[HN Gopher] Tarpit ideas: What they are and how to avoid them (2...
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Tarpit ideas: What they are and how to avoid them (2023) [video]
Author : dgs_sgd
Score : 129 points
Date : 2025-04-23 16:59 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ycombinator.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ycombinator.com)
| kristopolous wrote:
| When context changes, so do the prospects of these ideas.
|
| Youtube wasn't the first video streaming service but it was one
| of the first for the DSL era when people could watch video
| without lengthy waits.
|
| AI companies repeatedly failed until enough things, specifically
| data and compute were at enough scale to deliver.
|
| Advancements in battery technology made electric cars practical
| bucking the trend of decades of failed EV car companies.
|
| So many things - contactless payment, touchscreens, even LCD
| panels, these were lousy and impractical for decades.
|
| Attempts at mass adoption of handheld computers, now called
| smartphones, started in the 1980s. Without high speed mobile
| networks, high density color LCD screens, reliable geolocation,
| these things were necessary to make the handheld pocket computer
| something that everybody has.
|
| Even online grocery delivery services, now common place, had its
| start in the catastrophic collapse of WebVan in the 1990s. Cell
| phones, the gig economy, mature e-payments, these were all
| needed.
|
| You always need to look for the context change and how that can
| untar some tarpits.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| The video has a good heuristic to apply that I think works even
| within changing contexts: "avoid things with a high supply of
| founders who want to work on it but zero consumer demand for
| the thing itself", the classic one being a
| discovery/recommendations app.
| kristopolous wrote:
| I guess. Successful executions become so endemic you have to
| take a step back and recognize it.
|
| Hn is a discovery/recommendation site as is Reddit. Amazon
| makes a lot of margin on theirs and arguable it's part of the
| major value add for Spotify and Netflix.
|
| Almost everybody looks at food and accommodation reviews and
| people bring up IMDb and rotten tomatoes when considering
| whether to watch a movie.
|
| Search engines and llms make decisions on what to surface,
| those are a kind of recommendation as well.
|
| So although I understand the sentiment, it's not really a
| great example - there's plenty of successful executions
| beyond the dreaded "for you recommendations" engagement bait
| slop on social media feeds. You're using the successful
| executions dozens of times a day without noticing it.
| fakedang wrote:
| > Hn is a discovery/recommendation site as is Reddit.
| Amazon makes a lot of margin on theirs and arguable it's
| part of the major value add for Spotify and Netflix.
|
| Nope, HN is just an online forum. I can't tailor what I see
| on HN to my tastes, and there's a subset of posters who get
| preferential treatment on the frontpage (YC companies), so
| nope, HN is not a recommendation site.
| anself wrote:
| I don't think there's zero demand recommendation apps, a lot
| of founders choose this because it's a problem they want to
| solve for themselves, and there are a few success stories out
| there. It's just that it's a super-hard problem
| bee_rider wrote:
| What's a recommendation app? Like, I'd like to watch this
| movie, can you tell me if it is streaming on anything?
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Do you think we've made it to the point that a broker for
| streaming services would be viable? You pay a 10% premium
| and they connect you with the media you want to watch
| without you needing to maintain a monthly subscription to
| 15 different services.
|
| Would probably be worth it even if just to have a
| consistent UI across services.
| bee_rider wrote:
| That would be nice, but I think it is just a licensing
| issue and the companies that hold the licenses don't have
| any incentive to try and simplify things--they'd prefer
| we subscribe to every service and then watch, like, one
| show on each.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| It would be interesting to see data on this. How many
| people subscribe to multiple streaming services, vs the
| opportunity to license the content to an aggregator and
| sell to those that miss a lot of content because, like me
| they don't want multiple services. I refuse to subscribe
| to all the services that have the content I want to
| watch: Netflix, Apple, Prime, HBO Max, Discovery... the
| high seas become an inconvenient option at this point.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I agree (and would also like to see that sort of info if
| it existed). But, I'm pretty sure the same folks who were
| in charge of cable when it became insufferable are now in
| charge of streaming. So, less-annoying business models...
| I'm not hopeful.
| andreasmetsala wrote:
| > vs the opportunity to license the content to an
| aggregator
|
| Isn't this what Netflix used to be
| sgerenser wrote:
| Exactly. And the whole reason all these other services
| popped up is the IP holders realized they could make a
| lot more money with their own service vs licensing to an
| aggregator. I think it worked out pretty well for
| Disney+, because they have a huge back catalog of very
| popular IP. Not sure if anyone else is really making
| money with this new model, but they still don't want to
| go back to ceding all control to Netflix.
| nottorp wrote:
| We could go back to the olden days when everything was on
| Netflix instead :)
| wavemode wrote:
| Amazon Prime Video is already this. You can subscribe to
| Max, Peacock, Crunchyroll, etc. from within the Prime
| Video app, and watch content normally exclusive to those
| services.
| stevage wrote:
| Yeah, what was Zomato if not this?
| saulpw wrote:
| "It's a problem they want to solve for themselves", but
| note that they haven't tried all the alternative
| recommendation services and are only creating one as a last
| resort. They _want to solve the problem_ , which is a
| different drive from wanting a recommendation app.
