Tarpit Ideas: The Sequel
When some of the people ask me, "Oh, is my idea a tarpit?" I'll be like, "Hey, well, have you talked to any users?" And they're like, "No, I just—no, I thought you would tell me, though." Like, it's funny. It's like, "How you been watching the videos?" I think what we say in the videos is, "You should talk to users and get a customer." They're like, "Yeah, I guess you did say that."
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Interesting. This is Dalton plus Michael, and today we're going to talk about tarpit ideas again. Tarpit! The sequel! Part two! Part two! So we've gotten a lot of feedback from our first tpit video. Was it about a year? It was a while ago, yeah. Maybe a little bit more. It's like, "Oh, this looks like a nice pool of water. No one's—no one's here drinking at it. I'm going to—I’m going to go get a drink of water from this pool," right? Like, no danger. Quicksand!
What have you learned about this?
Well, I think a lot of people watched that video. Yes, and I've met a lot of people in the real world that have watched it. And the most common question I get is, "Hey, Dalton, is my idea a tarpit?" And then they tell me their idea. And maybe the first thing that I noticed was a lot of folks— I feel like didn't exactly get the definition that we had, and they interpret the term tarpit to just mean an idea that I don't like.
Again, maybe I'm—
And Michael—
Yeah, it's sort of like an idea that came up in the last video. And I think, you know, we try to define it a different way. Why don't you try to give the definition? And you should watch the video.
Watch—yes, but we should restart, right?
So the idea behind the tarpit idea is we would see a lot of Founders applying with the same idea over and over and over again. And often we would fund many of them, and often the idea wouldn't work. And after a while, we started seeing this trend. We're like, "Wow, there are these certain idea spaces that seem to always attract a lot of applicants, and they never work." And like, that's how we kind of came up with this concept of a tarpit idea.
And in the video, I explained that like that's how tarpits were for dinosaurs, right? It looks like a body of water from afar, and as the dinosaur gets close, they go to drink it, and it's tar, and they get stuck, and they die. And that's why we have all of these dead Founders in these tarpit pools, all these dead dinosaurs in tarpit pools.
What was interesting though, was that like you said, people interpret it as almost like a static list that doesn't change over time.
Well, and also that an idea that is bad and an idea that is a tarpit are the same thing. A tarpit is a pretty small—if we imagine the Venn diagram, tarpit ideas are a smallish set of ideas. Yes, there's lots of ideas that are neither good nor bad; they're just normal. Yes, yes! And so yes, there's something about tarpit ideas that are insanely attractive.
Yeah, like, if some—if other Founders don't come up with them all the time, constantly, it is not a tarpit idea. It has to be—it has to be something that you're like, "Yeah, I had that idea, too."
Yes! I think there's another part about tarpit ideas, which like—they sound—it's really funny. Most startup ideas, when you tell your friends and they're being honest, they're like, "That's not a good idea." Tarpit ideas get like a lot of praise! Like, the second your friend's like, "That's a great idea!"
Yeah! Like a food discovery! Like, you know that problem where you can't decide what restaurant to go to?
Yeah, that's a great idea! You pit your friends on, like, "I totally have that problem. I have that problem all the time."
I think that the other thing you brought up is there’s a characteristic of a startup idea where it's been done before, right? And I think this is an area where a lot of Founders, you know, avoid research to not learn things they don't want to learn. But it's been done before a lot and nothing has changed. Like there's no—you know, I would argue that there are a number of ideas that at any given time in the, you know, last hundred years might have been tarpit. And then technology changed!
Yep! And suddenly these are not only possible, they're great businesses. But I think that the kind of characteristic of it's been done a lot— a lot of people have failed and nothing has changed—that's very—and there's just like an endless supply of folks that haven't even started a company yet that tend to come up with a similar idea. It just is one of the first ideas to pop into people's minds.
