What are some other examples of tarpit startup ideas?

While it's true that consumer businesses are tougher than enterprise, one small secret YC won't admit to is that it's also much easier for a large incubator to seed an enterprise business. Just get them to sell to other YC companies and viola, they have traction immediately

Great stories, thanks guys. A few thoughts from a ex-Valley grunt: - Recent grads don't even talk about targeting businesses because a) it's not sexy, b) they don't yet know what the specific industry needs are, and c) they cannot conceptualize how much money there is waiting to be deployed in the business world (there's a mountain of it) - To come up with the best business ideas, you either have to be a) crazy enough to try it without domain expertise ("you don't know how much you don't know") or have experience with the specific pain at a previous employer (video idea for you guys: how to recognize when it's time to jump ship and pitch your idea to your former employer). - If YC is truly interested in more startups like this (this is music to my ears), YC may have to pivot their brand messaging (yes). Because right now YC (from the outside looking in) seems like a post-grad program for Stanford/Ivy kids. I know that's not what it is, but ultimately every accelerator is known for their household name successes (e.g. Airbnb). So the Australian mining guy - and thousands of potential superstars like him - may see videos of all these kids running around with pitch decks and hoodies and think "nah, they wouldn't be interested because I can't promise them a 100 billion dollar sexy idea."

Love how encouraging Michael Seibel is to everyone else in these podcasts, with his voice, words, body language, it is like just a river of positive feedback and encouragement for everything anyone else says that is good By the way I continue to find these so valuable. I basically listen to no other podcasts. I have founded two somewhat successful startups, and I am so glad you havent hired some social media clickbait person, but stay authentic and deliver actual true knowledge on how to succeed with a startup here

Great episode but never forget that a lot of incredible startups accomplished what a graveyard of startups trying the same thing couldn’t. Sometimes all you need are a few important tweaks. Just know exactly what those are and why if you are going into the tar pit.

Dalton and Michael: "F*** your stupid a** restaurant discovery app". Me: While cradling my project wrapped in a blanket whispering "Don't listen to them. You're the prince that was promised." 🤣

As a founder of a very very ridiculously common problem that has been tried by thousand of founders, You spoke about the very truth, deep within my soul resonated with a lot things and it did pinch, You initially get married to these consumer ideas and I'm married too to mine and this thought it must be as easy as history speaks about all these successful start ups we hear about and it isn't. It is an ever changing quantum social behaviour mechanism which is getting more complicated to measure as we grow in technological influence everyday. Consumer is a toddler who wants everything they see but when you give it to them they want the next shiny object. I'm watching this video at 4am in my time zone and I just decided to give my startup deadline of Q1 2023 to measure the success else I will shut it or pivot my startup. Thank you guys Namaste

Dalton and Michael share a brilliant concept here on this video. For our generation of folks born post 1990, I think is so hard to have someone committing to `boring` ideas. More than ever, we values cool ideas as a right and benefit of our generation, so doing boring stuff can be deemed even as a punishment on them. We have been lucky to go through YC, raising funds and getting to 150 employees on our business focused app.

This is a very sincere and educational video. However there is an unsolved mystery. For instance a fully consumer social app called BeReal became such a hit recently. The content is just images. No videos, no video calls, no audio rooms. So simple to implement. If the founders of BeReal thought to themselves if their idea was a tarpit, they would agree that their idea is the definition of a tarpit. So can you please make a video on how these founders managed to make unicorns from their tarpit ideas. What is the trick? We would love that. I just love watching you two, keep more coming :D

I have co-founded 2 startups and eventually realised exactly what Michael and Dalton are saying. So do extreme discovery research from problem space to every competitive space. It's much much much better to figure out stuff before you have spent a lot of money and effort than afterwards. And most of the time at the end of this figuring out you will find that "This Product is not needed!"

God, I love these videos. They are just so insightful and able to explain things effectively/impactfully. I need to rewatch their videos to keep the messages in the forefront of my brain. You see the slippery slope that we can all fall into as founders.

As a startup founder just getting out of founding a funded tarpit startup - this advice is resonating deeply for me in a way it never could've before I had attempted it. We built a consumer mobile fitness game app (games + fitness obviously both already incredibly crowded spaces, the bar was SO FRIGGING HIGH), and when we begged people to use it they were mostly like: "Why I have Strava?" My cofounder still refuses to pivot or acknowledge that this idea does not have a tangible shot of success. It sucks, I'd heavily recommend people consider more B2B startups before consumer.