|
| Now, if someone made a "Recommendation-Engine-in-a-Box",
| where someone who wanted to make a recommendation app for
| themselves would supply the content and could tweak the
| algorithm and the design, I could see that being successful
| in this market :)
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > I could see that being successful in this market
|
| I guess SaaS aimed primarily at founders makes it a meta
| startup? The snake is eating its tail.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > It's just that it's a super-hard problem
|
| I spent 2024 building an awesome TV series recommendation
| platform. It worked by matching you to professional critics
| who shared your tastes, by basically crawling Rotten
| Tomatoes and getting an LLM to grade the reviews out of
| ten. The recommendations were awesome, and having a
| personalized Rotten Tomatoes where you could read about and
| research the show using reviews by people who felt the same
| way as you did about stuff was freakin' cool.
|
| However, getting people to actually sign up and use the app
| without a massive marketing budget was very, very
| difficult. The stickiness to get people to go back to it is
| difficult. Asking people to input their preferences in the
| first place is hard. People also simply didn't believe the
| recommendations, and wouldn't take chances on shows; the
| computer can recommend The Detectorists to as many people
| as it wants, but there's a high number of people who would
| love the show but will dismiss it looking at the cover
| image and having a quick read of the synopsis.
|
| The recommendation part isn't super hard, the getting
| people to use a B2C app is super hard.
| immibis wrote:
| Now, if you were Netflix (or Popcorn Time), you could
| just show them the series directly in the app and people
| would come to your app to watch the series, and also get
| the recommendations. They'd come back more often if you
| had good recommendations. People just don't want
| standalone recommendations.
| flir wrote:
| There's also the fact that more data == better
| recommedations.
|
| Even if people wanted your standalone app, they're not
| going to sit and enter the kind of rich data a decent
| recommendation engine needs. It really has to be a tool
| that gathers data about you as a side-effect of you using
| it.
| immibis wrote:
| Well, there's "enter your Netflix username and password
| here"
|
| This has _severely_ fallen out of fashion since the
| 2000s, but it used to be not uncommon that when one web
| app wanted to do actions on your behalf on another web
| app, it would just take your username and password and
| log in as you. According to Cory Doctorow (I wasn 't
| there) Facebook did this to MySpace.
|
| For Netflix in particular, logging in from your server
| would probably trigger anti-account-sharing, but you
| could avoid that by making the requests you need from the
| user's app on their device, not from your server.
|
| I think the industry _feels_ like it 's illegal now, but
| I don't think it's _actually_ illegal? since there 's no
| criminal intent. I don't think it's the same, legally, as
| when a criminal steals your login details and logs in as
| you. But I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.
| But my evidence is that there are apps (e.g. POLi) that
| do this with _bank accounts_ and still don 't seem to be
| in any trouble. Even the banks don't seem to be locking
| it out as that would hurt the customer's relationship
| with the bank.
| quibono wrote:
| Interesting. I wonder if this is the right way though.
| Firstly because the RT critic score was gamified a while
| ago, and secondly because there's often a big gap between
| what the critics think and what the audience thinks. (One
| of the things I like to do is find movies on RT where the
| difference between the two is the biggest) Even if you
| ignore the fact that some reviews will be sponsored and
| not made entirely in good faith this is assuming that
| critics' judgment is a good signal in the first place.
| petesergeant wrote:
| I think all of this is addressed by matching you to
| critics who like and dislike the same shows as you like.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Still doesn't solve the problem of finding content I
| don't like, but it's so good, that I start liking it.
| This doesn't seem to happen much anymore.
| plastic3169 wrote:
| I think sign up for anything is a tall order. To use a
| recommendation site I would need it to just start asking
| me questions and immediatly also start the process of
| visually narrowing down content suitable for me. How many
| ratings from me would you need to do a good rec? Is there
| diminishing returns after certain amount of data from the
| user? There should be zero barriers of entry to this kind
| of thing. Like quirky website you click for few minutes.
| You can always provide "save your answers" button and
| have the sign-in flow there, although I would appreciate
| unique link I can bookmark more.
| imtringued wrote:
| And this is how we ended up with tinder...
| nradov wrote:
| That seems like terrible advice. First, many founders are
| targeting business or government customers rather than
| consumers. Second, when it comes to disruptive innovations,
| consumers don't even know what they want until you show it to
| them.
| ozim wrote:
| Even worse if you show it to them they still might not know
| they want it.
|
| You need like critical mass of early adopters so that
| people would see ,,hey this is useful, maybe I can use it
| too".
| ijustlovemath wrote:
| is there a difference between this and product market fit?
| nine_k wrote:
| Discovery and recommendation apps for music and videos, such
| as Spotify, YouTube, and TikTok, are big hits.
|
| You just have to have a colossal inventory, and a reasonably
| good algorithm.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Discovery and Recommendation in those apps seem to be
| features, not the purpose of the app itself.
| taurath wrote:
| The purpose of the app is to sell ads via engagement,
| recommendation is at least a partial (majority?) driver
| of engagement, so it's part and parcel of the purpose of
| the app.
|
| People want what they're providing, companies want to
| sell ads, and increase people's tolerance of ads. Until
| the next platform without ads comes out (note - tiktok
| didn't have ads almost at all for the first year)
| immibis wrote:
| The main purpose of these apps is to click on them and
| watch/listen to some $foo. Not to just tell you what to
| watch/listen to.
| pjc50 wrote:
| You can't have a discovery app _that doesn't host the
| content_.
| quinnirill wrote:
| Google and/or IMDb don't count as discovery apps or not
| hosting the content?
| doubled112 wrote:
| Last.fm did it, or did they host content and I've never
| realized this in 20 years?
