The long awaited follow-up to their original tarpit ideas video, Dalton and Michael dispel some misconceptions about what a tarpit idea actually is and how it applies to current technology trends like artificial intelligence. Don't get stuck!

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) - 
00:00 - Intro
00:29 - Tarpit 2.0
02:47 - Key Factors
04:18 - Technology & Historical Factor
05:18 - X for Y
06:16 - Current Technology
06:54 - Artificial Intelligence
08:48 - Changing Behavior
10:09 - Arbitrage
12:40 - Takeaway
13:40 - Outro

Transcript:

when some of the people ask me oh is my idea tarpit I'll be like hey well have you talked to any users and they're like no I just no I thought you would tell me though like it's funny it's like how you been watching the videos I think I think what we say in the videos is you should talk to users and get a customer they're like yeah I guess you did say that yeah [Music] interesting this is dalon plus Michael and today we're going to talk about tarpit ideas again tarp pit the sequel part two part two so we've gotten a lot of feedback from our first tpit video was it about a year it was a while ago yeah maybe a little bit more it's like oh this looks like a nice pool of water no one's no one's here drinking at it I'm going to I'm going to go get a drink of water from this pool right like no danger quicksand what have you learned about well I think a lot of people watch that video yes and I've met a lot of people in the world real world that have watched it and the most common question I get is hey Dalton is my idea a tarpit and then they tell me their idea and maybe the first thing that I noticed was a lot of folks I feel like didn't exactly get the definition that we had and they're they interpret the term tarpet to just mean an idea that I don't like again maybe I'm and Michael yeah it's sort of like an idea that came up in the last video and I think you know we try to define a different way why don't you try to give the definition and you should watch the video watch yes but we should we should restart right so the idea behind the tarpet idea is we would see a lot of Founders applying with the same idea over and over and over again and often we would fund many of them and often the idea wouldn't work and after a while we we started seeing this trend we're like wow there these certain idea spaces that seem to always attract a lot of applicants and they never work and like that's how we kind of came up with this concept of a tarpit idea and in the video I explained that like that's how tarpits were for dinosaurs right it looks like a body of water from afar and as the dinosaur gets close they go to drink it and it's tar and they get stuck and they die and that's why we have all of these dead Founders in these tarpit pools all these de dinosaurs and tarpit pools what was interesting though was that like you said people interpret it as almost like a static list that doesn't change over time time well and also that an idea that is bad and an idea is a tarpet are the same thing a tarpet is a pretty small if we imagine the VIN diagram tarpet ideas are a smallish set of ideas yes there's lots of ideas that are neither good nor bad they're just normal yes yes and so yes there's something about tarpet ideas that are insanely attractive yeah like like if some if other Founders don't come up with them all the time constantly it is not a tarpit idea it has to be it has to be something that you're like yeah I had that idea too yes I think there's another part about tarpet ideas which like they sound it's really funny most startup ideas when you tell your friends and they being honest they're like that's not a good idea tarpet ideas get like a lot of Praise like the second your friend's like that's a great idea yeah like a food Discovery like you know that problem where you can't decide what restaurant to go to yeah that's a great idea you pit your friends on like I totally have that problem I have that problem all the time I think that the other thing you brought up is there's a characteristic of a startup idea where it's been done before right and I think this is an area where a lot of Founders you know avoid research to not learn things they don't want to learn but it's been done before a lot and nothing has changed like there's no you know I would argue that there are a number of ideas that at any given time in the you know last hundred years might have been tarpit and then technology changed yep and suddenly these are not only possible they're great businesses but I think that the kind of characteristic of it's been done a lot a lot of people have failed and nothing has changed that's very and there's just like an endless supply of folks that haven't even started a company yet that tend to come up with a similar idea it just is one of the first ideas to pop into people's minds now I think what's interesting is what's happened since we recorded that video is llms yep AI I think that when I'm reading applications my first thought is like I am open to even classic tarpet ideas no longer being tarpet like I'm open what I love to see is when a Founder can explain to me why the new technology might make something accomplishable that wasn't accomplishable before yep what I hate to see is a Founder that's not even acknowledging that like many people have tried and failed before like it's like oh history that happened before I'm alive didn't happen wait it didn't like I've been alive and then that's when history starts right and actually I wasn't even aware so it's like since I've been like 18ish like that's like history starts the only good music is when I was 18 exactly literally I think another area that that you brought up is kind of the the X for y right you like the co-pilot for you know co-pilot's working great for developers yep should there not be a co-pilot for fill in the blank yeah and in this one to be very clear I don't think that these are tarpits fair but they are common and so to be very specific everyone says co-pilot for x and then like we could play Mad Libs co-pilot for real estate agents co-pilot for in uh investment bankers co-pilot for lawyers Pilots co-pilot for Pilots co- surgeons surgeons yeah uh co-pilots for you know basically any job who doesn't need a co- coil for dentists co-pilot for dog walkers who would not want a co-pilot and so again these are not tarpits because not enough people have tried them exactly but they are common ideas I would say again doesn't mean you shouldn't try it but yeah a lot of people just from first principles trying to come up with AI startup ideas these are the type of things they tend to cook up yeah this is not meant to try to like screw with your dreams right like I think that a lot of people start companies because there's a problem they see in the world they really want to fix and I think that the depressing thing I've learned is that whatever current set of technology is available can address only a current set of problems and like some problems are going to fall outside of that