You are stuck with web3! You are looking for patterns too much and this will lead you astray. Of course, it is due to the history of excessive success.
Worried I might be trying to drink from a tar pit. Building an NFT trading platform. Like opensea but supposed to be more advanced with trading tools. Bar is much higher than expected and the “NFT marketplace” space is competitive. Been putting a lot of thought into pivoting toward tools for NFT creators instead. 🤔 Great video!
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
@@diononeofyourbusiness8634 demand from within the incubator isn't necessarily real. Could just be your fellow incubatees supporting you out of pity. But you get to show series A investors some cool growth numbers and raise money to figure out the actual business later
@FREAQU No matter how you chop it up the point of the supply of startups building pretty much the same consumer products is ridiculously high with demand being low, meanwhile, the unsexy enterprises saying "hey we have a high need for X" is overlooked because of the points they mentioned.
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."
@@dailydose273 Maybe that's the biggest takeaway here: YC is ripe for disruption (who has the guts to do it?) If it's an old boys club, it's only a matter of time before someone comes along and does it 10x better. Sometimes I see the stuff they fund and it looks like a scheme to inflate the valuation and offload to Softbank & co.
@@lensvana Technically someone already does it better if you look purely for numbers. Recently Tiger cub Hedge funds like Tiger global etc started throwing money into the vc territory and so far they are doing amazingly (ofc I know about Tigers' FTX fiasco but that doesn't mean in general they disrupted the vc industry like no other). In 2021 they did like a deal a day or something like that with insane returns. YC can't compare. Their strategy is simply give founders money without the all the advice bs that comes along with VCs. If you need advice, sure, they will cover your consulting bills from bain or some startup-specific consultancies but if you are doing fine on your own, we won't be pushing the hoodie, bean bag narrative of SV onto you. Ultimately the only thing founders need from VCs is money. If they have problems, they can always buy the advice.
@@codeattack231 That's awesome, the more options for entrepreneurs - the better. I always associated Tiger with very large rounds, but it's great that now we have Tiger Seeds emerging. As you said, it's really about the money (akin to oxygen when you're starting out). For tech founders that just want to build great products - without the summer camp beanbag experience in the Bay Area.
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
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 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!"
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.
@@FinancialConsultdotcodotza sometimes it's not just timing, sometimes it's literally the tweaks themselves. Google and Yahoo had about the same timing but Google tweaked their process. Same with Facebook over myspace, they had same timing but different execution.
More often than not it's to spend that you put on an idea like some people who are very successful say you don't have to reinvent the wheel just edit it and call it something new
@@Lionsgala I've done this at a small scale on service businesses. Old dinosaurs don't even have a good website. You're not reinventing the wheel just polishing it, maybe putting on nice-looking rims so to speak.
Dalton and Michael: "F*** your stupid a** restaurant discovery app". Me: While cradling my project wrapped in a blanket whispering "Don't listen to them. You're the prince that was promised." 🤣
As a founder of a very very ridiculously common problem that has been tried by thousand of founders, You spoke about the very truth, deep within my soul resonated with a lot things and it did pinch, You initially get married to these consumer ideas and I'm married too to mine and this thought it must be as easy as history speaks about all these successful start ups we hear about and it isn't. It is an ever changing quantum social behaviour mechanism which is getting more complicated to measure as we grow in technological influence everyday. Consumer is a toddler who wants everything they see but when you give it to them they want the next shiny object. I'm watching this video at 4am in my time zone and I just decided to give my startup deadline of Q1 2023 to measure the success else I will shut it or pivot my startup. Thank you guys Namaste
I looked up into your platform.. Orbiting. I genuinely found it pretty cool however there’s a catch..It’s hard for me to use it if my friends aren’t using it, also the userbase is dramatically low right now.. for this to go viral there has to be some catchy thing to occur. How about first targeting the schools and colleges where this could blow up.. Example: NMIMS, Amity Uni, Bennet uni, Jindal Global uni, TIBS banglore, Manipal etc etc..
@@Prakhar_A Thank you so much, your comment gives me strength, what you mentioned is a proper criticism and colleges is my game plan. Orbits are great for intra-campus connectivity. Our entire strength is going towards onboarding colleges, We are in talks with multiple colleges. We have our V2 getting launched soon enough. Would like to become part of our beta tester for V2 ? We are doing an alpha launch in 1st week of Jan.
@@aaravvarma That would be amazing. I would absolutely love to contribute towards orbiting's growth since it's solving an actual problem the Gen Zs are facing these days..i believe in the idea and i think if executed correctly then it'll be a soonicorn!
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.
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
BeReal meets their defintion of a good consumer app though - people got incredibly hooked very fast with minimal marketing. I think their advice related to tarpits isn't to not implement a tarpit idea at all, it's rather to back out soon if it fails to gain traction.