Now, I think what's interesting is what's happened since we recorded that video is LLMs. Yep, AI. I think that when I'm reading applications, my first thought is like, I am open to even classic tarpit ideas no longer being tarpit. Like, I'm open. What I'd love to see is when a Founder can explain to me why the new technology might make something accomplishable that wasn't accomplishable before.
Yep! What I hate to see is a Founder that's not even acknowledging that like many people have tried and failed before. Like, it's like, "Oh, history that happened before I'm alive didn't happen." Wait, it didn't? Like, I've been alive, and then that's when history starts, right? And actually, I wasn't even aware! So it's like since I've been like 18ish, like that's—like history starts. The only good music is when I was 18!
Exactly!
Literally! I think another area that you brought up is kind of the "X for Y." Right? You like the co-pilot for—you know, co-pilot's working great for developers. Yep! Should there not be a co-pilot for fill in the blank?
Yeah! And in this one, to be very clear, I don't think that these are tarpits, fair? But they are common. And so to be very specific, everyone says "co-pilot for X." And then like we could play Mad Libs: co-pilot for real estate agents, co-pilot for investment bankers, co-pilot for lawyers, pilots, co-pilot for surgeons, surgeons, yeah, co-pilots for—you know, basically any job.
Who doesn't need a co-pilot? For dentists, co-pilot for dog walkers! Who would not want a co-pilot? And so again, these are not tarpits because not enough people have tried them exactly. But they are common ideas. I would say again, it doesn't mean you shouldn't try it, but a lot of people just from first principles trying to come up with AI startup ideas—these are the type of things they tend to cook up.
Yeah, this is not meant to try to like screw with your dreams, right? Like, I think that a lot of people start companies because there's a problem they see in the world they really want to fix. And I think that the depressing thing I've learned is that whatever current set of technology is available can address only a current set of problems. And like, some problems are going to fall outside of that set. And every time there's a new chunk of technology, we have to re-explore—right? Let's re-explore what problems are available.
And I think that what's cool is that, like, there are a lot of companies this batch where I would say I would not have funded this idea in the pre-LLM world.
Okay! Like, I funded a company that's basically doing like completely AI-generated podcasts. And it's like without LLMs and the ability to do like voice generation, that would—I would have never considered funding it! But now I'm like, "Okay, let's see."
And so I think that's the other thing that you should kind of understand from our perspective. We're definitely in an "okay, let's see" phase compared to like 10 years into B2B SaaS. It was like, we've seen a lot! We've seen a lot of forms! And like, yeah, so I think that like that's another fun part of this.
And I guess AI-generated video and audio—we have seen YC companies working on those since 2016, 2017! Like, the early generative AI stuff we funded—we've been funding that consistently! Yes! And it seems like it's getting better! Yes! The quality is getting better!
Yes! It's one funny thing about these things is they always train them on YouTube video. And guess, guess what? Guess who has a lot of YouTube video of them? And so all these new demos that we see, it's us!
Yeah! In the videos! Quite embarrassing!
It is a little bit embarrassing, but they're getting—they're getting admittedly kind of good.
Yeah! Well, I was thinking, I played like— I played this personalized podcast. It's called Pocket Pot. I played this one to my wife, and she's like, "Oh, like you're listening to NPR or like some other thing." And then it played a quote of me talking to the reporter, and she's like, "Oh, did you give an interview?" I'm like, "This all is—this is—I didn't! I'm learning for the first time that I'm on my own podcast!"
And so, it's fun for us to see all these new things! But like still, if you can't draw any connection between the two—technology and why your problem can be solved today—and it's one of these ideas that have been tried many times, tricky!
Yep! Maybe the last thing we should talk about is like where—what are the flavors of tarpits? You know, we were talking about this before. There are multiple flavors of tarpits.
Like, what do you see?
I think there's the two most common vectors: one, just a belief that the world should work differently than it does. Better! And this is all coming from a good place! But it's basically, "Wow, the way X works is bad. We should do it!" Why? And everyone simultaneously needs to adopt the scheme.