Hot Take: Venture Capitalist fund ideas they understand, like, and have experience with.... (Atari founder) Nolan Bushnell turned down Steve Jobs offer of a third of Apple when it was a garage startup.

Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Intro 00:16 - Advice on pivoting - Tarpit ideas 00:38 - Tarpit definition 03:49 - Most tarpit - Consumer ideas 04:56 - Why do founders choose consumer ideas so much 06:37 - Why is it hard doing consumer stuff 07:21 - What's the bar for a startup 07:43 - Google 09:53 - Facebook 11:19 - Timing - Web 2 13:38 - Smartphone 14:21 - What is a tarpit idea? 15:45 - App to discover new things 16:34 - Why they don't work 19:37 - Recent target ideas 20:27 - Web3 - Rebuilding the world 21:38 - Theory of supply and demand 23:29 - Demand side 26:13 - Best pivots 27:49 - Closing thoughts

I wish i seen this video earlier. Many people need to see this. It would save them time and energy and money.

I cannot thank you enough. This is the most important video you’ve ever shared.

When you guys described the Discovery idea at around 17:20 and were explaining why it doesn’t work, I actually paused the video and started verbally defending it to myself and in that moment I realized what a tar pit idea is. Nonetheless, here is my defense: I love going to coffee shops but I don’t want to go to the same coffee shop every day. I love that feeling of finding a coffee shop I’ve never ever gone to. It is true that I will run out of coffee shops eventually but there was a period where I kept finding new coffee shops every day. Therefore, the discovery app works temporarily during this period or at a city you’ve never been to before. Once you run out of places in a particular area, it’s over So a discovery app could work if you are constantly changing areas, although even this has a limit and the number of people who are constantly changing areas is small

Absolutely love this so much I kept talking with replies throughout while listening to this. Felt like someone speaking my mind! ❤

"Founders think that the average people are like them" ... and in design there is a rule "You are not the user" ...as a designer who worked with founders, this is one of the most difficult arguments ugh

That is one of the most valuable videos on startup ideas, thank you.

Not a big fan of this videos, I personally feel like this is just an investor mindset - "We've seen the stats, and we personally think its not worth it". If you see an angle on an idea, go for it but do you due diligence, know what other similiar companies have done and how they suceeded or failed and work through those obstacles to make yours work. If the opportunity outweighs the effort, go for gold. Look at the success history of auto-manufacturer, before Tesla came along. Same thing with dating apps, before tinder came along. Just know what your getting yourself into, spot the opportunity, plan how youre going to get there, then if its worth the opportunity, quickly build something to test that theory out. If it succeeds, that angle is going to create a wedge thats going to be worth something. If you dont succeed, well, then on to the next idea, that you might have.

Gotta love how much fun they have at the thought of decomposing dinosaurs

The whole thing about the "hidden/magical restaurants" is that they are special BECAUSE nobody knows about them. It's rewarding to discover those things on your own or through friends.

I have been waiting for this one, for a very veeeery long time (after getting a sneak peek during startup school 2022). It is finally out. THANK YOU!

Thank you for clarigying. We're definitely on the right path!!!

Great episode! I feel that the tendency of falling into tarpits also stems from the fact that the creators of the iconic platforms (mimicking whom now leads to tarpits) have become the icons of pop culture. And the retorics on the media is that if you are not a "thought leader" or "a role model," then you are not a successful entrepreneur. While most of the successful entrepreneurs that I met in my life were introverted, quiet, focused, and absent from the media.

This was the business equivalent of tough love lol this was awesome!

One of the best YC videos I've seen. Definitely a shift in thinking

The entrepreneurial journey is difficult, and we end up facing expected issues at times. For example, I was so excited about this video, but who thought it would be impossible to take this much bobble head movement. Quick solution - Change tabs and just listen to the audio, and try not to imagine what you saw!

I once watched a video and took notes, but I believe it would be beneficial to watch it again with my team at least ten times.

Great points Guy’s, couldn’t agree more, when we graduated Founder Institute we saw the same effect, millions of units sold, and zero marketing underpinned by evangelical user’s. Always love listening to YC, keep up the great work.

I’m literally building an open source software orchestration tool, that was trippy af.

