Million Dollar Ideas that Evolved Over a Couple of Drinks!

Dorothy Parker had said, “Creativity is a wild mind and disciplined mind.” A brainstorming session in the office meeting room, your study or your cubicle is not the only place where ideas can sprout in your head. Creativity is not bound to your surroundings or state of mind.

Before the inception of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg became popular when he came up with Facemash with his Harvard roommates. He realized his entrepreneurial instincts over a few drinks. Who would have thought that alcohol can be productive!

You will be surprised to know that some of the most amazing and unique ideas have evolved over a session of booze. You might have heard of a few, let’s find out.

Tinder

Sean Rad and Justin Mateen, Co-founders of Tinder, launched the online dating website at a college birthday party where the brother of one of the founder’s studied at that time. The catch was that the people attending the party had to show that they had downloaded the app. With this, they were able to raise the download from 400 users to about 4,000 in a week’s time.

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Thrillist

The idea of Thrillist came to Ben Lerer and Adam Rich while they were having beer on their roof in New York. Unhappy with the city guides that they used to refer and willing to try something out of the box, the idea of the Thrillist travel, food and fashion blog series came to them while they were relaxing and having beer in 2004.

Tripoto

Co-founder of Tripoto, Anirudh Gupta got his first investor over a beer session. Anirudh was sharing his business plan with his IIT-Delhi senior, Nikunj Jain in a bar. Having heard the plan, Nikunj was interested in investing, giving rise to Tripoto.

Reddit

Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, Founders of Reddit raised find for their venture by offering to buy beer for their capitalist, Paul Graham. Both of them set out to develop a food-ordering app but during the beer session Graham advised them to develop "the front page of the Internet".

Uber

The idea of Uber evolved over a couple of drinks while Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp were jamming on ideas in Paris. Talking about the problem in San Francisco, the latter hoped to solve the problem and hence came up the idea of a ‘limo timeshare service’.

Southwest Airlines

In 1966, Rollin King and Herb Kelleher, the founders of Southwest Airlines, portrayed the fabulous triangular flight route between San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston on a cocktail napkin in a bar while having drinks.

PopSugar

PopSugar is another idea that was born over a few glasses of wine. On sharing celebrity gossip, Lisa was suggested by Om Malik, founder of GigaOm, to start a blog with Brian Sugar. She is now the founder of Sugar Inc. media group.

Alma Mater

Varun Aggarwal & Rohan Malhotra, the founders of Alma Mater came up with their business idea while having drinks and wrote down on a piece of tissue paper, "Make merchandise for every school and college in India."

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