workaccount2|5 months ago

It's also why it's not worth it to develop a hit hardware product, China will undercut you 50% in a month (and probably build it better).

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.

nharada|5 months ago

This already exists for some things, i.e. arcade.ai