Great, thoughtful discussion. I particularly liked: 1.) supply and demand theory, 2.) importance of timing, and 3.) historical conditions that contribute to success. Subscribing now and looking forward to more great discussions. Happy Thanksgiving!

A disgruntling video to watch when your idea is consumer-facing and music-oriented. We're still in the initial stages, so we'll decide if it's not worth it once we've seen whether traction can built itself and hit that high bar, but everything said in this video makes sense. Just means it's time to continue ideating!

Why was Twitch not a tar pit idea? It's consumer facing and it took several years to find a niche (streaming games used to be a niche). Did it succeed only because of timing?

I think we're seeing the same explosion in AI generation tools / applications where it's very easy to make basic usable products, though it seems that when technology is rapidly emerging you're at high risk of becoming superseded by something more innate that comes along. This will be especially true in AI with the leaps and bounds it continues to make. ChatGPT alone has made so much of what we were solving for redundant as a purely emergent property of the technology.

Great discussion. Very insightful. I think the concept of tarpit is really really important. I have experienced this first hand in our first iteration of the product which was a self host-able PaaS. So, I think it can also happen in enterprise software space. But interesting insight for me, or a parallel I can draw for these enterprise tarpit products would be that they often target hobbyist, early stage startups and SMBs.

This is an extremely good episode. I had visceral feeling about these ideas while I was starting but this video comprehensively explained.

I understand and agree entirely with what you guys are saying. But if you’re building something that fits the idea of Tarpit and watching this video DO NOT STOP. Make sure you complete that project before you pick up something else.

If a consumer startup doesn't have strong pull from users (as described at @10:55 in the video), how likely is it the idea is a loser?How can you tell early on whether it's an awareness problem, or an "I'm aware, but don't care" problem? I'm in this boat. What are the next steps you suggest?

I think a big chunk of these themes are geographic. I’ve built my whole career in the Northern Virginia tech corridor, and ALL the founders I’ve known are focused on B2B or B2G technical problems. I suspect the difference is that Silicon Valley attracts a ton of people obsessed with consumer products.

What is the point of using Facebook and Google as examples? What is the value or takeaway that any of this gives prospective entrepreneurs? Other than TikTok, and maybe some crypto related apps, what apps have had that sort of adoption in the last 5 years? You might as well talk about the launch of wifi or computers... I am just trying to see the value-add here

Don't get discouraged by the fake gurus. Follow your passion. Make a good product. Google was just a web page with a search bar, now it runs everything.

It would be interesting to hear about the tarpit ideas for b2b startups.

And idea of helping people discover new restaurants is not bad. Its just not good for venture funding. Plenty of local blogs solved it by writing content, distributing it into platforms that people use when they are bored (social media) and getting paid from ads or paid sponsorships. It just not a business for vc market

you've persuaded me, I pivoted) the greatest video I've seen on YC

“Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.” - Scott Adams

The best advice you can ever get is to not play the "beg for money" game that everyone is playing now. This includes applying for these "accelerators." The would love to have a crack at every new idea and have every new idea and business brought before them to approve of, steal or buy. They will drain you and waste the time of 99.99% of applicants so to increase your chances of success you would be better off to pretend like they don't exist because the vast majority of the time you are going to end up working on, programming and self funding your idea so just do that rather than jump through their hoops and be set back. What you will get the majority of the time by applying to programs like this are wastes of time, money and precious data about a market.

Pioneers take the arrows, so learn from their hardships & mistakes, then do it better.

Thank you guys, we appreciate the best advise from you guys

This hit home. In other news, I had *just* parked my social app idea after prototyping it for months (still think it has potential... lol). Perfect timing for this video.

I can’t wrap my head around why a consumer product would be considered a tar pit. I feel like “consumer product” is such a big blanket that covers just soooo many ideas. The only ideas left would be business products right? Am I not understanding correctly?

Excelent content, I'm trying to get some directions to start my own startup and this seems one of the great places to get advice. For now what I find difficult is that everyone has a different opinion and doesn't seem to have a single unique path to find success. The analogy of finding gold is very inspiring. Usually you dont find gold in the middle of Manhattan you go to a faraway place often times unexplored. This seems to be the most objetive advice even though is not super objective it is a great pointer for you to understand that you will endure a unique self exploration path that it's not guaranteed to be successful. This seems to be it. Another great advice I took was from Peter Thiel. Being an entrepreneur is more like being a detective. Obviously if you want to start a consultancy company or open a restaurant this advices don't apply the same way and you can be successful too in a different way. Maybe by copying someone's business model but you gonna get much more competition and you might be capped to a dozen millions dollars which is not necessarily bad but... Why not got to the bigger tank?

