What Wacky Business Are You Starting In 2018? — Experts Weigh In

New year, new you, and a new business too! Everyone is ready to take on new challenges at the start of the new year everyone is ready to take on new challenges so why not take a chance on starting a new, unusual startup? We asked 16 startups to share their wacky business ideas with us!

1. “The Puznd App – find the missing puz! We visualize social relationship to enhance communication. Puznd offers the first mobile app which features a guided, easy to use and free of charge analysis for social relationships. All findings are accessible at a glance in a customizable, multi-dimensional chart, which can be imprinted on a mug. The chart reveals important conversation topics – like shared values, memories or wishes.” — Jost Odermatt, Founder, Puznd Ltd.

2. “Vehicle Reman remanufactures fleet vehicles to save customers up to 50% or more while saving the environment too. The automotive industry hasn’t changed in over 100 years – we’re offering an alternative product. There is too much value in vehicles that we dispose at the same time auto loan debt is soaring. That debt level and the environmental impact is too great. We’re starting with fleet before going to the consumer. Our goal has simply been profitability – with that we can work out efficiencies and scale.” — Greig Latham, Managing Director, Vehicle Reman

3. “Drawntodiscover.com is a progressive and pioneering visual literacy and learning solution for children. We manifest creativity and self-confidence through interactive enrichment video lessons built to develop fine motor skills into cognitive growth. It is a monthly subscription program for parents of children 4-11, helping them learn the importance of pencil grip, fine motor skills development, creativity, and fun in learning. As a result, we find the children using the program often increase their math, science, and reading skills while truly enjoying the educational experience. Through partnering with renowned children’s literature author and artist, Wendy Anderson Halperin, we launched Drawn To Discover to help children learn beyond the point, click, swipe gamification of current supplemental educational offerings.” — Brian Goodman, Co-Founder, Drawn To Discover

4. “Vizzle is an app that collects and combines videos for just about any event, occasion, or business use. Let’s say you want to make a ‘happy birthday’ video for your grandmother. You open the Vizzle app and start a project called Grandma’s Birthday. Then you send an invitation from the app to all your family who your like to make a quick happy birthday video for Grandma. You can also post a link to it on social media so anyone can take part (this is a great option for events like graduations or anniversaries). When they open the link they can make a video within the Vizzle app so they don’t have to record a video and then email it to you. It is all done within Vizzle. Once you have as many videos as you want, you can select which you want to include and tell Vizzle to create the video. It will automatically merge the various clips into one video collage which you can send to Grandma, show at a party, and share on social media. It can be used for practically any personal purpose. Businesses can also use it to collect video testimonials and product reviews, and some people have told us they plan to use it as a replacement for weekly update The app is currently available on Google Play and the iTunes app store. New capabilities are being added weekly at this point.” — Chris Denny, Co-Founder, Lead Optimize LLC

5. “MagicFund is a crowdfunding platform that uses a new type of business model to raise donations. The thing that makes MagicFund unique is that other users can share your donation campaign to their friends to earn a commission of the donations they generate for you. So, for example, if I ask for donations for my medical fund, and you share my donation campaign to your friends, you get 10% of whatever your friends donate to me. This commission-based model is designed to incentivize sharing of donation campaigns on social media, and its goal is to maximize the amount of donations each campaign receives while also leveling the playing field for people in need who are less able to promote themselves than more prominent or well-connected individuals. Goals for the first year in business include: building brand awareness, establishing credibility as a viable crowdfunding platform, and user acquisition.” — Matt Pembroke, Owner, MagicFund

6. “Acceptd is already the largest arts network in the world with nearly 300,000 artist members and hundreds joining daily. To continue serving the arts we are launching a new business. Our current code name for the new business is Ignite. Our mission is to help arts venues redefine their product and their offerings to fill the house every night with a new generation of art. We do this by guiding our clients on creative performance concepts and by marketing arts events through digital channels.” — Bill Balderaz, Principal, Futurety

7. “PK Fitness is an effort based workout tracker and social network. Using the science of your body, the app tracks how hard you’re working and tells you in real-time as you exercise, keeping you accountable and motivated every step of the way. The app also hosts a supportive and encouraging community for you to ask questions, start discussions, post transformation pictures, and share your sweatiest, no shame post-workout photos with. We all know working out can sometimes be discouraging, intimidating, and unmotivating. PK is out to change that by providing personalized effort, weekly streaks, and easy-to-understand insights, keeping you motivated to workout longer, harder, and more frequently. Best of all, the app isn’t limited to tracking only a handful of activities such as running, cycling, or yoga. PK Fitness works for any activity type and any fitness level, giving you the tools you need no matter what you do, how you do it, or what kind of shape you’re in. PK Fitness is currently available for free worldwide in the App Store and Google Play” — Madison Leonard, Head of Marketing & User Engagement, PK Fitness

