I was surprised to find that OMGPop (they made Draw Something) started out as a super awkward dating website called iminlikewithyou.
https://venturebeat.com/2008/06/30/iminlikewithyou-raises-15m-for-social-gaming-site/
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070530/111236.shtml
Facebook incorporated in February 2004 and by the end of 2007 it was valued at over $15 billion. Three years. Pretty crazy how quickly things can happen.
Wow. And some ideas take a very long time to finally gain traction. FlyClear is now CLEAR.
Dopplr was a free social networking service, launched in 2007, that allowed users to create itineraries of their travel plans and spot correlations with their contacts' travel plans in order to arrange meetings at any point on their journey. Additional features included allowing the user to calculate the carbon footprint their journeys have produced.
Wikipedia
https://www.failory.com/cemetery/dopplr (oh! this is a nice site if you’re looking for case studies of failed startups)
https://www.lulu.com/ (book printing, self publishing)
Unfortunately, I could not find these published anywhere public
I’m the bozo but we gotta keep trying