Thank you very much for sharing this wisdom. Very informative and impactful.

I rewatch this video every few months just to make sure I am not pursuing a tarpit idea with my startup 😅👌🏻

I love you guys! Thank you for the high quality content!

I love these discussions - thanks for sharing it with the world! Two quick thoughts: Re: discovery ideas & physical constraints => What about ideas that don't rely on the physical world? E.g. IMO Discovery for apps is really broken. Of course, you have the monopoly storefronts (iOS / Android app stores) but it's so overcrowded with ads, bought reviews, and trash comments that it's genuinely impossible for me to find good new apps without going on Reddit or some other site. There are more than enough apps, so what would be the argument to try and explore that space? A few arguments against "improving app discovery": most people don't care about the actual quality of apps as long as it's sort of doing the job, Apple/Google could just improve their store and wreck the startup, and nothing can compete with the readily available Apple/Google stores so there's no way to even create a competition, ... Re: discovery ideas & why they don't work => This seems to be the opposite advice that Thiel gives in "Zero to One". He actively pushed the philosophy that "you need an insightful idea of seeing the world differently that few people will agree" (paraphrased). Anybody wants to weigh in here?

Great video. Thank you! It would be great if you could share a list of the most common tar pit ideas that apply to YC

One of the problems with discovery apps, I used to work for a startup from a freakin rich kid founder trying to discover the cool clubs, etc. in NYC. The problem is all these underground exclusive places do exist but they don't want to be discovered, and the people that go there know that, so they only talk about the places with people who they know are cool. If the places get discovered then they get saturated with douchebags who don't have to do any work to find them other than just going on an app...

These videos are so good. Can’t believe they’re free. Thank you for making these 🤝

Insane value provided here! Many thanks

00:00 Avoid tar pit ideas to increase startup success 04:09 Consumer business is a product marketed to individuals, not companies. 08:00 Consumer companies need to make products that people become obsessed with 11:35 Consumer products were easier to launch in the 2000s due to lack of competition 15:14 Discovery apps for restaurants and music are limited by physical constraints. 18:43 The bar is higher for startup ideas in popular spaces 00:28 Startups with high demand and low supply of founders are more likely to succeed. 25:22 Recognize the supply and demand theory to increase startup success Crafted by Merlin AI.

Google's growth was a perfect storm, but the entire internet was a blue ocean then. Open AI and Web3 are both spaces for future Googles, but the world is incredibly savvy now.

Why haven't I found this channel since? KZfaq work on your algos!!!

The fact is that investors don't want to think and instead just want to follow the crowd. The founders who do that get funding. Investors want to create a hype to have justification to invest more money with total immunity. So, they get more fees. That's driving founders into "tar pits" but everybody is happy with it, except the retirees who put the money in the LPs pocket in the first place.

Eh, I just started working on my "Discover things to do in life" idea XD

This was a really valuable and eye-opening talk, thank you!!!

Speaking on supply and demand, ai is very challenging for me to understand and I would love some great resources or connections on how to learn it

I would watch Michael and Dalton’s discussion of FTX on PPV

I appreciate much of the info here - especially since I believe myself to have somewhat of a tarpit idea. Although, some of the messaging here reads as if you aren't an extremely high functioning employee or part of the 'rich' class than you shouldn't even try.

This video came up right after I watch one about the Dunning Kruger effect. Seems like the right frame to view these "tarpit" ideas.

If discovery is such a bad idea space, why some of the most successful companies you backed are marketplaces? Probably it’s an idea space itself but rather execution without understanding the real problems set and barriers to entry. Yelp is not great for discovery of so many things but they have historically strong page rank, which is hard for new entrants to compete. In this case the mistake is to assume that just because an app provides a better discovery onsite, its where that discovery starts. Thats not the case. Being successful in solving discovery problems is as much about having a strong distribution strategy as it is about the product itself.

Someone should make an app that gives a tarpit rating for "new ideas"

Most founders have not spent years working inside of large companies, and the B2B markets are enshrouded in fog until you’re working for a company consuming those products/services.

