Updated
January 8, 2026 6:33 PM
A group of entrepreneurs coming up with different ideas. PHOTO: FREEPIK
If startup success stories usually make you picture cutting-edge tech, you might be missing a big part of the picture. Sometimes, the weirdest ideas shine the brightest, making real money and delighting both founders and customers. From ordinary rocks turned into pets to renting live chickens, these unusual startups show how far creativity and a pinch of humor can go.
If you think the business world is all suits and serious pitches, think again—welcome to the wonderfully weird side of entrepreneurship.
Owning a pet is a joy, but let’s be honest—it’s also a handful. Between shedding fur, endless feeding schedules, surprise messes and finding a sitter when you’re away, pet parenting is not exactly effortless.
Back in 1975, an advertising executive named Gary Dahl found himself joking about this very problem over drinks with friends. His solution for the “perfect” pet: a rock. No feeding, no walking, no grooming and absolutely no accidents on the carpet.
What started as a joke quickly snowballed into a real business. Smooth stones were sourced from Rosarito Beach in Mexico, then packed in playful cardboard “pet carrier” boxes with little air holes and a bed of straw. To make the experience even more cheeky, every Pet Rock came with a care manual that instructed owners to give their new companion sunlight, affection and, of course, a name.
It was absurd and hilarious, but it worked. Selling at US$3.95 apiece in the ’70s, Pet Rocks became a cultural phenomenon. Today, you can still find them on Amazon, but they will now set you back around US$29.99 or more. Would you bring home a Pet Rock? People in the ’70s sure did.
Back in 2013, Phil and Jenn Tompkins a couple duo, launched the company "Rent The Chicken" with one straightforward goal: give people a chance to try raising backyard hens and enjoy fresh eggs without the long-term commitment.
Through partnerships with local farmers across the U.S. and Canada, this backyard chicken rental startup brings egg-laying hens straight to people’s yards. It offers different rental packages, but a standard six-month rental costs around US$500. This usually includes two hens ready to lay within days, a portable coop, feed, food and water dishes and expert support for any chicken-related questions.
The chickens arrive in spring and stay until fall. When the season ends, families can choose to return the hens, extend the rental or even buy them for about US$40 each at the end of the contract.
Today, the company works with partners in 29 states, from Oregon to Texas, and in parts of Canadain p. For people outside those areas, an out-of-area purchase package that comes with three hens can be shipped anywhere in the 48 contiguous states in the U.S. for about US$1,550.
In a way, it’s a fun and hands-on path to food security — giving families the joy of collecting their own eggs and knowing exactly where their breakfast comes from.
By day, Gadlin worked as a full-time web developer for a television broadcasting company. Outside of work, he poured his energy into comedy and writing. That creative streak took him back to high school days, when he had drawn silly cats for a comic series called Silly Cats Comic.
With those doodles as his foundation and a bit of basic design know-how, Gadlin launched his website, “I Want to Draw a Cat For You” in 2011. The concept was as simple as it was funny: visitors would describe the cat of their dreams and Gadlin would personally hand-draw it, then send it their way.
This quirky startup idea landed him on Shark Tank, where he secured an offer of US$25,000 from investor Mark Cuban for a 33% stake in the business. Not bad for stick-figure cats.
When the site first launched, customers could pay extra US$5 for colour. Shipping cost US$1 if they didn’t mind the drawing arriving in a folded envelope, or US$5 for a flat mailer. For delivery within 48 hours, there was a US$19.95 rush fee that many customers were happy to pay.
These days, Gadlin leans more on digital delivery and limited runs of his cat drawings at US$50, rather than mailing every single piece of his art. What he once described as “mediocre cat drawings” has become proof that a simple, original idea can claw its way into the startup world.
Imagine arriving in a new city with no one to show you around. That is exactly the kind of situation where RentAFriend can help.
Launched in 2009 by Scott Rosenbaum, the unusual business was inspired by Japan’s “rental family” services, where people can hire a friend, a date or even a parent for a short period. Rosenbaum saw an opportunity to adapt that concept for North America, but with a focus strictly on platonic friendship.
Here’s how it works: Anyone can sign up as a “friend” for free by creating a profile, listing their interests and setting an hourly rate. People who want to hire pay a membership fee, typically around US$24.95 a month, to connect with friends across the platform.
With a rented friend, you can do pretty much anything platonic. Go sightseeing, hit a museum, catch a game, work out together or even bring them along to a party or family event. At its heart, RentAFriend connects people who need company with those happy to earn a little extra simply by being one.
Back in 2014, in the small town of Norwood, Ontario, Canada, three brothers—Jarrod, Darren and Ryan Goldin, set out to do something that sounded downright bizarre at the time: farm crickets for people to eat.