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Yeah last.fm was a streaming webradio type thing. You
| could also scrobble your own mp3s but (as I remember it)
| the whole point of that was so you could then listen to
| the stream tailored to your preferences.
|
| Just like Pandora which was also really great for a
| while.
| diggan wrote:
| > You could also scrobble your own mp3s but (as I
| remember it) the whole point of that was so you could
| then listen to the stream tailored
|
| That's not how I remember it at all. The biggest features
| (that at least made me and my friends use it) was that no
| matter what player you used, it probably had a "Scrobble
| to last.fm" features (which sadly, seems Spotify at least
| removed), and then you'd use Last.fm to find new songs to
| play via your own player.
|
| I don't think I remember anyone using the Last.fm
| radios/playlists, but instead just as a data-browser to
| find new artists/albums/songs, then play those somewhere
| else.
|
| But this was around 2005 sometime in Sweden, we basically
| just had Spotify and maybe Grooveshark available for
| streaming, maybe things typically worked differently
| elsewhere.
| dcow wrote:
| Recommendation apps would work a lot better if we weren't so
| collectively hing up on copyright.
| f3b5 wrote:
| In central Europe our biggest tarpit are sustainability /
| climate topics. Even founders that are smart enough to
| realize the difficulties still pursue these topics because of
| an unfoly feedback loop where government agencies almost
| exclusively fund those "societally important" areas. There's
| no other risk capital available so most founders align their
| goals, just to fold 1-2 years later.
| vanattab wrote:
| I mean that's better then funding a bunch of startups that
| try and use psychological traps to capture the attention of
| your kids and ruining their ability to focus. Most of them
| also fold 1-2 years later.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Yeah this is actually a really useful idea in general.
|
| I learned this when I was put on a team for a modeling
| competition in college. You had like 72 hours to solve the
| problem and write the report. It was really stressful but a
| LOT of fun.
|
| There were a range of topics that you could choose from. Some
| were really obvious how to apply mathematics to, and some...
| weren't.
|
| I was the math talent on the team... but my team members
| talked me out of going for one of the problems that were easy
| to apply math to. We instead picked the problem where it was
| LEAST obvious. And... we ended up winning the competition
| against a field of 10,000+.
|
| I think that lesson applies in business all over the place.
| There's actually a lot of good comfortable money to be made
| in unglamorous industries.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| I think many of the "fun" ones will always be tarpit ideas.
| e.g. "an app to help find something fun to do with friends"...
| that's just your chat app of choice.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Instagram has recently been quite successful at giving me ads
| for events that seem actually fun and relevant to me, to the
| point of me being low key afraid of throwing off the
| algorithm so it starts recommend worse things. So, I think
| there's potential but it's very elusive. I feel that my
| Instagram "getting it" is more of an accident than by design.
| api wrote:
| Maybe the moral is: before starting a venture like others in
| the past that failed, work out from first principles as much as
| you can whether the enabling technologies or other
| circumstances in the world have reached some kind of tipping
| point that makes it different this time.
|
| It probably won't be different this time unless something has
| changed. "I'm just that good, I will out execute everyone
| before me" is probably BS. The people before you were probably
| not lazy or dumb, it just wasn't time.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| You mean due-diligence in market research?
|
| Bah! That'll never work!
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| I think of "context change" as multiple technologies and trends
| that chaotically converge into a critical mass of opportunity.
| It's easy to spot looking backwards, but impossible to predict.
| You're just the nth individual trying this new/old thing, and
| now the market supports it, and for a while things are great,
| until you overreach, you don't reach enough, you're legislated,
| a new technology comes out of nowhere, there's a pandemic,
| there's a tectonic shift in global markets, etc.
| fnord77 wrote:
| do you know of any technologies that are lousy now and might
| untar sometime later?
| kens wrote:
| Some thoughts: VR, fusion, non-refrigerant cooling
| technologies, personal genomics, silicon-on-sapphire ICs,
| every drug and treatment that is just around the corner,
| quantum computing, CO2 capture, failed Google projects such
| as Google Glass, Google Wave, Google contact lens glucose
| sensor.
| fnord77 wrote:
| optical computing, custom printed medication(s) pills
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I think optical computing is in the exact opposite of the
| situation the OP describes.
|
| We have known how to do it for a while now. There are
| just not too many applications where its strengths are
| more important than its drawbacks.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Nuclear energy (new OR existing technologies)
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Social media that aligns with human needs, permaculture
| farming, digital voting systems, smart contracts.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| Choose your own adventure games.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Similarly a lot of people give up on something in their life,
| e.g. finding a partner, because of earlier attempts in
| different (worse) conditions.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Quite often we are incapable of identifying what those
| different conditions were. When something you don't think is
| important is the actual cause of the failure you're unlikely
| to notice and misatrubute the cause.
| j45 wrote:
| Learning the timing of timing is one key skill to learn.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| On the subject of context I wrote a short post back in 2018
| [0].
|
| Smart people spend time on this problem/solution.
|
| Solutions appear but fall short of expectations.
|
| The technology or more commonly that application of it is
| stigmatised.
|
| Sometimes the whole field becomes tainted.
|
| The problem/solution complex is declared a "dead end" or "false
| dawn".
|
| Interest cools. Nobody invests for a while. The wreckage of the
| previous cycle rusts away. The craters erode. This takes 20-30
| years.
|
| During this period, some very small companies, academics, and
| individuals continue to guard the flame, but lack funding or
| new talent to advance.
|
| Go to step 1, invent new buzzwords/framing and repeat.
|
| Ignore much of what was learned during the previous cycle.