@@dailydose273 Hey mate, read some of your comments. In one of them, you talked about Hyper. When I looked them up I found three different ones with almost the same name. Can you share which one were you talking about? Thanks.
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.
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.
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.
Google as the nth search engine is a time everybody knew for sure that: A) search results quality was an intractable problem and B) it was impossible to monetize a thing that would send traffic away. 🤷♀
"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
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!
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.
Great points Guy’s, couldn’t agree more, when we graduated Founder Institute we saw the same effect, millions of units sold, and zero marketing underpinned by evangelical user’s. Always love listening to YC, keep up the great work.
I 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.
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.
The entrepreneurial journey is difficult, and we end up facing expected issues at times. For example, I was so excited about this video, but who thought it would be impossible to take this much bobble head movement. Quick solution - Change tabs and just listen to the audio, and try not to imagine what you saw!
I 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
@@daultimate100 This is a good point. It would be neat to hear Michael Seibel talk about whether Twitch & Socialcam both succeeded despite being a tar pit idea or if the idea was not a tar pit. Live video systems are difficult technically, so they may have had less competition. It's likely easier to recognize a tar pit idea by reading hundreds of applications instead of writing one.
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
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.
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 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.
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?
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 think people tend to gravitate towards the tarpit consumer ideas is not only because they are consumers themselves, but the feeling of hope "what if I could make this idea into a reality? I could be known as *the* creator of XY", meanwhile creating a niche B2B startup would get you fewer public recognition.
I've literally kept away from the "startup world" because of the "restaurant discovery" and "social network for tall people" ideas (and that type of over-excited-networker founder, to be honest) for a lot of years. You'll probably see an application to YC from me regarding product management and development tooling. Great video, 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!
The fact is that investors don't want to think and instead just want to follow the crowd. The founders who do that get funding. Investors want to create a hype to have justification to invest more money with total immunity. So, they get more fees. That's driving founders into "tar pits" but everybody is happy with it, except the retirees who put the money in the LPs pocket in the first place.
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?
Tarpits are ideas that seem to be sexy but they have an underlying business model issue that will make it unlikely for it to work. It's not exclusive to consumer startups - there are plenty of B2B tarpits (for me a lot of these no code B2B stuff are tarpits). I think they emphasized on consumer products because it's the first thing we think about.
It’s more about how the bar is high for them to succeed that makes them tarpits. They are not saying consumer ideas will never succeed, but the chance of them finding a unicorn is much lower than other sectors.
They are more sexy so they attract a lot of talent. So unless you are the best of the best, make something that is on the road less traveled. Only problem is that most founders can’t tell that they aren’t top tier.
Building a working business out of a consumer product is much harder than a business to business product, in my opinion. As a first time entrepreneur we started thinking we would build a consumer product and it would just go viral eventually, just work a little harder, almost there. It did not, and since our pivot to b2b, it's such a more logical and achievable business model
Google was the nth search engine is a time everybody knew for sure that: A) search results quality was an intractable problem and B) it was impossible to monetize a thing that would send traffic away. 🤷♀
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.
One of the problems with discovery apps, I used to work for a startup from a freakin rich kid founder trying to discover the cool clubs, etc. in NYC. The problem is all these underground exclusive places do exist but they don't want to be discovered, and the people that go there know that, so they only talk about the places with people who they know are cool. If the places get discovered then they get saturated with douchebags who don't have to do any work to find them other than just going on an app...
If a consumer startup doesn't have strong pull from users (as described at @10:55 in the video), how likely is it the idea is a loser?How can you tell early on whether it's an awareness problem, or an "I'm aware, but don't care" problem? I'm in this boat. What are the next steps you suggest?
Maybe your go to market strategy is not good. If your product is iterative the go to market strategy needs to be novel. If you have early users now, check who's the most active active and see if you can find specific channels to reach those. The more specific the better, and it needs to be free-ish.
If they' re not aware they have the problem and don't recognize they have the problem even when they see the solution, it's incredibly unlikely they will pay for it. Creating awareness is terribly expensive in those situations where people don't care "but should care". They will not care
@@hommhommhomm That's not true. There are two types of products: Pull products and push products. Pull products are based off of known problems and users pull you into building them. Push products are the opposite - you need to push the solution to people because they don't know they have that problem. There are success stories in both cases.
Most founders have not spent years working inside of large companies, and the B2B markets are enshrouded in fog until you’re working for a company consuming those products/services.
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.
Good stuff guys thank you. But if you have so much knowledge about falling businesses, I wonder if this is possible to find somewhere results of the market experiments or tests? Every new entrepreneur will benefit from having such a database.