Solve Esoteric problems Expand vision and think of all possible problems where it is simpler to make money It's simpler to go with tailwind timing is important

Thank you. I have seen a better and recognized a much easier solution thats not apart of the consumer world.

By default no searching no looking around just the top 10 which would make the companies that want to be in the top 10 work harder to make that happen

Thank you for the clear and valuable insight.

Now I want to found a startup for eliminating 25Hz sound bursts in KZfaq videos. :-)

I’m sorry but execution is everything. Before zoom so may companies tried tele video Conference softwares and Not one of them were as successful as zoom. People think zoom blew up during pandemic , it started 10 years ago. Execution is everything.

Our startup Idea: Creating A tool for video dubbing, such that the dubbed voice isn't machine voice but instead sounds like the actual speaker's voice itself. ML will play the main role in our product, moreover this actually isn't a startup Idea but our College Project Idea that we have chosen and working on.

Nice insights. Thank you so much.

11:56 people got broadband and they were bored. Really important phrase there

This is great advice. If you’re trying to make money, I do have a passion project that I can’t wait to release once I’m done with it. Not expecting to make any money from it, but it would be cool to have my idea out in the universe and understand what it’s like to develop something into release it and then I can think about money making in the future.😊

So pay attention to saturation when deciding what field to do your startup. 30 minutes summed up in 1 sentence.

Love the supply-demand theory, thanks.

Finally an honest business video

Is Dalton an actually successful startup founder? I've read about him and please excuse my ignorance, but I'm not sure why he is Y Combinator's partner

Google was the nth search engine is a time everybody knew for sure that: A) search results quality was an intractable problem and B) it was impossible to monetize a thing that would send traffic away. 🤷‍♀

Thank you for another insightful video. Both of you should be professors someday or teaching in some capacity if you're not already. It would've been good to hear some examples of B2B/Enterprise tarpit ideas.

Good stuff guys thank you. But if you have so much knowledge about falling businesses, I wonder if this is possible to find somewhere results of the market experiments or tests? Every new entrepreneur will benefit from having such a database.

I wish they focused more on specific examples, and why these examples don’t work. The core example I saw was “discovery app”, and the issue with the idea was very understandable: there just aren’t enough good restaurants or parties etc open locally. But what are some more tarp it ideas? And what are some issues? I fear my idea is tarpit, and I can’t gather data about past failed examples. I google “centralized education platform” but not much comes up. There is Ready Education, but it didn’t fail per se, from what I’ve gathered they’ve at least connected 700 schools. I don’t like their approach, but who are competitors and why did these companies fail?

How about Reddit though? They had to fake initial user traction on the website right?

Gosh. I really enjoy almost all advice and content that has been shared by YC (Dalton/Michael)... but this one didn't seem to evoke the same sentiment.This "tarpit idea" seems a bit circular/unfalsifiable to me ... specifically: an idea that is seemingly obvious and/or fun/desirable/sexy could be/is a "tarpit idea" ... until its not... where not = a company emerges and succeeds in the space? I totally get the intent... unfortunately, I just wish they would've talked about how important it is to have a unique insight that drive DEMONSTRABLY different outcomes (measurable) if you are going to work on a startup idea in a competitive or challenging space. I feel the commentary could wrongly discourage people from chipping away at innovative new ways to approach tough, intuitively obvious problems... would love to hear others' thoughts though.

Although I liked the talk, I would've loved if there could have been added a few more examples, e.g. why timing can be harming vs. helping a startup company.

Eh, I realized, my startup is a Tarpit idea, I like it, so I keep working on it. Walking alone in a super deep dark, I'm pretty brave for it. :) Anyway, users come without any ads, just organic, no growth hacks, no crazy social meme posts, and they seem to like it, 1.2K MAUs now. I just code my app and don't have time to advertise anywhere. But I will after finishing some community features.

it takes a lot of humility to work on something for years and still admit it's fundamentally a bad idea, and can explain why it's flawed systematically

So would consumer products like fitness apps now be considered a Tarpit idea? Or is it still a lucrative product?

Who uses two of the most successful companies of the last two decades as examples of quality bar?

I'm confused...don't these consumer apps have to go and do some legwork, finding product/market fit and getting traction beforehand? Why would someone invest in an unproven app with a handful of users?