Avoid These Tempting Startup Ideas 

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."

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." 🤣

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.

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

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.

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 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!"

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.

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!

"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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Extremely insightful. Thank you.

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

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

Thank you for the clear and valuable insight.

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.

This was really insightful, thank you!

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!

Nice insights. Thank you so much.

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

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

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

Another great topic thanks!

Love the supply-demand theory, thanks.

Thanks for this refreshing insight.

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

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 content! thank you very much

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?

Thanks, this was an insightful talk 👍

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

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.

This was an awesome vid - thanks!

Thanks for Video!

thanks for the talk!

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.

Really good info - thank you!

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

This was a very informative and enlightening discussion. Thank you. It's amazing how the importance of Supply and Demand should be a very basic and obvious concern and cosideration; the same can be said of Timing and the Historical Conditions that contributed to the success of today's "Tech Giants", yet it's not. People get so caught up in emotion, and in wanting to do what everyone else is doing that they don't consider these things. I also agree that the best ideas are those geared towards solving the problems of corporations.

awesome video

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.

Thank you guys.

You guys are funny man 😂 advice plus a laugh, thanks for these

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.

A great one, thanks.

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

Hard hitting realism, good stuff

Thank you

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!

I love these talks....

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.😊

This opened my mind 🧠

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.

Very insightful

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

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?

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

Love these videos

Excellent advice!!

This is gold!

Great advice!!!

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.

life changing 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?

I have Learnt alot from you guys. And personally i think right now concentrating on the consumer products is really risky!

Awesome advice

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.

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

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.

Some people think I'm crazy when I get to talking about nft metaverse shops it occurred to me a while back that it would probably be easier if we just built a tool to walk into stores and basically copy everything in the entire store just like Google did with that giant camera that used to sit on the car for Google maps

This talk was amazing

I have 3 products. Now I know 1 is a tarpit unless I pivot. Thank you

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 love idea about supply and demand but I have one question what metrics you could use to measure what is good supply and demand levels ?

Very useful video

Finally an honest business video

The 75% statistic is wrong. Within 5 days, only roughly 13.64% of the undergrad population was on FaceBook. Still quite a feat, but nowhere near 75%.

honest channel ever