|
| [1] https://blog.eutopian.io/the-next-big-thing-go-back-to-
| the-f...
| zik wrote:
| I remember the excitement around VR back in the late 80s.
| These new polhemous motion tracking devices and LED
| microdisplays were going to change the world! Except the
| technology was expensive and ultimately it kinda sucked. It
| was barely used outside academia, interest died off gradually
| and eventually it was tacitly acknowledged to be going
| nowhere.
|
| Then 30 years on Oculus was founded and everyone who'd never
| used one of the old VR systems was super excited. To be fair,
| the technology was a step better - much cheaper and more
| accessible, low motion input latencies, better resolutions.
| But ultimately it's still not really quite good enough and it
| seems that the hard reality is it's not going to make its way
| into mainstream consumer everyday use this time either.
|
| I can't wait for round 3 in 2040 or so.
| diggan wrote:
| > But ultimately it's still not really quite good enough
|
| I'm not sure what use cases you've tried it, but I'm
| "playing" a bunch of flight simulators, and after getting
| used using a HP Reverb 2 for all my simming, it's basically
| impossible to move back to "flat" screens again. It gives
| you a completely different depth-perception that is as
| vital when you fly as when you race, so basically any
| simming is a lot easier and more fun with VR. But again, if
| you make the plunge into VR simming, it's short of
| impossible to go back to "normal" afterwards.
|
| > hard reality is it's not going to make its way into
| mainstream consumer everyday use this time either.
|
| Yeah, simultaneously I agree with this. VR-in-motion (so
| not sitting still) is still pretty bad, and the setups you
| need for good performance are pretty expensive, so it's
| unlikely to break into mainstream unless some breakthrough
| is being made. With that said, there are niches that are
| very well served by VR and personally I guess I hope it'll
| be enough when the mainstream hype dies off.
| dingnuts wrote:
| I disagree, I played a lot of Elite: Dangerous with a VR
| headset and while I completely agree about the scale, it
| was so much hassle to get in and out of the goggles and
| get everything set up and then to be totally cut off from
| the real world for any extended period that I stopped
| using it.
|
| It's been in the closet for a few years. Beat Saber is
| fun too, but.. I guess if you're the kind of person who
| has a sim setup in a dedicated room in your house it's
| still appealing but for anyone remotely casual it's just
| not worth it
| jerf wrote:
| VR has moved from "only enthusiasts can even consider it"
| to "viable niche". That's a huge step up... viewed
| logarithmically you could even call it "halfway there".
| But it definitely needs a couple more revs before it gets
| to "mainstream accessible".
| grogenaut wrote:
| Maybe the change is the internet amplifies those holding
| the flame longer, like those responding parallel to me
| psunavy03 wrote:
| AR is the true future, but we're a materials science
| breakthrough away. You need waveguides or some similar
| thing that generates holograms that's cheap, has a wide
| FOV, and works in bright light. HoloLens and Magic Leap
| came close, but people couldn't figure out how to make
| enough money off the devices, apparently.
| echelon wrote:
| Is it?
|
| I don't want to see sports teams playing on my coffee
| table. I don't want to see recipes dancing in front of me
| while I wear glasses in front of a stove, the humidity of
| boiling water vapor sticking to plastic lenses. I don't
| want people dicking around with headwear while they're
| supposed to be driving. I don't want to see contact and
| bio information hovering above my friends. And I
| certainly don't want to see ad overlays throughout daily
| life.
|
| I want to escape life and enter fantasy worlds. I want to
| be transported. I want to see the Matrix unfold in front
| of me. That's about as far from AR or XR as I can
| imagine.
| yaky wrote:
| IIRC there was a brief VR spike around early 2000s. I
| remember trying out Duke Nukem in a helmet and a three-
| button controller.
|
| And then a bit later, there were 3D glasses, ones that
| synchronized with the high-rate monitor to show each eye
| its respective right and left frame. The demo for it at the
| time was Rogue Squadron and I thought the effect was
| amazing.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| > DSL era
|
| What's this mean?
| cplan wrote:
| Digital Subscriber Line
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| It means I now get to feel really old for the rest of the
| day.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| If you imagine a modem handshake sound I wonder what baud
| rate it is.
| diggan wrote:
| Before we had cables dedicated to internet, we reused
| telephone cables for both telephone+internet, so adding
| digital data on top of the existing network, hence Digital
| Subscriber Line :) It was the fiber of the 90s.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Surely a large # of North American internet users are still
| using DSL?
|
| I mean, I live rural and even I have fiber now, but that's
| new.
| diggan wrote:
| The island I grew up on in Sweden (with a population of
| ~700) got broadband in 2007 sometime I think, and in 2013
| got fiber optics. Surely most of North America has to be
| using better stuff than DSL at this point? Although
| geographically and politically it is probably a bit
| harder to get high performance internet access everywhere
| there.
| maccard wrote:
| I think the summary of the video captures this essence really
| nicely.
|
| > If your idea has been tried before, do your research and
| understand why it didn't work. Assume the founders who tried
| before were very smart, very determined people; what's
| different now?
|
| If you can't answer that question, don't try again.
| fidotron wrote:
| What pushed YouTube over the edge was it had backers that were
| willing to overlook and fight for the rampant copyright
| violations that it had at the time. Then once big enough it
| then did the deals to go legit, which it now enthusiastically
| supports for any new entrants.
|
| No other streaming site would have got away with that. Napster
| was also a bit of a demonstration of how it probably wouldn't
| work, so it wasn't a low risk strategy.