8. “Mī Mix is a food-tech company focused on bringing hyper-personalized nutrition products to mainstream markets so that good nutrition can be easy and accessible for everyone. Mī Mix recognizes that one size fits all is not the right model for food, and we want to help lead the way for the industry to give consumers the affordable, healthy products they deserve.” — Quin Patton, Co-Founder, Mī Mix

9. “The Complete Retirement Planner will be the premier means for easily creating a comprehensive, year by year, retirement plan. Professionally designed, but meant for personal use, this planner will directly help the 74% of households that have no written retirement plan (a critical step in becoming financially secure), and no other means for properly figuring one out. Until now, the tools needed to create such a complex plan are virtually non-existent (try to find one!). Problem solved! There is nothing else that is this complete. Our goal/mission – to help the 74% by providing the best possible means to easily create an informative, reliable, and detailed retirement plan.” — Drew Parker, Creator, The Complete Retirement Planner

10. “Eazyplan automates planning weddings, corporate and social events. Event industry remains highly fragmented and continues to operate with the old tools like countless emails, request for proposals and other accessories of previous century. Eazyplan automates all the recurring tasks for professionals and their clients and simplifies planning all kinds of events.” — Maksym Podsolonko, CEO, Eazyplan

11. “The unique business that I’m starting in 2018 is turning my hobby social media following into an actual brand and online community. Currently, I’ve built a social following of over 30 thousand photographer followers across different platforms, but in 2018 I want to create compelling content and include affiliate links to earn a commission of each product sold from the website. The industry would be a niche photography blog that has an interesting approach to consumer reviews with a more creative aspect to it. My goal in 2018 is to make enough money with the site to be able hire more writers and videographers to step up the production of content on the website and social platforms.” — Nick Le, Founder, Gridfiti

12. “In 2018, we are launching a company that champions people living life to the fullest with a new camera-based messaging app for making plans with friends using video invites.” — Brian Liebler, Founder & CEO, LivnList

13. “I am officially launching my ecommerce store in 2018, and it is the very unusual niche of dollhouse kits and dollhouse miniatures. I have more than 2,000 miniatures on my site to appeal to an audience mainly composed of older female hobbyists. My goals for my first year of business include gathering 1,000 email addresses; gaining four-figure followings on Facebook and Instagram; and making a modest profit since most of the money I make will be invested in advertising.” — Amanda Austin, Founder & President, Little Shop of Miniatures

14. “I am helping people, through coaching and downloads, mindfully use social media. Whether that means less screen, or feeling confident in their online usage for political involvement. I want people to feel control over their social media use, not that social media is controlling them.” — Kaytlyn Sanders, Life Balance Coach, Beneficial Habits

15. “My girlfriend and business partner (Melanie McDaniel) and I have had a dream for a long time to start our own health business where we teach people how to approach health from an unconventional and holistic space. However, it wasn’t until this year that we were able to turn that dream into a reality. I was coaching CrossFit and personal training while she was doing some consulting for businesses. Throughout the last few years we dabbled in different industries trying to find our fit. We tried our hand at selling home cleaning units and real estate… but nothing was fulfilling us. Early this year when we were sending out ‘mailers’ to different houses we had looked at for possible wholesaling opportunities, we decided we didn’t like what we were doing at all. We had one foot in real estate and the other in health and nutrition. The problem was we didn’t know what to do or where to begin with turning one on one coaching into a bigger business. After attending some mastermind events and talking
with my accountability groups bringing this topic to the front, we decided to go all in. We quit real estate and focused all our energy on creating our dream. We took our nutrition and meditation backgrounds and created 90-day programs for people to take part in online. We wanted to reach a larger group and to scale our reach. As we started with our beta tests and enrolling people in the programs, I maintained my coaching position at the CrossFit gym. We were able to funnel the money made in real estate as well as getting two loans to fund starting up the business. It wasn’t until the week of our launch (late November 2017) that I quit my coaching job as well. Since then, we have been getting ready to reach a larger audience than ever before in 2018 and are excited to get the ball rolling!” — Harry Sherwood, Co-Founder, Consciously

16. “The four largest expenses in life are: Your house, your schooling, your car and your wedding. There is more than enough financing for your car, school and house, why not for your wedding? Enter DUO Pay. We’ve offer affordable payment plans and financing for your wedding. We are starting this company this year.” — Nick Redd, Co-Founder, DUO Venues

Ready to get your wacky business up and running in 2018? Give us a call at 1-877-692-6772, or visit us at mycorporation.com.