by Everyone dreams of striking it rich, but most imagine it involves years of hard work, careful planning, or maybe even a lucky lottery ticket. However, for some people, wealth came in the most unexpected and downright ridiculous ways.
From bizarre bets to outrageous business ideas, these stories prove that fortune can sometimes strike in the strangest places.
Cowboy Showdown
U/CeterumCenseo85: “He and his brother developed an online game where two cowboys walk away from each other, then turn around and shoot and one dies.
The game was entirely automated. You could just bet money on who wins, and if you got it right you would x1.95 your money, with 5% going to the house. They got unfathomably rich. Saw them race sports cars around the world. Last time I checked though, they went to prison for tax fraud.”
Template Fortune
U/LordEmostache: “A friend of mine used an app to create a bunch of different notebooks and diaries using free templates, then sold them through Amazon.
Amazon would supply the books, print the covers onto them and sell them while my friend sat back and got paid for minimal effort. Doesn’t really work anymore but they made enough to not need to worry about that.”
Masked Gamble
U/mrNoobMan_: “Distant acquaintance was in China before Covid kicked in and anticipated the need for masks. Back home he went to his bank but they didn’t want to give him money so he borrowed 100k from local drug cartel to buy a container load of masks from China.
Fast forward 2 months and these masks were worth 2.5 million. He paid back his depth and is a rich man now. Pretty badass move though.”
Class of Fame
Another is Britney Dawn, just google her. It’s a whole thing. The crazy thing is realizing both these people went to the same high school, in the same year. In a class of like 100 people.”
The Lube Man
U/EducationWestern5204: “Knew a guy who thought there was a market for single serving lube packets- think fast food ketchup packets, but for lube. He marketed it to truck stops and other places where there are a lot of budget conscious people who spend a lot of time in the road and don’t want to bring a bottle of lube home where their partner might notice it.
Turns out he was right. Before he was even 30, he had enough money to retire, more or less and pursue his hobbies of custom German cars, schmancy dogs, and mountain biking.”
King of Compost
U/moosemoose214: “Had a friend who grew up on a dairy farm in the Midwest, started packaging the manure in #5 burlap sacks as organic fertilizer (is and is the best kind in all honesty) loaded his old farm truck and went to a farmers market in Minneapolis.
Sold out in a couple hours, was offered distribution shortly after and now is the king s— in his mansion and old farm truck”
Bitcoin Saver
U/IllHaveTheLeftovers: “Bitcoinnnnnn. Some dude I knew distantly made millions over Covid – bought a bunch of land in Thailand and set up this insane burner/circus/new age performance and living space thing.
Ended up buying a bunch of local businesses that were going to go under, apparently saving them. I personally think it’s still bloody colonization but guy is building the land pirate ship of his dreams.”
Wealth Founders
U/Sometimes_Stutters: “My friends uncle invented the Sunday-Monday pill organizer. Started a business around that product. Worth north of $500m now.
Another one of my friends went to Yale and won like $40k jackpot at a casino. Another student convinced him to give him the money to help start a hedge fund back in like 2014, and now it’s worth like $80m”
Pivot to Profit
U/musing_codger: “Wasn’t too absurd, but I had a friend that was struggling to manage his small business. He had a handfall of locations. To keep up, he hired someone to write software to help manage the business.
Then the other franchisees all wanted his software, so he pivoted to the software business. A few years later, he sold for quite a lot of money.”
Lights Out
U/Silent_Ad3752: “I know a girl who had a stage light fall from the ceiling and land on her head at some production (we live in LA so commercials, TV and movies are the main industries here) and won millions in a lawsuit/workers comp.
She bought a hotel in Panama with the money and never really has to work a day in her life.”
Coffin Crafter
U/DieHippieDie420: “Making coffins for ‘vampires’ to sleep in. The dude needed a better paying job and learned how to make coffins. Some blood sucker asked for one he could sleep in, and the guy made it.
He networked with this guy and pretty much just makes coffin beds now. I’m not sure filthy rich, but it was a solid move from skilled labor to the 1%.”
Pixel Pioneer
U/DropsOfChaos: “I know the guy who made the million dollar homepage. Million pixels (1000×1000), sold them for $1 each. Sold out super quickly, pocketed a million bucks in weeks, basically.
Others tried to copy (he tried again with a twist himself!) but the novelty had worn off. Just a one off, brilliant idea that any one of us could have done 🫠”
Lucky Lawyer
U/TourAlternative364: “I guess not that absurd but guy was an already very successful and wealthy lawyer. (Actually nice decent guy as far lawyers go.) I was working as a bartender at the time and he sits down for a drink. ‘I got some amazing news! I usually don’t mess with those things but bought a lottery ticket and actually won quite a large sum of money!’
I said, cool maybe I should get you a c——– blah blah naw I’ll have my regular….any fun plans for the money…Oh I’ll still come here, don’t worry ha ha…. small talk other customers came etc etc. I think he usually tipped 50 cents but I got a whole dollar that day. Just thought it was more funny than anything.”
Midnight Millionaire
Dude started the day apparently broke ended it as a multi millionaire, then it f—– rained that news years eve so I ended up being cold as s— watching some random dude blow through money celebrating.”
Viral Rise
U/Arbiter_89: “I went to high school with Bo Burnham. One day he had a youtube video go viral. Like a week later he was represented by the same agent as Drew Carey.
Ironically, the kid who joked about being unpopular was suddenly really popular due to the success from his jokes.”
Shock Settlement
U/Herr_Poopypants: “A classmate in high school climbed and subsequently fell off a electric transmission tower and got hurt pretty bad.
Even though he was an i—-, because there were no warning signs or a fence around it he received a bunch of money as a legal settlement from the electric company”
Flipping the Script
U/darybrain: “A day time TV show many years ago about flipping repossessed houses bought at auction where they showed three folks/couples buying a house, fixing it up and selling it. One chap bought two houses but did nothing to them, didn’t even clean them. All he did was sell them at market value and made a killing since the auction price was peanuts. The show edited it as if he was new to the flipping house game so maybe he’d have a better go the next episode even though his profit was more than the other folks.
The next two episode he did the same thing with another seven houses before the production team realised that he had no intention of doing anything to any house and was only there to use the production crew’s contacts and for them to do a lot of the legwork as required for the show. He made over £100k+ on nine houses with doing barely anything. The show stopping dealing with him after that.”
Enzyme Entrepreneur
U/JAM88CAM: “Ok so university lecturer at my uni, he was a deep sea biologist. He was given a sea slug which had been collected on an automated underwater vehicle dive. In the mucus of this sea slug, he isolated a bacteria which produced a protein digesting enzyme which worked at low temperatures. He sold this biological enzyme to one of the big company’s I think proctor and gamble.
The whole ‘wash your clothes at 30/ low temperatures’ biological washing powder etc. that was him . Went from driving a ford escort,.to a jaguar, to retiring in about a week.”
Gel Goldmine
U/OkFrosting6438: “Friends of my cousins: Back in the early 00’s, husband was having an ultrasound. When they put that conductive gel on the area to get scanned, the technician commented, this stuff is so expensive, and we just go through tubs of it. The guy spent a few weeks researching it and found a manufacturer in China. Spent a few weeks getting product up to regulations and boom, he was in business.