I have been listening to yc for almost a year and you have been of great value to me as a startup founder.... Could I possibily know the software you use to record this episodes. Thank you.
it takes a lot of humility to work on something for years and still admit it's fundamentally a bad idea, and can explain why it's flawed systematically
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.😊
Eh, I realized, my startup is a Tarpit idea, I like it, so I keep working on it. Walking alone in a super deep dark, I'm pretty brave for it. :) Anyway, users come without any ads, just organic, no growth hacks, no crazy social meme posts, and they seem to like it, 1.2K MAUs now. I just code my app and don't have time to advertise anywhere. But I will after finishing some community features.
@@Joshua-dc4un Yes, this was a problem for us too, but now we have developed a powerful solution that solved of fake users issue quite well. It means multi-step authentication, which works quite well because nearly 70% of our users verify themself. We notice that there is a kind of demand for this, as there are many dubious social apps. What is also interesting is that I have worked on a couple of similar apps and this did not happen there, our users are somehow willing to do a lot of things. Due to the lack of social functions, there are still not many users in the application, but I'm working on it now. Another interesting thing is that mainly women register with us, which is a good sign.
You find true purpose & meaning in helping real people (consumers) than building something for soulless corporations. Even if odds of failure are high & getting funded is difficult, I am going to continue to build for consumers.
everything eventually leads to consumers. for example if you can help a car company make more efficient cars it would be the final consumer who pays less for gas. but I agree with you working with everyday people is more fun and inspiring
I think that B2B startup ideas often look intimidating and unattractive because it seems like you will be selling to soulless corporations. But in reality, corporations are made up of people. You will be selling to people and making people's lives better. In some ways I think working on B2B can even feel more like you're helping real people because you probably have fewer customers with more direct interaction, whereas in a consumer app the users are mostly analyzed by quantitative and impersonal means.
Huh. I never thought about founding a start up until watching this video. In my case, it's to develop a tool marketed towards businesses that can act as a sort of "Swiss Army Knife" for AI. It would allow firms to create a laser focused AI trained on their known good data for...anything. Fraud detection, error detection, CMDB monitoring, etc.,etc.
If discovery is such a bad idea space, why some of the most successful companies you backed are marketplaces? Probably it’s an idea space itself but rather execution without understanding the real problems set and barriers to entry. Yelp is not great for discovery of so many things but they have historically strong page rank, which is hard for new entrants to compete. In this case the mistake is to assume that just because an app provides a better discovery onsite, its where that discovery starts. Thats not the case. Being successful in solving discovery problems is as much about having a strong distribution strategy as it is about the product itself.
I have a question, I am working on a consumer idea. I have talked to 112 people(potential customers) and received feedback from all of them. All of them want such a product to exist and are willing to pay for it a very small amount I told them. Currently, I am interacting with even more people and building a prototype. I know it's challenging to scale the product to the desired numbers. I took notes, listened to what you were saying and analyzed it very carefully. Am I working in the right direction? Thank you.
Build a small minimum viable product proof of concept and see how many people ACTUALLY use it. Talk is cheap, and people will tell you they love your idea to your face because it’s awkward to say anything else. But will they actually use it? That’s when you know.
I think the point is that you can still try, but just go in ready to let go if it doesn't work. Some people cling to ideas and don't know where else to go if it doesn't work. I'm also working on a prototype, and I started out as a consumer. The product I want doesn't exist and it's a major pain point that I'd like to solve. It's very nerve racking that the product doesn't exist yet - but I'm still going to try because the problem is still there...
Gosh. I really enjoy almost all advice and content that has been shared by YC (Dalton/Michael)... but this one didn't seem to evoke the same sentiment.This "tarpit idea" seems a bit circular/unfalsifiable to me ... specifically: an idea that is seemingly obvious and/or fun/desirable/sexy could be/is a "tarpit idea" ... until its not... where not = a company emerges and succeeds in the space? I totally get the intent... unfortunately, I just wish they would've talked about how important it is to have a unique insight that drive DEMONSTRABLY different outcomes (measurable) if you are going to work on a startup idea in a competitive or challenging space. I feel the commentary could wrongly discourage people from chipping away at innovative new ways to approach tough, intuitively obvious problems... would love to hear others' thoughts though.
The supply and demand of ideas and willingness to undertake them is a really enlightening pov. A point on consumer facings app though. So who will make consumer products in the future then? Has most of consumer demand been already met? I understand that the bar to clear can be higher, especially if there is no clear defined pain point to solve for an individual consumer (if its not an entertainment proposition). It also depends on the goals. if your goals are to be a hundreds of millions or billions type outfit then sure, consumer is harder. What if your goals are not that though? What if you just want to make what you need to have a fullfiling life producing what you want? I guess that would not be aligned with VC investors so maybe the video speaks truth to the VC point of view
Is Dalton an actually successful startup founder? I've read about him and please excuse my ignorance, but I'm not sure why he is Y Combinator's partner
I wish they focused more on specific examples, and why these examples don’t work. The core example I saw was “discovery app”, and the issue with the idea was very understandable: there just aren’t enough good restaurants or parties etc open locally. But what are some more tarp it ideas? And what are some issues? I fear my idea is tarpit, and I can’t gather data about past failed examples. I google “centralized education platform” but not much comes up. There is Ready Education, but it didn’t fail per se, from what I’ve gathered they’ve at least connected 700 schools. I don’t like their approach, but who are competitors and why did these companies fail?