The idea first struck Jarrod after he saw a cricket-based nutrition bar on television. Around the same time, the UN released a report on edible insects as a sustainable food source. Suddenly, the “weird” idea didn’t seem so weird after all.
At Entomo Farms, crickets are raised in cage-free “cricket condos”, where they live in warm, dark spaces that mimic their natural habitat. They’re fed and cared for until they reach about six or seven weeks old, then humanely harvested using a CO₂ method. From there, they’re rinsed, roasted and ground into a fine powder—no additives, just pure cricket protein.
The appeal goes beyond novelty. Crickets are packed with nutrients and need far less land, feed and water than beef, making them both healthy and eco-friendly.
While their approach may seem unconventional, what drives Entomo Farms is simple: making sustainable, responsible food accessible to everyone.
These startups prove that innovation doesn’t always wear a serious face. Sometimes, it turns up wrapped in humor, curiosity or even a touch of absurdity, yet still manages to spark real change. From crickets turned into protein to chickens rented out by the season, each weird startup idea shows that entrepreneurship thrives when people dare to think differently.
While some of these unusual business ideas burned bright then faded, others are still evolving in the background, shifting from fads to niche services or steady, quiet companies. What they share is a willingness to test an idea most people would dismiss at first glance.
That is the real takeaway for founders. Weird startup ideas will not always scale into unicorns, yet they can test new consumer habits, open up fresh markets and shape culture in surprising ways. If you are building something new, there is space for products that make people laugh, think or raise an eyebrow before they reach for their wallet.
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Humanoids are moving from research labs into real industries — and capital is finally catching up.
Updated
January 8, 2026 6:31 PM
A face of a humanoid robot, side view on black background. PHOTO: UNSPLASH
Humanoid robots are shifting from sci-fi speculation to engineering reality, and the pace of progress is prompting investors to reassess how the next decade of physical automation will unfold. ALM Ventures has launched a new US$100 million early-stage fund aimed squarely at this moment—one where advances in robot control, embodied AI and spatial intelligence are beginning to converge into something commercially meaningful.
ALM Ventures Fund I, is designed for the earliest stages of company formation, targeting seed and pre-seed teams building the foundations of humanoid deployment. It’s a concentrated fund that seeks to take early ownership in a sector that many now consider the next major technological frontier.
For Founder and General Partner Modar Alaoui, the timing is not accidental. “After years of research, humanoids are finally entering a phase where performance, reliability and cost are converging toward commercial viability”, he said. “What the category needs now is focused capital and deep technical diligence to turn prototypes into scalable, enduring companies”.
That framing captures a shift happening across robotics: the field is moving out of the lab and into early commercial readiness. Improvements in perception systems, model-based reasoning and motion control are accelerating the transition. Advances in simulation are also lowering the complexity and cost of integrating humanoid platforms into real environments. As these systems become more capable, the gap between research prototypes and market-ready products is narrowing.
ALM Ventures is positioning itself at this inflection point. Fund I’s thesis centers on the core technologies required to scale humanoids safely and economically. This includes next-generation robot platforms, spatial reasoning engines, embodied intelligence models, world-modeling systems and the infrastructure needed for early deployment. Rather than chasing every robotics trend, the fund is concentrating on the essential layers that will determine whether humanoids can work reliably outside controlled settings.
The firm isn’t starting from zero. During the fund’s formation, ALM Ventures made ten early investments that directly align with its investment focus. The portfolio includes companies building at different layers of the humanoid stack, such as Sanctuary AI, Weave Robotics, Emancro, High Torque Robotics, MicroFactory, Mbodi, Adamo, Haptica Robotics, UMA and O-ID. The list reflects a broad but intentional spread, from hardware to intelligence to manufacturing approaches, all oriented toward enabling scalable physical AI.
Beyond capital, ALM Ventures has been shaping the ecosystem through its global Humanoids Summit series in Silicon Valley, London and Tokyo. The series gives the firm early visibility into emerging technologies, pre-incorporation teams and the senior leaders steering the global robotics landscape. That vantage point has helped the firm identify where commercialization is truly taking root and where bottlenecks still exist.
The rise of humanoids is often compared to the early days of self-driving cars: a long arc of research suddenly meeting an acceleration point. What separates this moment is that advances in embodied AI and spatial intelligence are giving robots a more intuitive understanding of the physical world, making them easier to deploy, teach and scale. ALM Ventures’ Fund I is an attempt to capture that transition while shaping the companies that could define the next technological era.
With US$100 million dedicated to the earliest builders in the space, ALM Ventures is signaling its belief that humanoids are not just another robotics cycle—they may be the next major platform shift in AI.