I actually had the idea for Uber in 2002. I have documented conversations with a supplier of technology and call centre resource about 10 years before Uber existed. That was a giant **** up wasn’t it?
We collect and disseminate data. Our cloud platform allows our clients to download numerous reports. Originally these reports were preformatted, so clients received them as we designed them. We then developed a method by which our users could create bespoke reports. They could include or exclude columns, filer and sort in an infinite number of ways. We called these reports Uber Reports. Way before Uber. We've since had to change their name because people thought they were about taxis.
not quite on the same level but I like my artwork. I very much liked an artist and bought three of his signed prints when I was at uni for £150. I thought I was a bit of a genius by selling them all on for about £750 to £1000 within the space of a year or so. That artist was called Banksy. He became quite popular. Each piece worth touching on six figures now. you can’t beat a giant f*** up
You threw me a curved ball there , I saw the title of the thread & thought straight away that there was a new candidate for the managers job !!!
A close mate of mine shared an idea of putting take away menus online in the late 90s. I was in my teens and only able to do static websites, so told him it would never work. Oops.
I once had a dream that I became a millionaire from selling my own brand of sports clothing called 'The King's clothing'. It was initially all going to be green, with gold logo's. I saw the logo clear as day in my mind, and how it was going to look. I didn't have the first idea of how to get it off the ground or anything, so I never really gave it a 2nd thought. A couple of years later, I saw someone with a green t-shirt with a gold logo, almost identical to the one I'd seen in my dream. The brand is called Gym King and is now worth millions. I checked online, and my dream happened about 6 months before the company was founded.
We called him Banger when he was here. Brilliant young midfield talent who was a superb passer of a ball and had a rocket shot. Didn’t know he was a painter though - no social media in them days about what players did in their spare time. Every day’s a school day, eh?
An ex customer of mine had the rights for importing Nike to the UK in the 70’s, he sold it back to them late 70’s. He used the profits to buy rights to Swingball, which he still gets royalties for.
I remember when i was 18, 32 years ago Fish Cake Jake wanted to set up a drive through hand car washing business. We werent interested but we could have had the empire on this as they are everywhere now.
Patrick Cryne told a story about talking to Steve Jobs one day who asked him what the i meant in iSoft. Patrick told him it didn’t really mean anything and Steve said that was genius. Years later, everything Apple is an i_____.
There was a bloke in Wombwell in the 90s who worked at Mion - an electronics firm who had a contract to make hardware for an outfit called Pace Microsystems, who in turn had a contract to build digital satellite receivers for Sky. He inherited around 20 grand just at the time Sky Digital - the first tv service in the UK with an EPG - was about to launch and he'd seen the technology in action. Realising this would be huge, he invested his 20k in Pace shares, selling them later for 80k which at the time meant he could buy a nice three bedroom house for cash and be mortgage free for life. Which would be a lovely story, had it not been for the fact that Sky Digital went beyond huge and 12 months after he sold his shares, his holding would have been worth over a million quid. Still, Pace are long since defunct and he's still got a roof over his head so better that than holding on too long.
It makes sense in that they did meet each other, the time frames work out and it is a bit random of a thing to have both thought of independently despite how simple a thing it is.
I had a belting idea once. A wash basket with collapsable legs. So you could fill it with clothes from the washing machine, take it outside, press a button, and the legs drop down so it's at hip height for hanging them on the line. Little wheels on the legs so it could be moved around. 6 months later it was in Betterware. ********. That's the same right? We could be the two richest people in Yorkshire?
We could have bought Barnsley and turned them into a Sheffield Wednesday type club, massive, Europe in 6 years etc.
There were people thinking of it before either of them though, it was used by a few companies. I'm not sure if the time frame does work out as much as it seems either. The iMac was launched publicly at the beginning of may 1998 which means that the na!e was thought up quite a bit before that as it was on the actual manufactured computers as well as all the promotional material. While some articles say that isoft started in 1994, others say 1996 and all say that it was simply a group of people working at a larger company so would it actually have had its own company name at that point? The first record I can find of a company called isoft is when Ingleby (1013) ltd which was a cobco kind of off the shelf company changed its name to I soft (not isoft) in November 97 and then to i Soft (small i) in December 97. The first time any of his companies were called isoft without the space or capital I was much after the iMac was on sale
