Bad Idea Rewarded
This is the idea behind a startup named Outbox: a private company of strangers will take your (mostly junk) mail, open it, scan it, and then email it to you. This is questionable for a few dozen reasons, but investors disagree—it just nabbed a $5 million check.
Here are three questions I'd like to ask the investors:
Why would I ever trust some tiny startup to handle my medical records, bank statements, love letters, etc?
Why would I want a way for paper junk mail to arrive in my email inbox?
In what world will enough people use an infinitesimally niche mail-scanning app to recoup a multi-million dollar investment?
Not this world. In this world, the foolishly counterintuitive is just as good as the fiercely original.