So I'd put the idea of coordinating with your friends to see who you can hang out with and do event planning is one of these where wouldn’t it be cooler if all your friends wanted to hang out all the time, and you could coordinate with them all? Have more fun. We’d all have more fun! We wouldn't be sad!
Yeah! And so the way you want the world to work is that everyone’s like, "Yeah, I want to install a new app to see what all my friends are doing and hang out with them!" Sadly, it does not appear that people want to do that! Or at least no one that's tried this idea has figured it out yet. I'm sure someone is watching me like, "But I'm going to figure it out!" Um, God bless you!
But that's again—it’s coming from this really good place. This utopian sense of changing the way that we live our lives!
Yes! And running into that—it’s just hard to change human behavior! It's a perfect example of tarpit because it's the perfect example of something where like nobody would say no.
Yeah! No one would want to discourage you!
Yeah! You're working on something that's really good!
Yeah! So that's number one. What about number two?
Number two is—I don't know, you did a better version of this earlier.
Yeah! I think it's tricky. I think it could be summarized as like some form of arbitrage or getting rich very quickly. There's like a limited window where like I have some secret knowledge, and like I can get very rich very fast. And like I would be working for Google, but because of this moment in time, I can kind of like fast forward through the entire startup thing and like kill it.
And I think that—that also sounds really attractive! It's like, "Right! Like, you have to work for 15 years to make your startup work!" But like if I just do the right thing at the exact right time—game on! Grand slam! Home run! I can be rich, you know, in Miami!
Like, yeah, this is where you just end up doing an idea that's like whatever is raising money or you find some sort of arbitrage where you—you know a lot of ad tech stuff was like this or—anyway, like you see these momentary things where you want to just immediately make tons of money from it.
There were lots of people influenced by wall street bets during the pandemic where a lot of startup ideas were like someone saw wall street bets and was like, "Hey, I'm gonna make a startup out of this somehow!" Like that was the—that was the input.
My favorite one is like, "I'm doing so great on Wall Street bets and my friends are all seeing it, and they just want to give me their money so I can invest it for them!"
So, what is the fastest way I can create like an investment advisory business?
Excuse me? So I could just shove my friend's money into the market as fast?
Check out Michael!
I don't know why you're live!
Like, I was going to pitch you that idea. I got some great stock tips! And I'm just like, "God! Like, am I watching the car crash in real time?"
I don't see the problem.
It's like, "Don't markets always go up forever? Isn't that how—Isn't that how graphs work?"
Aren't graphs like this when you're young?
Yes! The market only goes up forever if it's your first time!
And I'm thinking about this poor Founder’s friends who just dump all their life savings into their investment advisory business and the market—
I even know what company you're referencing.
Well, there's many. I mean, there's—there's more than I'm thinking of!
Yes, I know! I know what you're saying!
So yeah, so that's like, you know, the mercenary.
So wrapping it up, right? I think maybe the big takeaway here is this is not a static list of ideas. Maybe ideas that we had mentioned in our last video are no longer tarpit. Technology's changed. Maybe ideas we made fun of in this video won't be tarpit six months from now. Technology changes!
If it looks too good to be true, like if you're getting too much positive feedback, if it feels like, "Why does this already exist? It seems so easy," that's not like the shape of things that we see working, right? Like, maybe you should be a little skeptical.
Well, it's funny! When some of the people ask me, "Oh, is my idea tarpit?" I'll be like, "Hey, well, have you talked to any users?" And they're like, "No, I just—no, I thought you would tell me, though." Like, it’s funny. It’s like, "How you been watching the videos?" I think what we say in the videos is, "You should talk to users and get a customer." They're like, "Yeah, I guess you did say that."
Yeah! Interesting!
I thought I would just pick a video and idea based on what you said in the video.
All right, Colton, good chat!
All right! Sounds good! Thanks, man.
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