Statistically, over the course of its existence, most YC projects are B2B. Is it safe to assume that YC is not inclined to fund B2C projects, especially those focused on social networks of various kinds?
i disagree on no one want another social or another restaurant descovy app. the reason why more of them are created is because there is a gap... no doubt about it. but who will find it first? i can bet if you go to a popular street in your town you will find at least 10 restaurants that are not in any app and they serve great food.
Although I liked the talk, I would've loved if there could have been added a few more examples, e.g. why timing can be harming vs. helping a startup company.
Solve Esoteric problems Expand vision and think of all possible problems where it is simpler to make money It's simpler to go with tailwind timing is important
Times change. Interests change. Ways of going about things change. Social media has problems you guys in Silicon Valley can’t seem to face. You push web 3 instead. Really. Well ... keep up the great work with the blinders firmly in place because the next generation is coming. Otherwise ... there are a lot of good points. I’d simply add people’s perspectives do change and if anyone has a good enough value point ... believe and never back down.
Had a discussion recently, basically we agreed, the easy money on the internet had been made. Imagine the early days of the industrial revolution. If you managed to get your loom working, you basically were in textiles and sold out. That's over now, same as the internet. On the discovery type apps, I think the founders that think a discovery app is possible, 1 AI technique away, completely miss the point. It's people you are recommending to, and people only really take recommendations from other people when it comes to real world experiences, sure, when buying online I'll buy extra, but picking a new restaurant, food, sight, experience, good old word of mouth, from my in circle is way more powerful. Can't be replicated by code
Yet another video from yc that inspires me to keep my day job! One of these days I'll launch my medicare-advantage-star-ratings-machine-learning business but not today.
I think there’s multiple categories within the consumer apps world. You’re talking a lot about social media apps, and other apps that not only require people to use the app but has a social component that requires other people involved to make it work. This type of apps are very complex, because depend on tech, idea and the social growth factor that it’s the hardest part. These apps need to be “viral” in some way to work. But then you have the niche consumer apps and apps for prosumers. These apps are focused on solving single problems for people that are already within a niche spending money in related solutions (apps, physical products and services) Not all consumer apps need to be viral apps to be successful.
What are some other examples of tarpit startup ideas?
Grocery delivery, Online Education, seems to be tarpit, isn't it? Everyone wants to start one.
No Code stuff. Anything that has notion like UI
You are stuck with web3! You are looking for patterns too much and this will lead you astray. Of course, it is due to the history of excessive success.
Uber for tutors on a college campus
Worried I might be trying to drink from a tar pit. Building an NFT trading platform. Like opensea but supposed to be more advanced with trading tools.
Bar is much higher than expected and the “NFT marketplace” space is competitive.
Been putting a lot of thought into pivoting toward tools for NFT creators instead. 🤔
Great video!
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
I so agree 😂
Yes, but nothing wrong with that. That is proof that there is legitimate demand for the idea. It also gives quick and immediate product feedback.
@@diononeofyourbusiness8634 demand from within the incubator isn't necessarily real. Could just be your fellow incubatees supporting you out of pity. But you get to show series A investors some cool growth numbers and raise money to figure out the actual business later
YC readily admits this - it’s one of the perks of joining YC.
@FREAQU No matter how you chop it up the point of the supply of startups building pretty much the same consumer products is ridiculously high with demand being low, meanwhile, the unsexy enterprises saying "hey we have a high need for X" is overlooked because of the points they mentioned.
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."
@@dailydose273 Maybe that's the biggest takeaway here: YC is ripe for disruption (who has the guts to do it?) If it's an old boys club, it's only a matter of time before someone comes along and does it 10x better.
Sometimes I see the stuff they fund and it looks like a scheme to inflate the valuation and offload to Softbank & co.
@@lensvana Technically someone already does it better if you look purely for numbers. Recently Tiger cub Hedge funds like Tiger global etc started throwing money into the vc territory and so far they are doing amazingly (ofc I know about Tigers' FTX fiasco but that doesn't mean in general they disrupted the vc industry like no other). In 2021 they did like a deal a day or something like that with insane returns. YC can't compare.
