Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Intro: Discussing tarpit ideas with users 00:29 - Tarpit 2.0: Real Definition 02:47 - Key Factors: Tarpit ideas are insanely attractive 04:18 - Technology & Historical Factor 05:18 - X for Y 06:16 - Current Technology only solve Currently Problems 06:54 - Artificial Intelligence: Funding Companies Post LLM World 08:48 - Changing Behavior: Flavors of Tarpits 10:09 - Arbitrage: Fast money, Wall Street influence, and startup success 11:14 - Wall Street bets inspired startup ideas 12:40 - Takeaway: Too Good To Be True 13:40 - Outro
We got rejected too but end up getting acquired by Google within 2 years of registering the company. So, YC is not the end of story. They do make mistakes 😅
Summary by Each Key Concepts: - Tarpit ideas: Seem attractive but consistently fail despite multiple attempts. - Often receive initial praise but have inherent flaws that lead to failure. - Many people try these ideas, but nothing significant changes to alter the outcome. Technology & Historical Factor: - New technology can sometimes turn previous tarpit ideas into viable ones. - Founders should acknowledge past failures and explain how new tech changes the game. Common Patterns: - "X for Y" phenomenon: Common startup idea pattern that needs thorough validation. - Utopian ideas: Beliefs about changing human behavior often lead to failure. - Arbitrage opportunities: Ideas promising quick riches are often unsustainable. Takeaway: - Tarpit ideas list evolves with technology and market changes. - Founders should be skeptical of ideas that seem too good to be true and validate them with real users.
You can feel the amount of combined experience through the screen from the content. These guys have gone through ALOT ALOT of proposals, and funded alot of whacky stuff
I'm pretty sure I started a tarpit startup: Micropayments for content. Everyone SAYS they love the idea. We got investment, we got customers (including big ones). There were plenty of previous attempts at it (including multiple companies with extremely similar names). It is a REALLY hard problem. Paywalling existing websites is technically hard. We had a Wordpress plugin, but other Wordpress plugins suck so they break everything. Getting to scale so that people are already signed up is hard. Dealing with media companies is ANNOYING (it's a lot more coagulated megacorporations than you realise) and it's an all or nothing deal.
Hi James! Really useful to read this. Are u still working on it? I was also thinking about micropayments but for SaaS platforms. Let me know if you want to chat about this
Growing up in LA you get the La Brea tar pit experience as a grade schooler on a bus. I suggest everyone go down there, and get the tar pit experience. See why you dont want to drink from the water. also see the movie miracle mile. Its something physical you have to experience. then do something cool, like go across the street to LACMA and see some cool art, or go to the science museum and walk under the space shuttle.
I HATED part 1 because I watched it half way to that beautiful water and had just passed the Point of no return . I drank a bit bring that beautiful pond before i got sucked dry before pivoting😂
Can you go through a list of examples of companies you funded that ended being up tar pits and the reason why they became a tarp it ,,, or an example of the basic “same idea” you get thousands of times. I just blew my wad 🎉😂
6:56 Michael I'm not sure how this example demonstrates how new tech (in this case GenAI) is now making previously unviable ideas more viable? Is there a palpable/profitable demand for computer generated podcast content? Or a problem this is actually solving? Couldn't someone have just typed up a summary of a research paper or a scripted topic and had good text-to-voice software make it sound like a podcast 5 years ago? Personally I feel like most people loyally listen to podcasts more for the host & guest (human) personalities/humor/opinions/etc. I wish you guys would've used this topic to share your perspectives on how GenAI-centric startups right now may actually have parallels to tarpit pitfalls. As someone who is actually working with GenAI tech, I'm feeling more and more every day that the "AI is the hammer and everything is a nail" mentality is still running rampant in businesses, but for many use cases, the jury is still out on whether the revenue or productivity gains are anywhere near the costs. 🤔
There is infinite demand for entertaining content, and content makes money on advertising based websites. Imagine Mr beast type videos that didn't need any funding because they aren't even real.
Isn't one of the main characteristics of tarpit ideas that they require relatively little innovation. i.e. food discovery or X for Y .......... the idea is right on the surface and has no real differentation.
I agree! My brother & I run a SaaS for Turkish manufacturers and it's doing well. But we've also had a lot of failed startups. From my experience, DON'T re-invent the wheel. Find products that are already making money & do it better. Steve Jobs wasn't the first to create touchscreens. Elon wasn't the first to create electric cars. Zuckerberg wasn't the first to create a social media platform. Amazon wasn't the first ecommerce delivery service. You fall into a tarpits when you're trying to re-invent human needs / modify human behaviour. As a small company, you're not going to this. E.g. Uber for dogs is terrible idea. Focus on making existing products SIGNIFICANTLY better & you'll be eye-wateringly rich. The journey will also be TOUGH so stick in there.