| morsecodist wrote:
| From the video it doesn't really seem like tar pit ideas are
| about technical limitations but more about solving the wrong
| problem. I don't think the ideas you list are tar pit ideas at
| all. The value proposition for all of these things is obvious.
| The technology was hard but once the technology existed it was
| pretty clear that people would want these things.
|
| At least from my read of the definition tar pit ideas are not
| just ideas that have been tried and failed but they are
| supposed to seem easy. Things like the restaurant discovery
| example are technically very easy to build but the limiting
| factor to people enjoying buying from restaurants is not a tech
| platform.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| Some ideas are tarpit ideas until enough people get stuck.
|
| Location estimation (figuring out where you are) based on indoor
| WiFi / BLE is one example. Compared to 15 years ago, we have
| (IIRC - I don't work in this space) super-precise timing API from
| the modem, and there has been work on the reflections issue (the
| two big problematic things that non-RF people typically miss).
| little_ent wrote:
| I did a project on this in like 2010 as a student hobby
| project. It wasn't accurate, but I also had no idea what I was
| doing. I mostly did it in a naive way, where I mapped out
| signal strengths in various rooms (it was dorm floor, 2 rooms
| shared each) and then trying to figure out where I was based on
| it. As a non-CS student I thought it was cool......
| dfedbeef wrote:
| It was cool
| genewitch wrote:
| What about multipath? Is that not an issue at wifi wavelengths?
| Or is that a sub or superset of reflections? It was quite a
| long time ago now that the first "proof" that one could use
| leaky WiFi to "see through walls" and observe people moving
| around inside a building from without.
|
| Participate in a transmitter hunt (also called a foxhunt or a
| t-hunt) where the organizers or the people hiding the
| transmitter know their stuff. Reflections and multipath can
| lead you _miles_ away from a transmitter location.
|
| Anyhow, someone asked me if I knew how to do this without
| consent once; that is, if I knew how to track people in a
| building without them knowing. This was 8 years ago or so. I
| had hoped saying "that's not possible" would dissuade them, but
| instead they just never spoke to me again.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| Oh yeah, multipath is the term I was thinking of. As I
| recall, the issues were that a "longer" path may have a
| stronger signal than a more "direct" path, and that a
| straight line of sight path is not a given.
| AdventureMouse wrote:
| I think there is a difference between ideas that are based on a
| fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works and ideas
| that we do not currently have the capabilities to solve.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| The video has a sequel released nine months ago:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU9iT7MW0rs
| samschooler wrote:
| And for completeness, here is a video from 2022:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=Th8JoIan4dg&t=195s
| surprisetalk wrote:
| https://taylor.town/tarpits
| anself wrote:
| Is there a way to consume this in text instead? Video is far too
| slow and cumbersome and requires headphones
| tomhow wrote:
| You can browse through to the video on YouTube then read the
| transcript (I think transcripts are available on all YouTube
| videos - perhaps unless the publisher disables it. But it's
| definitely available on this one).
|
| I think it would be great if YC turned discussions like this
| into well edited written articles. I know there's talk about
| producing more text content to help startups.
| djmips wrote:
| Google Gemini will also summarize if you want to start there.
| The transcripts are tough to read IMO
| mwilcox wrote:
| Maybe YC is the problem
| bjornsing wrote:
| Why do I feel like YC videos are targeted at really slow people?
| The combination of discussion in slowmotion and exaggerated
| gestures reminds me of elementary school. I'm sure there are
| valuable ideas in there, but I just don't have the patience to
| watch.
| 65 wrote:
| Sorry Mr. Smarty Pants that Hacker News is not Smart enough for
| you.
| bjornsing wrote:
| Hehe. But I must say HN in general is significantly higher
| pace than these YC videos, intellectually.
| eirikbakke wrote:
| Just watch at 150% speed.
| joshdavham wrote:
| YC (and Dalton & Michael in particular) like to emphasize
| clarity and "the basics" in their videos. Recall that their
| target audience are largely nerds in their early-mid twenties
| who've never started a business before.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| They are probably following some kind of training.
|
| Those features are very common on every educational video. I do
| agree that this one focus on an audience that is supposed to be
| too advanced in relation to the video depth of knowledge, so it
| shouldn't need it. But still it is normally pushed for every
| video, and the risks of getting the pacing wrong are very
| asymmetric.
| gitroom wrote:
| dang that was packed with real talk - ive tripped over my share
| of looks obvious, actually impossible ideas too. you ever get
| tempted to try the same failing thing hoping this time the
| timings right?
| asimpleusecase wrote:
| The tarpit idea is very descriptive in hindsight. What makes
| something a tarpit is an idea that sounds cool on the surface and
| is accessible (don't have to be one of a kind founder to do it)
| and when you talk to your friends and people who might be
| customers you get very positive feedback. So it all starts to
| feel like a slam dunk. However, if you are a VC you will have
| seen this exact idea or close variations in it a hundred times
| and they all flamed out to a zero. As the VC you have visibility
| into common failure modes ( not able to charge enough, no scaled
| market, not sticky enough, etc) what is hard from the founder
| side of things is all those issues and many more are common to
| almost any venture until you crack the problem and get market
| fit. So the tarpit concept is more a description of VC scare
| tissue than a fully operational definition for founders ,because
| a former tarpit can become a blue ocean of opportunity (
| uncontested market) if some element of the equation changes (
| technology shift, culture shift, deep founder insight etc)
|
| So as a founder how can you tell if you are about to jump into a
| tarpit?