Their strategy is simply give founders money without the all the advice bs that comes along with VCs. If you need advice, sure, they will cover your consulting bills from bain or some startup-specific consultancies but if you are doing fine on your own, we won't be pushing the hoodie, bean bag narrative of SV onto you.
Ultimately the only thing founders need from VCs is money. If they have problems, they can always buy the advice.
@@codeattack231 That's awesome, the more options for entrepreneurs - the better. I always associated Tiger with very large rounds, but it's great that now we have Tiger Seeds emerging.
As you said, it's really about the money (akin to oxygen when you're starting out). For tech founders that just want to build great products - without the summer camp beanbag experience in the Bay Area.
@@codeattack231 do you have other examples of institutions doing the same think ? I m curious
@@codeattack231 Different game, YC is seed capital. In order to give money at scale like Tiger you need metrics and financials to look at.
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
Some may find it encouraging. Personally I find these two guys discouraging. They laugh at and disparage so many ideas
@@nerd_abroad"The truth is often uncomfortable" - Jeffe Bezozzzzz
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 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!"
Hi Mithrandir I agree with you! Can you suggest me some frameworks to help recognize if a product is really needed or not?
Talk to users before you write a single line of code
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.
Many times it's about timing and they discussed that.
@@FinancialConsultdotcodotza sometimes it's not just timing, sometimes it's literally the tweaks themselves. Google and Yahoo had about the same timing but Google tweaked their process. Same with Facebook over myspace, they had same timing but different execution.
@@jonjeskie5234 as I said, MANY times and as you said SOME TIMES...happy
More often than not it's to spend that you put on an idea like some people who are very successful say you don't have to reinvent the wheel just edit it and call it something new
@@Lionsgala I've done this at a small scale on service businesses. Old dinosaurs don't even have a good website. You're not reinventing the wheel just polishing it, maybe putting on nice-looking rims so to speak.
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." 🤣
how's the prince?
@@sltwtr806 He got sent to the Wall.
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
Tell me about you company! What’s the story, Aarav?
I looked up into your platform.. Orbiting. I genuinely found it pretty cool however there’s a catch..It’s hard for me to use it if my friends aren’t using it, also the userbase is dramatically low right now.. for this to go viral there has to be some catchy thing to occur. How about first targeting the schools and colleges where this could blow up.. Example: NMIMS, Amity Uni, Bennet uni, Jindal Global uni, TIBS banglore, Manipal etc etc..
@@Prakhar_A Thank you so much, your comment gives me strength, what you mentioned is a proper criticism and colleges is my game plan.
Orbits are great for intra-campus connectivity.
Our entire strength is going towards onboarding colleges, We are in talks with multiple colleges.
We have our V2 getting launched soon enough.
Would like to become part of our beta tester for V2 ?
We are doing an alpha launch in 1st week of Jan.
@@aaravvarma That would be amazing. I would absolutely love to contribute towards orbiting's growth since it's solving an actual problem the Gen Zs are facing these days..i believe in the idea and i think if executed correctly then it'll be a soonicorn!
What's your company now?
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.
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
Bereal has NO REVENUE. and they have no idea how to do it yet. Don’t consider it any success yet.
What about Gas app?
lady LUCK
BeReal meets their defintion of a good consumer app though - people got incredibly hooked very fast with minimal marketing. I think their advice related to tarpits isn't to not implement a tarpit idea at all, it's rather to back out soon if it fails to gain traction.
@@dailydose273 Hey mate, read some of your comments. In one of them, you talked about Hyper. When I looked them up I found three different ones with almost the same name. Can you share which one were you talking about? Thanks.
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.
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.
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.
Google as the nth search engine is a time everybody knew for sure that: A) search results quality was an intractable problem and B) it was impossible to monetize a thing that would send traffic away. 🤷♀
I cannot thank you enough. This is the most important video you’ve ever shared.
"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
I wish i seen this video earlier. Many people need to see this. It would save them time and energy and money.
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!
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.
what's the name of the app?
Great points Guy’s, couldn’t agree more, when we graduated Founder Institute we saw the same effect, millions of units sold, and zero marketing underpinned by evangelical user’s. Always love listening to YC, keep up the great work.
I 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.
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.
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.
Pioneers take the arrows, so learn from their hardships & mistakes, then do it better.
The entrepreneurial journey is difficult, and we end up facing expected issues at times. For example, I was so excited about this video, but who thought it would be impossible to take this much bobble head movement. Quick solution - Change tabs and just listen to the audio, and try not to imagine what you saw!
I’m literally building an open source software orchestration tool, that was trippy af.
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.
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.
That is one of the most valuable videos on startup ideas, thank you.
Thank you for clarigying. We're definitely on the right path!!!
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.
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!
Absolutely love this so much I kept talking with replies throughout while listening to this. Felt like someone speaking my mind! ❤
Gotta love how much fun they have at the thought of decomposing dinosaurs
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?
