Paul Graham writes about startups:

This is not only possible, it’s how Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all got started. None of these companies were even meant to be companies at first. They were all just side projects. The best startups almost have to start as side projects, because great ideas tend to be such outliers that your conscious mind would reject them as ideas for companies.

We embrace this at Odd Alice by rolling our own internal incubator-thingy, called satellite programs. I think it’s a good idea. The first graduate, Tech Troopers, is an anomaly though since there are outside founders, but BlankPage is built under these principles.