set and every time there's a new chunk of Technology we have to re-explore right let's re-explore what problems are available and I think that what's cool is that like there are a lot of companies this batch where I would say I would not have funded this idea in the pre- lolm world okay like I funded a company that's basically doing like completely um AI gener podcasts and it's like without llms and the ability to do like voice generation that would I would have never considered funing it with that I'm like okay let's see and so I think that's the other thing that you should kind of understand from our perspective we're definitely in a okay let's see phase compared to like 10 years into B2B SAS it was like we've seen a lot of we've seen a lot of forms and like yeah so I think that like that's another fun part of this and I guess AI generated video and audio we have seen YC companies working on those since 2016 27 like the early generative AI stuff we funded we've been funding that consistently yes and it seems like it's getting better yes the quality is getting better yes it's one funny thing about these things is uh they always train them on YouTube video and guess guess what guess who has a lot of YouTube video of them and so so all these new demos that we see it's us yeah in the videos quite embarrassing it is a little bit embarrassing but they're getting they're getting admittedly kind of good yeah um well I was thing I played like I played this personalized podcast it's called pocket pot I played this one to my wife and she's like oh like you're listening to NPR or like some other thing and then it played a quote of me talking to the reporter and she's like oh did you give an interview I'm like this all is this is I didn't I'm learning for the first time that I'm on my own podcast and so it's it's I would say it's fun for us to see all these new things but like still if you can't draw any connection between the two technology and why your problem can be solved today and it's one of these ideas that have been tried many times tricky yep maybe the last thing we should talk about is like where what are the flavors of tarpits you know we were talking about this before there there multiple flavors of tarpits like what do you what do you see I think there's the two most common vect are one just a belief that the world should work differently than it does better and this is all coming from a good place but it's basically wow the way X works is bad we should do it why and everyone simultaneously needs to adopt the scheme so I'd put the the idea of coordinating with your friends to see who you can hang out with and do event planning is one of these where wouldn't it be cooler if all your friends wanted to hang out all the time and you could coordinate with them all have more fun we'd all have more fun we wouldn't be sad yeah it and so the way you want the world to work is that everyone's like yeah I want to install a new app to see what all my friends are doing and hang out with them sadly it does not appear that people want to do that or at least no one that's tried this idea has figured it out yet I'm sure someone is watching they me like but I'm going to figure it out um God bless you but that's again it's coming from this really good place this utopian sense of changing the way that we live our lives yes and running into that it's just hard to change human Behavior it's a perfect example of tarpet because it's the perfect example of something where like nobody would say no yeah no one want to discourage you yeah you're working on something that's really good yeah so that's number one what what about number two number two is um I don't know you did a better version of this earlier yeah I I Think It's Tricky I think it's it could be summarized as like some form of Arbitrage yeah or getting rich very quickly there's like a limited window where like I have some secret knowledge and like I can get very rich very fast and like I would be working for Google but because of this moment in time I can kind of like fast forward through the entire startup thing and like kill it and I think that um that also sounds really attractive it's like right like you have to work for 15 years to make your startup work but like if I just do the right thing at the exact Right Time game on Grand Slam home run I can be rich you know in Miami like yeah this is where you you just end up doing an idea that's like whatever is raising money or you find some sort of Arbitrage where you you know a lot of adtech stuff was like this or uh anyway like you see these momentary things where you want to just immediately make tons of money from it there were lots of people um influenced by Wall Street bets uh during the pandemic where a lot of startup ideas were like someone saw Wall Street bets and was like hey I'm gonna make a startup out of this somehow like that was the that was the input my favorite one is like I'm doing so great on Wall Street bets and my friends are all seeing it and they just want to give me their money so I can invest it for them so what is the like fastest way I can create like an investment advisory business excuse me so I could just just shove my friend's money into the market as fast check out Michael I don't know I don't know why you're live like I was going to pit you that idea I I got some great stock tips and I'm just like God like am i w like am I watching the car crash in real time I I don't see the problem it's like don't markets always go up forever isn't that how isn't that how graphs work aren't graphs like this when you're young yes the market only goes up forever if it's your first time and I'm thinking about this poor Founders friends who just dump all their life savings into their investment advisory business and the market I even know what company you're referencing well there's many I mean there's there's more than I'm thinking of yes I know I know what you're saying so yeah so that's like you know the mercenary so wrapping it up right I think maybe the big takeaway here is this is not a static list of ideas maybe ideas that we had mentioned in our last video are no longer tarpit Technology's changed maybe ideas we made fun of in this video won't be tarpit 6 months from now technology changes if it look looks too good to be true like if you're getting too much positive feedback if it feels like why does this already exist it seems so easy that's not like the shape of things that we see working right like maybe you should be a little skeptical well it's funny when some of the people ask me oh is my idea tarpit I'll be like hey well have you talked to any users and they're like no I just no I thought you would tell me though like it's funny it's like how you been watching the videos I think I think what we say in the videos is you should talk to users and get a customer they're like yeah I guess you did say that yeah interesting I I thought I would just pick a video and idea based on what you said in the video all right Colton good chat all right sounds good thanks man [Music]