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.
What’s the pitch, Natarajan?
@@cole1 platform for hobbies. I know, that's not much of a pitch 😅
@@natarajanshanker5103 thanks
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?
right?
@@dailydose273 💯
They're not saying you shouldn't do it but just to be self aware of the reality
@@daultimate100 This is a good point. It would be neat to hear Michael Seibel talk about whether Twitch & Socialcam both succeeded despite being a tar pit idea or if the idea was not a tar pit. Live video systems are difficult technically, so they may have had less competition. It's likely easier to recognize a tar pit idea by reading hundreds of applications instead of writing one.
@@nathanbanks2354 Are you planning to pivot from Lumendé?
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
It would be interesting to hear about the tarpit ideas for b2b startups.
One of the best YC videos I've seen. Definitely a shift in thinking
Lots of folks fall into the tarpit. Lenny Rachitsky started Localmind, a way to help you discover restaurants in your area. Classic tarpit.
This was the business equivalent of tough love lol this was awesome!
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.
This video came up right after I watch one about the Dunning Kruger effect. Seems like the right frame to view these "tarpit" ideas.
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 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.
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?
This is an extremely good episode. I had visceral feeling about these ideas while I was starting but this video comprehensively explained.
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
Bless you!
@@koderkev42 Thank you 😊
you've persuaded me, I pivoted) the greatest video I've seen on YC
One year on, how's the new positioning going?
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 think people tend to gravitate towards the tarpit consumer ideas is not only because they are consumers themselves, but the feeling of hope "what if I could make this idea into a reality? I could be known as *the* creator of XY", meanwhile creating a niche B2B startup would get you fewer public recognition.
I've literally kept away from the "startup world" because of the "restaurant discovery" and "social network for tall people" ideas (and that type of over-excited-networker founder, to be honest) for a lot of years. You'll probably see an application to YC from me regarding product management and development tooling. Great video, 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!
The fact is that investors don't want to think and instead just want to follow the crowd. The founders who do that get funding. Investors want to create a hype to have justification to invest more money with total immunity. So, they get more fees. That's driving founders into "tar pits" but everybody is happy with it, except the retirees who put the money in the LPs pocket in the first place.
So pay attention to saturation when deciding what field to do your startup. 30 minutes summed up in 1 sentence.
“Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.” - Scott Adams
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?
Tarpits are ideas that seem to be sexy but they have an underlying business model issue that will make it unlikely for it to work. It's not exclusive to consumer startups - there are plenty of B2B tarpits (for me a lot of these no code B2B stuff are tarpits). I think they emphasized on consumer products because it's the first thing we think about.
@@jeromeibanez2891 not necessarily just a business model issue
It’s more about how the bar is high for them to succeed that makes them tarpits. They are not saying consumer ideas will never succeed, but the chance of them finding a unicorn is much lower than other sectors.
They are more sexy so they attract a lot of talent. So unless you are the best of the best, make something that is on the road less traveled. Only problem is that most founders can’t tell that they aren’t top tier.
Building a working business out of a consumer product is much harder than a business to business product, in my opinion. As a first time entrepreneur we started thinking we would build a consumer product and it would just go viral eventually, just work a little harder, almost there. It did not, and since our pivot to b2b, it's such a more logical and achievable business model
Google was the nth search engine is a time everybody knew for sure that: A) search results quality was an intractable problem and B) it was impossible to monetize a thing that would send traffic away. 🤷♀
Why haven't I found this channel since? TH-cam work on your algos!!!
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.
These videos are so good. Can’t believe they’re free. Thank you for making these 🤝
One of the problems with discovery apps, I used to work for a startup from a freakin rich kid founder trying to discover the cool clubs, etc. in NYC. The problem is all these underground exclusive places do exist but they don't want to be discovered, and the people that go there know that, so they only talk about the places with people who they know are cool. If the places get discovered then they get saturated with douchebags who don't have to do any work to find them other than just going on an app...
If a consumer startup doesn't have strong pull from users (as described at @10:55 in the video), how likely is it the idea is a loser?How can you tell early on whether it's an awareness problem, or an "I'm aware, but don't care" problem? I'm in this boat. What are the next steps you suggest?
Maybe your go to market strategy is not good. If your product is iterative the go to market strategy needs to be novel. If you have early users now, check who's the most active active and see if you can find specific channels to reach those. The more specific the better, and it needs to be free-ish.
If they' re not aware they have the problem and don't recognize they have the problem even when they see the solution, it's incredibly unlikely they will pay for it. Creating awareness is terribly expensive in those situations where people don't care "but should care". They will not care
@@hommhommhomm That's not true. There are two types of products: Pull products and push products. Pull products are based off of known problems and users pull you into building them. Push products are the opposite - you need to push the solution to people because they don't know they have that problem. There are success stories in both cases.
