The Famous Companies You Had No Idea Actually Started Out as a Joke
Many well-known companies didn’t begin with grand strategies. They grew out of side projects, experiments, or ideas their founders didn’t expect to last. What seemed like a quick fix or a small joke sometimes struck a chord with people and spread far beyond its first audience. The following stories show how casual beginnings can lead to businesses that change the way whole industries operate.
Groupon
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Groupon began as a small project called “The Point.” It was a way for people to come together to solve problems. The founders tried using it to offer group discounts just for fun. The idea took off fast and soon became a billion-dollar company, leading the daily deals trend.
Cards Against Humanity
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This party game was created to have fun at a New Year’s Eve gathering. The creators later released a free version online, expecting only a few people to try it. Its dark humor quickly caught on, and it became one of the world’s most popular card games.
Slack
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Slack didn’t begin as a workplace tool at all. Its founders were building an online game called Glitch when they realized they needed a better way to communicate inside their team. The game never found an audience, but the chat system did. What started as an internal fix was released on its own and quickly became one of the most widely used apps in modern offices.
Twitter
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At Odeo, a struggling podcast company, someone suggested a side project: a feed of short updates. They called it twttr. It wasn’t the focus, just a lightweight tool for quick posts. But while the main business faded, the experiment kept spreading—and soon outgrew everything around it.
YouTube
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Did you know that YouTube was first planned as a dating site? The idea was to get people to share videos about themselves. No one used it that way, so the founders opened it up for any kind of video. The site became a new kind of entertainment.
FedEx
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FedEx founder Fred Smith pitched the idea for overnight shipping in a college paper. His professor wasn’t convinced. So Fred started the company out of spite. Years later, when he was out of cash, Smith famously gambled the last of his money in Las Vegas and won enough to keep it running.
Reddit
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The founders of Reddit made fake accounts and posted content to make it look active since it was completely empty. It piqued the interest of real people who were looking for novel ways to keep a conversation going. They joined and Reddit slowly became one of the internet’s biggest platforms for news, humor, and niche communities.
Yellow Pages
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In 1883, a printer ran out of white paper while making a phone directory. He used yellow paper instead, worrying that people might complain. But the look stood out and caught on. Before long, the yellow pages became the standard for business listings across the world, all because of one simple mistake.
Ben & Jerry’s
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Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield were childhood friends who decided to take a $5 ice cream-making course. They enjoyed it so much that they opened a small shop in a gas station for fun. Their creative flavors and quirky style won over locals, and the brand grew into a global favorite.
Craigslist
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It was supposed to be a simple email list that Craig Newmark used to tell his friends about events in their area. They started using it to buy and sell things and find employment. Despite its lack of ads or fancy designs, the site became one of the most useful on the web.
Instagram
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There used to be a messy app called Burbn that had a lot of features, like games and check-ins. This was the beginning of Instagram. Its founders soon realized that most users liked sharing photos on their app. Instagram was born, a clean, simple app that changed the way people share photos online.
Discord
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What began as a niche chat app for a small circle of gamers didn’t stay that way for long. The voice quality was better, the setup easier, and friends kept inviting more friends. Before long, entire communities—far beyond gaming—had moved in. Today, Discord serves as a home base for millions of groups with little in common except the need to talk and organize.
Spanx
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Sara Blakely wanted a smoother look under her clothes, so she grabbed a pair of scissors and cut the feet off her pantyhose. The idea seemed odd to friends, but