It is a long standing open problem whether there is any infinite-dimensional commutative Banach algebra without nontrivial closed ideals. This is in some sense the Banach algebraists' counterpart to the invariant subspace problem for Banach spaces. We do not here solve this famous problem, but solve a related problem, that of finding (necessarily commutative) infinite-dimensional normed algebras which do not even have nontrivial closed subalgebras. Our examples are incomplete normed algebras rather...