|
| 1) do a lot of research on the problem and see what has been done
| in the space in the past and who is working on the problem now.
| If you find lots of failure - dig in and try to understand what
| the core failure modes were. 2) work on something that people
| will pay you for, even a very ugly early product. Income is a
| strong validation. 3) reconsider your idea if it requires the
| incineration of mountains of cash to get people's attention.
|
| But at the end of the day Tarpit is really a descriptive
| heuristic that VCs can find to be useful but not absolute.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| I found imagining the actual metaphor of tarpit enlightening -
| it looks like a nice healthy pool of water but turns out to be
| sticky and impossible to get out of. Under that attractive
| surface are all the corpses of everyone else who charged in and
| got stuck.
|
| So it's exactly like you say: you keep your distance and you
| look for evidence.
|
| I do think the point of the metaphor is that sometimes a tarpit
| is just what it is. I.e. there is no value under that shiny
| surface and you're only getting stuck staring at it.
| joshdavham wrote:
| What are some tarpit ideas that y'all've come across? Any AI-
| specific tarpit ideas?
| janalsncm wrote:
| If by "AI" you mean freemium platforms making api calls to
| OpenAI with a markup, I would say most of them. If it's easy,
| 100 people are already doing it.
| wavemode wrote:
| Any idea where you are basically just a wrapper over some other
| other company's API.
| queueueue wrote:
| Not sure about AI specific but: Todo apps, habit trackers, lots
| of social media, job boards, recommendation apps, fun things to
| do with friends, travel planners, trackers (movies/books). I
| think it's more common for B2C because these are things that a
| lot of people come across.
|
| Some of these ideas could maybe be done better now that we have
| genAI but the question might would it work as a standalone app
| or is it just a feature?
| tlb wrote:
| It's far too soon to call any AI-specific ideas tarpits.
| Nothing newly made possible by LLMs or generative image models
| has been tried long enough to give up on. There are no startup
| bones to dig up yet.
| thruway516 wrote:
| Not AI but Ive seen a lot of social startup apps in my time all
| trying to be the next facebook with a twist. They all end up in
| the same place. If you have any idea along the lines of
| "Do/share X with your friends" it has probably been tried a
| million times before so just don't. Another one is dating apps.
| Everyone thinks they all suck and everyone thinks they have the
| new twist that will make it not suck. End result is so many
| shitty 'ghost town' dating apps that end up looking and
| functioning like the other 99%. Once in a while a Snapchat or
| Tindr will break out with a genuinely fresh idea but for every
| one of those there are a million carcasses of failed startup
| ideas
| whstl wrote:
| I worked in a consultancy/agency 15 years ago for less than a
| year (it wasn't for me) and in that short span I witnessed 3
| "facebook with a twist" projects. Code was delivered, but
| they naturally failed to gain any critical mass whatsoever.
| Also having startups getting a consultancy to do their code
| was already quite strange.
|
| I specifically remember one of them being "facebook for dogs"
| and another being for restaurant professionals.
| badmonster wrote:
| this is a great video
| aaron695 wrote:
| I think it's a good video.
|
| "The restaurant doesn't exist" is an important axiom.
|
| It's why recommendation engines are useless, Netflix has nothing
| more. Smart users will see TikTok doesn't really have a good
| recommendation engine, just good content, bite sized so lots can
| be produced.
|
| > the world seems limitless but for these physical things it's
| actually fairly limited
|
| This is a really good quote, it also applies to digital.
|
| Anyway, a list of tarpit ideas would be useful. The axiom's are
| too hard, like software complexity and getting money out of
| educational institutions.
| thruway516 wrote:
| > Smart users will see TikTok doesn't really have a good
| recommendation engine, just good content, bite sized so lots
| can be produced.
|
| This. Nobody has invented a Recommendation engines that really
| works, the ones that seem to work just have lots of content
| they can throw at you. I really think tiktok would be no less
| succesful with an engine that simply threw a random video at
| you. Recommendations is a really hard problem and anyone that
| solves it had essentially solved AGI
| cjs_ac wrote:
| I used to be a schoolteacher, so whenever I read about someone's
| shiny new EdTech idea, I can't help but think that it's a tarpit
| idea.
|
| Every developed country has a set of professional standards for
| teachers, and teachers who don't live up to those standards are
| pushed out, sometimes by having their teaching accreditation
| revoked. In Australia, for instance, there's a set number of
| hours of 'professional development' that teachers have to do
| every few years, and if you don't complete them, you lose
| accreditation and have to find a new career. The professional
| development activities and courses that meet the requirements are
| audited by the Department of Education, and have to draw on the
| latest research in educational psychology: keeping up with the
| latest research is the entire point of that professional
| standard.
|
| When I did my teacher training, the first thing we were told in
| the first lecture was to never cite any research older than ten
| years, because it would be out of date. Now, if you've trained in
| the sciences - I was a physicist - you should be troubled with
| this, because a discipline can't really accumulate knowledge
| about the world if it throws everything out after ten years.
| That's why, when I broke the rules and searched through the
| databases of academic literature going back more than ten years,
| I saw the same ideas being reinvented under different names in
| different decades.
