What is a “tarpit idea”?
These are the startup ideas that seem good — almost too good to be true! — but have been tried by many founders before with little to no success.
Tarpit ideas are often not hard in obvious ways. They might seem so easy and good that it’s unbelievable that no one has done it — but when you look a bit deeper, you realize that they have been tried. Over, and over again.
Via: Tarpit ideas - what are tarpit ideas & how to avoid them
To put my mind at rest, these are ideas I think are tarpits.
On-Chain Games / Game Items
- People do not actually care about taking a sword from one game to another, or whatever.
- Games are self-contained ecosystems. Objects are valuable only within their specific contexts.
Personal CRM
- no one wants to treat their life like work
- the tech has been there for 10+ years to make this happen, alas
Micro-transactions for content/blog posts
- economics don't make sense (transaction costs!)
- friction doesn't make sense
Ethical investment platform
- making money > making money "ethically"
Dedicated decision making software/tools
- generalized tools do the trick
- it's a niche audience
Decentralized Twitter using Crypto
- Harder to use
- Smaller/niche user-base
- Not even 2x better than web2 social, let alone 10x needed to get folks to truly switch
Watch 🎬 Tarpit Ideas: The Sequel
.jpg)