Thank you @@jeromeibanez2891 - good thoughts.
@@hommhommhomm, Your comment // situations where people don't care "but should care". They will not care // is good advice. Thank you so much.
Most founders have not spent years working inside of large companies, and the B2B markets are enshrouded in fog until you’re working for a company consuming those products/services.
Someone should make an app that gives a tarpit rating for "new ideas"
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.
Good stuff guys thank you. But if you have so much knowledge about falling businesses, I wonder if this is possible to find somewhere results of the market experiments or tests? Every new entrepreneur will benefit from having such a database.
I have been listening to yc for almost a year and you have been of great value to me as a startup founder....
Could I possibily know the software you use to record this episodes.
Thank you.
it takes a lot of humility to work on something for years and still admit it's fundamentally a bad idea, and can explain why it's flawed systematically
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.😊
Eh, I realized, my startup is a Tarpit idea, I like it, so I keep working on it. Walking alone in a super deep dark, I'm pretty brave for it. :)
Anyway, users come without any ads, just organic, no growth hacks, no crazy social meme posts, and they seem to like it, 1.2K MAUs now. I just code my app and don't have time to advertise anywhere. But I will after finishing some community features.
Mind sharing the app?
How did you deal with authentication, currently working on mine and there seems to be a lot to handle
@@Joshua-dc4un Yes, this was a problem for us too, but now we have developed a powerful solution that solved of fake users issue quite well. It means multi-step authentication, which works quite well because nearly 70% of our users verify themself. We notice that there is a kind of demand for this, as there are many dubious social apps. What is also interesting is that I have worked on a couple of similar apps and this did not happen there, our users are somehow willing to do a lot of things.
Due to the lack of social functions, there are still not many users in the application, but I'm working on it now. Another interesting thing is that mainly women register with us, which is a good sign.
i want to try your app
You find true purpose & meaning in helping real people (consumers) than building something for soulless corporations.
Even if odds of failure are high & getting funded is difficult, I am going to continue to build for consumers.
everything eventually leads to consumers. for example if you can help a car company make more efficient cars it would be the final consumer who pays less for gas. but I agree with you working with everyday people is more fun and inspiring
I think that B2B startup ideas often look intimidating and unattractive because it seems like you will be selling to soulless corporations. But in reality, corporations are made up of people. You will be selling to people and making people's lives better.
In some ways I think working on B2B can even feel more like you're helping real people because you probably have fewer customers with more direct interaction, whereas in a consumer app the users are mostly analyzed by quantitative and impersonal means.
Who uses two of the most successful companies of the last two decades as examples of quality bar?
Eh, I just started working on my "Discover things to do in life" idea XD
Thank you guys, we appreciate the best advise from you guys
Finally an honest business video
By default no searching no looking around just the top 10 which would make the companies that want to be in the top 10 work harder to make that happen
Huh. I never thought about founding a start up until watching this video. In my case, it's to develop a tool marketed towards businesses that can act as a sort of "Swiss Army Knife" for AI.
It would allow firms to create a laser focused AI trained on their known good data for...anything.
Fraud detection, error detection, CMDB monitoring, etc.,etc.
Thank you. I have seen a better and recognized a much easier solution thats not apart of the consumer world.
I have 3 products. Now I know 1 is a tarpit unless I pivot. Thank you
I have Learnt alot from you guys. And personally i think right now concentrating on the consumer products is really risky!
If discovery is such a bad idea space, why some of the most successful companies you backed are marketplaces? Probably it’s an idea space itself but rather execution without understanding the real problems set and barriers to entry. Yelp is not great for discovery of so many things but they have historically strong page rank, which is hard for new entrants to compete. In this case the mistake is to assume that just because an app provides a better discovery onsite, its where that discovery starts. Thats not the case. Being successful in solving discovery problems is as much about having a strong distribution strategy as it is about the product itself.
The demand supply idea is pretty good!
How about Reddit though? They had to fake initial user traction on the website right?
I have a question, I am working on a consumer idea. I have talked to 112 people(potential customers) and received feedback from all of them. All of them want such a product to exist and are willing to pay for it a very small amount I told them. Currently, I am interacting with even more people and building a prototype. I know it's challenging to scale the product to the desired numbers. I took notes, listened to what you were saying and analyzed it very carefully. Am I working in the right direction? Thank you.
What’s the idea?
Build a small minimum viable product proof of concept and see how many people ACTUALLY use it. Talk is cheap, and people will tell you they love your idea to your face because it’s awkward to say anything else. But will they actually use it? That’s when you know.
I think the point is that you can still try, but just go in ready to let go if it doesn't work. Some people cling to ideas and don't know where else to go if it doesn't work. I'm also working on a prototype, and I started out as a consumer. The product I want doesn't exist and it's a major pain point that I'd like to solve. It's very nerve racking that the product doesn't exist yet - but I'm still going to try because the problem is still there...