|
| So there seems to be a bit of a trend for people to build
| flashcard-type tools at the moment, probably because someone's
| seen a paper on spaced repetition. That's nice, but you can't
| build a business around this. It doesn't matter if all the
| thought leaders are all in on spaced repetition this year,
| because next year they'll have moved on to something else,
| because they need to have something new to talk about. In
| Australia and the UK at least (I don't know the figures for other
| countries), half of all teachers leave the profession within five
| years of joining it, so most of your user base is
| overenthusiastic twenty-somethings with no life experience (yes,
| I was one of these) who will do whatever The Research tells them,
| and the ones who stay long enough to gain leadership positions
| tend not to grow out of this, so the classroom side of EdTech is
| basically a bunch of fads, so it's impossible to build a stable
| business in this space.
|
| If you want to sell software to schools, go and work in a bunch
| of them, find some obscure administrative problem, and solve
| that.
| rolandog wrote:
| I partially agree with what you just posted, but -- walking
| along your train of thought, I take a bit of issue with the
| following paragraph (sliced for emphasis):
|
| > So there seems to be a bit of a trend for people to build
| flashcard-type tools at the moment, [...] so it's impossible to
| build a stable business in this space.
|
| I am of the radical idea that lots of things should not be for-
| profit businesses (doesn't mean that it can't be profitable --
| just not exorbitantly so), and that economist's mistaken goal
| of exponential growth expectations is criminally separated from
| the sigmoid limits to reality.
|
| So, therefore, while I agree that EdTech is a bunch of fads, I
| think the fact that EdTech is a thing is wrong.
|
| And I agree with your main point that we should be chasing
| accumulation and refinement of knowledge, and not doing some
| sort of spring-cleaning every 10 years.
| bombcar wrote:
| "EdTech" is ripe for disruption - by a non-profit, open-
| source entity that provides "school stuff as a service" but
| is basically a lifestyle business.
|
| It would have to be funded by adventure capitalists (e.g.,
| retired techies having fun building stuff) for awhile, but it
| could easily take over once it got traction.
| udit99 wrote:
| Interesting. I don't mean to detract from your main point but
| as someone who's deeply into spaced repetition for the past 5-7
| years (Daily Anki user + built my own spaced repetition systems
| for learning various skills), I find myself disagreeing with
| you on some things that you mentioned:
|
| 1. Spaced Repetition is not a fad. It's the most consistent and
| reliable way we we know for rote memorization (conditions
| apply). And it's not a new thing either. It's been around since
| the late 1800s. It just wasnt practical until the advent of
| computers and mobile devices. So I'm skeptical that there is
| another "something else" to move on to that is as impactful as
| SRS.
|
| 2. Not sure what the state of education in Australia these days
| but speaking strictly from my school days in India
| (1980s-1990s), something like spaced repetition would have been
| a godsend for every single student. And I'm 100% sure a vast
| majority of schools and teachers still havent heard of it.
|
| 3. I've been learning German for the past few years from some
| of the top private institutes in Vienna, Austria and let me
| tell you that neither the teacher, nor the students have any
| idea about spaced repetition.
|
| That said, you're probably right about the business-viability
| of such ventures because of the difficulty of selling to the
| decision-makers, I just strongly disagree about Spaced
| Repetition being a "flavor of the year"
| sokoloff wrote:
| I didn't read GP as making a judgment that spaced repetition
| was new or a fad, but rather that in the environment of how
| education decision-makers shift focus to new things, it's a
| current flavor-of-the-year.
|
| We saw elements of this with "new math", Singapore math, and
| common core math, each label of fairly similar concepts
| promising to improve kids' facility with math. Test scores
| haven't leapt though.
| udit99 wrote:
| Yeah, you're probably right. I agree that the problem might
| be shifting focus every year but the one difference with
| your math examples is that Singapore Math/Common Core math
| etc. all seem like different systems that don't build on
| top of each other. You (I'm assuming here) can't focus on
| Singapore Math one year, then the next year to add Common
| Core math on top of that etc. Its one or the other.
|
| Spaced repetition on the other hand is a cross-disciplinary
| technique that just needs to be introduced and kept there.
| There's nothing else out there to substitute it with. If
| the young staff hype it up one year and then it becomes
| part of the curriculum and then they move on to other fancy
| edtech things, then there's nothing wrong with it.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| Sure, but there are all sorts of pendulum shifts in the
| teaching zeitgeist. Spaced repetition was just an app-based
| example: it's been a few years since I was in the classroom
| so I'm not sure what the flavour of the year is, but if
| spaced repetition were currently popular amongst
| schoolteachers, the swing away from it that I would expect to
| see would be to argue that memorisation isn't really learning
| and that learning experiences should be about developing
| deeper understanding, and so on. There is no measure of 'best
| practice'; a lot of these shifts are driven by personal
| preference.
| udit99 wrote:
| > argue that memorisation isn't really learning and that
| learning experiences should be about developing deeper
| understanding, Agreed, but if you ask anyone who's SR for
| any amount of time will tell you: It's realllly hard to be
| effective with it if you don't understand the underlying
| concept. The order of operations is "first understand, then
| drill". Of course, this comes with nuance. There are things
| that just have to be drilled and others that don't even
| need any drilling if you understand the concept. And I'd
| expect those educators to know the difference.
|
| > There is no measure of 'best practice'; a lot of these
| shifts are driven by personal preference.
|
| Again, you're probably right but using the example of SR
| threw me off because it's the one thing where I think the
| data is so clear that it's easily justifiable.
| fidotron wrote:
| > If you want to sell software to schools, go and work in a
| bunch of them, find some obscure administrative problem, and
| solve that.
|
| I think this principle generalizes to: If you want to sell
| software to X, go and work in a bunch of X, find some obscure
| administrative problem, and solve that.