Yep, an app for coordinating with friends for hangout is a tarpit idea, I did it, it doesn’t seem would work out. It’s an iOS app called WhiMeet, will just keep the lights on for fun. 🙃
Yeah, seems like an idea that could be really huge, if it worked. I checked out your site, the text was pretty generic; I could only find out what the app did by reading some of the terms of use. I was hoping it would be more like a scheduler, but still cool. I really would like to have that app. Good luck with it!
@@johnmacbride900 Thank you for searching for it and even read some of the terms of use. You're very supportive of people's attempts! If you're using iPhone, the app actually can be found in App Store using keyword WhiMeet. Like Michael and Dalton mentioned in the episode, it is really hard to change people's behavior if it is already formed and saturated. People 1) just stick to Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat etc. for connecting with Friends; 2) people tends not to acquire new friends, even after meeting each other, unless they clicked which is very rare; 3) people tends not to meet with good friends that frequently, and like to keep their schedule as secret to most friends; 4) people's relationships and dynamics are super complicated, delicate and fragile. Those points are obvious to think of after a fact, but you always think nothing is impossible when starting the idea.
Bread Alert! A discovery app that lets you know where the freshest bread is at all times, in your house and in local bakeries. Push notifications when a new loaf drops.
A tarpit idea can become a decent idea all of a sudden if there is demand on the consumer side. Few years ago(in 2015) I wanted to start a company that conducts mock interviews for people looking to prepare(India). I saw that a lot of people have earlier started such companies, some were B2B (conduct screening interviews for other companies) and some were B2C. None of them were making much money, some got shutdown. But, a lot of pay after placement kind of edtech startups came in 2020, heavily funded, They needed mock interviews for their students so that they can get them placed asap. And then these mock interview prep companies started making decent money. Same is the case with mental health startups in India or other countries where the consumers are not interested in paying for a solution, either group therapy or therapy or medications to manage their issues.
I think this video is more confusing than helpful because a lot of great starts here in India have precisely attempted to change user behavior and succeeded or played on an early regulatory inflection / arbitrage... This makes it more confusing. You need to do tarpit idea 3.0 now asap!
still sounds as jaded as the first time... everything is a tarpit idea until it isn't... like Airbnb... actually, like Google or Facebook (look at the history of the segment in each case)
My idea is to solve tenant-landlord problems at the scale of mid-sized rental companies that have approximately a few hundred tenants. My company will help these mid-sized landlord groups register as a REIT and issue shares, which they will then reward to tenants in exchange for on-time rental payment. Tenants are usually managed only by negative reinforcement, if they damage the property, they lose their security deposit, and that's it. But with shares of ownership, even a tiny fraction, the tenant will get to experience the ownership incentive, and this will lead to reduced damages, increased on-time payments, and help meet the requirement of having 100 different shareholders for the tax-advantages of the REIT structure. Anybody want to steal this idea or work with me on this? Or is this a tar-pit idea?
Who's going to give up an ownership share in an asset? The math of figuring out what fractional amount of ownership is worth the fractional improvement to the property is one thing, but what you're proposing divorces the incentive (shares for rent) from the intended outcome (better-maintained property), so you'll get tenants paying on time, but not maintaining. Also, people aren't just forgetting to pay rent. If they don't pay on time, it's because they don't have money, so you're not modifying that behaviour either. So owners give up shares for effectively nothing.
Haha. With this thought process, next step for these guys will be to realize funding a startup is a tarpit idea and they should find new profession :))
Full send it bro. Before hp/canon do, or make it so good they buy it off your hands. There's limited time offer of "power to the people" on these ones before we're all annotating for big tech.
Not as entertaining as the first video on tarpit ideas...and to be more precise - I would recommend to ask Chat GPT for a better definition: A "tarpit idea" refers to a concept or proposal that initially seems promising or straightforward but quickly becomes complicated, time-consuming, and difficult to manage. It's akin to a tar pit, where once something enters, it gets stuck and struggles to get out. In intellectual or project contexts, tarpit ideas are those that trap resources, time, and energy, often leading to minimal productive outcomes despite significant investment. These ideas can bog down progress and distract from more feasible and efficient solutions.
Just me or do these guys come off as condescending? All they did was say the obvious and laugh at / mock the common pitfalls of first time founders… off putting if you ask me
Another aspect would be that these unrealistic tarpit ideas have an impactful result. Tesla, Neuralink, OpenAI etc all were tarpits at a point. So its too subjective. Its a matter of perception. Not saying they are wrong. Its simply hypocritical to negate ideas or simply suggest they are tarpits based on your assumption. These guys themselves say with time, beliefs around tarpits change so techically there is nothing correct or anything wrong with anything. It is just the rght thing at the right time and place.
I find videos so helpful but Michael’s laughing so frequently and so annoying. It’s like watching Tom cruise laughs in his movies It’s like you wake up at midnight and hear tick ticks of clock or drop of water in drain. Anybody has same problem
Must say that this video was too conversational for me with too little structure. The problem why friends of mine are confused about tarpit ideas is because it's unclear how to identify them. This video was more of a "heres another vague definition and lets add a bunch of qualifying factors to it for 10 min"