@@Prakhar_A slippers for cats
Gosh. I really enjoy almost all advice and content that has been shared by YC (Dalton/Michael)... but this one didn't seem to evoke the same sentiment.This "tarpit idea" seems a bit circular/unfalsifiable to me ... specifically: an idea that is seemingly obvious and/or fun/desirable/sexy could be/is a "tarpit idea" ... until its not... where not = a company emerges and succeeds in the space?
I totally get the intent... unfortunately, I just wish they would've talked about how important it is to have a unique insight that drive DEMONSTRABLY different outcomes (measurable) if you are going to work on a startup idea in a competitive or challenging space. I feel the commentary could wrongly discourage people from chipping away at innovative new ways to approach tough, intuitively obvious problems... would love to hear others' thoughts though.
The supply and demand of ideas and willingness to undertake them is a really enlightening pov. A point on consumer facings app though. So who will make consumer products in the future then? Has most of consumer demand been already met? I understand that the bar to clear can be higher, especially if there is no clear defined pain point to solve for an individual consumer (if its not an entertainment proposition). It also depends on the goals. if your goals are to be a hundreds of millions or billions type outfit then sure, consumer is harder. What if your goals are not that though? What if you just want to make what you need to have a fullfiling life producing what you want? I guess that would not be aligned with VC investors so maybe the video speaks truth to the VC point of view
Is Dalton an actually successful startup founder? I've read about him and please excuse my ignorance, but I'm not sure why he is Y Combinator's partner
I wish they focused more on specific examples, and why these examples don’t work. The core example I saw was “discovery app”, and the issue with the idea was very understandable: there just aren’t enough good restaurants or parties etc open locally. But what are some more tarp it ideas? And what are some issues? I fear my idea is tarpit, and I can’t gather data about past failed examples. I google “centralized education platform” but not much comes up. There is Ready Education, but it didn’t fail per se, from what I’ve gathered they’ve at least connected 700 schools. I don’t like their approach, but who are competitors and why did these companies fail?
Apologies, I wrote this at 20 mins in. I see that there is a couple more examples. I didn’t really understand Web3, and have never heard of Web3.
I would watch Michael and Dalton’s discussion of FTX on PPV
Statistically, over the course of its existence, most YC projects are B2B.
Is it safe to assume that YC is not inclined to fund B2C projects, especially those focused on social networks of various kinds?
i disagree on no one want another social or another restaurant descovy app.
the reason why more of them are created is because there is a gap... no doubt about it. but who will find it first?
i can bet if you go to a popular street in your town you will find at least 10 restaurants that are not in any app and they serve great food.
Although I liked the talk, I would've loved if there could have been added a few more examples, e.g. why timing can be harming vs. helping a startup company.
Insane value provided here! Many thanks
Solve Esoteric problems
Expand vision and think of all possible problems where it is simpler to make money
It's simpler to go with tailwind
timing is important
Speaking on supply and demand, ai is very challenging for me to understand and I would love some great resources or connections on how to learn it
Times change. Interests change. Ways of going about things change. Social media has problems you guys in Silicon Valley can’t seem to face. You push web 3 instead. Really. Well ... keep up the great work with the blinders firmly in place because the next generation is coming. Otherwise ... there are a lot of good points. I’d simply add people’s perspectives do change and if anyone has a good enough value point ... believe and never back down.
Had a discussion recently, basically we agreed, the easy money on the internet had been made. Imagine the early days of the industrial revolution. If you managed to get your loom working, you basically were in textiles and sold out. That's over now, same as the internet.
On the discovery type apps, I think the founders that think a discovery app is possible, 1 AI technique away, completely miss the point. It's people you are recommending to, and people only really take recommendations from other people when it comes to real world experiences, sure, when buying online I'll buy extra, but picking a new restaurant, food, sight, experience, good old word of mouth, from my in circle is way more powerful. Can't be replicated by code
Now I want to found a startup for eliminating 25Hz sound bursts in TH-cam videos. :-)
Yet another video from yc that inspires me to keep my day job! One of these days I'll launch my medicare-advantage-star-ratings-machine-learning business but not today.
I think there’s multiple categories within the consumer apps world. You’re talking a lot about social media apps, and other apps that not only require people to use the app but has a social component that requires other people involved to make it work.
This type of apps are very complex, because depend on tech, idea and the social growth factor that it’s the hardest part. These apps need to be “viral” in some way to work.
But then you have the niche consumer apps and apps for prosumers.
These apps are focused on solving single problems for people that are already within a niche spending money in related solutions (apps, physical products and services)
Not all consumer apps need to be viral apps to be successful.