|
| Although some people seemingly have a talent for selling
| products into industries they have no idea about. I always
| assume that means a highly motivated buyer.
| FinnLobsien wrote:
| There's also a different angle: EdTech doesn't have to sell to
| schools, but could also be learner-facing.
| FinnLobsien wrote:
| I think an underrated aspect of this is also that YC is
| ultimately a VC fund and so they're talking about companies that
| have the potential to be massive, multi-billion dollar companies.
|
| Many typical tarpit ideas (to do apps, habit trackers, note
| taking etc.) can be great businesses for a couple of people
| building software together but not have venture-scale outcomes.
|
| I do agree that as soon as you get network effects
| (recommendations, marketplaces etc.), SOOOO much is tarpit.
| bob1029 wrote:
| B2C is virtually impossible compared to B2B. This may not be
| immediately apparent but it is so obvious in hindsight.
|
| The biggest reason I think founders are going for B2C is because
| they have zero clue about how to network and sell to other
| businesses. It's easy to set up a shopify account. It's hard to
| cold call your first prospect. Do you even have any prospects? Do
| you know how to find them?
|
| The advantage of B2B is that once you figure it out for the first
| customer, you are on an exponential path to happiness. You can
| practically cancel your marketing budget at that point. B2C
| requires an ongoing assault on the dopamine economy. Unless you
| can get someone on a subscription and program them to forget
| about it, you're gonna get steamrolled by TikTok & friends.
| nkzd wrote:
| > because they have zero clue about how to network and sell to
| other businesses. It's easy to set up a shopify account. It's
| hard to cold call your first prospect. Do you even have any
| prospects? Do you know how to find them?
|
| How do you learn this skill? Any resources or books you
| recommend?
| gatnoodle wrote:
| Sure, a lot of people have written about this but this isn't
| a skill that you can learn from a book.
| mettamage wrote:
| Which is why it feels virtually impossible to many
| founders. Some people may claim B2B is easier, but only if
| you have the skill and it is hard to figure out how to
| obtain it
| bob1029 wrote:
| Not everyone needs to be on the sales team. You only need
| ~one person who knows how to do it. Once they get the
| channels opened with the client and the technical people
| are sending emails directly & regularly, even the most
| closeted nerds (including those who might also be
| founders) can begin to contribute meaningfully.
|
| This is what being a "non-technical" founder is all about
| - building bridges between people and organizations.
| fud101 wrote:
| The only B2B ideas I have would apply to one company i'm
| familiar with, maybe a couple of similar companies in the same
| space. How is that better than B2C?
| nkzd wrote:
| I guess the logic behind B2B vs B2C comes down this belief:
| It is easier to sell one unit for $1 million than one million
| units of something for $1.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| How big is that space in terms of businesses? Can you reach
| them more easily than you could reach a similar $ value of
| customers? Can you expand your reach and learn more about the
| market once you're embedded? Are they easier to sell to than
| consumers? Can you sell them support or maintenance
| contracts?
|
| etc...
| carlosjobim wrote:
| My experience is the complete opposite. B2B is almost
| impossible, even when you have a great product for a great
| price. B2C on the other hand is a delight, with much better
| prospects for growing your clientele.
| phtrivier wrote:
| B2B puts you at the mercy of "your next customer's wished
| feature".
|
| The bigger the "B" you're trying to sell to, the bigger the
| desire to say yes. This is a very dangerous path.
|
| If you're DHH, you can say no. If you're responding to RFPs for
| a living... It becomes complicated. Not impossible of course,
| but it's a different path altogether.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > B2B puts you at the mercy of "your next customer's wished
| feature".
|
| Yes.
|
| > The bigger the "B" you're trying to sell to, the bigger the
| desire to say yes.
|
| Absolutely.
|
| > This is a very dangerous path.
|
| You lost me here. What you term "a very dangerous path" I
| call "a roadmap".
|
| The bigger the customer, the more they can pay. Also, just
| because it's 'B' and not 'C' doesn't mean there aren't humans
| involved. You can go a long way (often, all the way) with a
| simple 1:1 conversation with the most senior person
| responsible for your project on the customer's side.
| dzink wrote:
| An idea is tarpit until someone, or some new tech, or regulation
| cracks it.
|
| YC has a rare opportunity and it squanders it. It is a hub that
| gathers most problems and approaches to them in each discipline
| and many many failures on them at least once a quarter and all of
| that goes down the drain, instead of being published and explored
| publicly. The energy of bright new founders is not spent re-
| hashing the old but exploring the new. YC can still evolve into a
| science hub for things people want with much more impact than it
| does now. New founders want to protect IP and hold back
| competition, so publish the failed ideas and approaches - make it
| a competition. Show the full length and breadth of tarpit zones
| and any time they may be cracking. This way new energy goes
| towards better VC returns instead of falling into old cracks.
| Build a Yelp of things people want that need to be built or
| solved.
| debarshri wrote:
| Sometimes a tarpit idea might work because of founders execution.
| Then the upside is huge.
|
| For instance, some animals who survived the tarpit were naturally
| selected for evolution.
|
| Philosophically, idea of building a startup is a tarpit too. You
| need lot of perseverance and courage to navigate out of it,
| survive and eventually win.
| davidedicillo wrote:
| It's only a tarpit idea when you don't know it's a tarpit idea.
| I'm building a bookmarking service. I have no illusions that this
| will become anything more than a hobby project. Still, I love
| solving specific problems for myself (specifically, making
| consumption easier to deal with content overload).
| noemit wrote:
| this is neat. i think digg should come back.
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