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The video has a good heuristic to apply that I think works even within changing contexts: "avoid things with a high supply of founders who want to work on it bu

The video has a good heuristic to apply that I think works even within changing contexts: "avoid things with a high supply of founders who want to work on it but zero consumer demand for the thing itself", the classic one being a discovery/recommendations app.

kristopolous 1y ago
I guess. Successful executions become so endemic you have to take a step back and recognize it. Hn is a discovery/recommendation site as is Reddit. Amazon makes a lot of margin on theirs and arguable it's part of the major value add for Spotify and Netflix. Almost everybody looks at food and accommodation reviews and people bring up IMDb and rotten tomatoes when considering whether to watch a movie. Search engines and llms make decisions on what to surface, those are a kind of recommendation as well. So although I understand the sentiment, it's not really a great example - there's plenty of successful executions beyond the dreaded "for you recommendations" engagement bait slop on social media feeds. You're using the successful executions dozens of times a day without noticing it.
- fakedang 1y ago
  > Hn is a discovery/recommendation site as is Reddit. Amazon makes a lot of margin on theirs and arguable it's part of the major value add for Spotify and Netflix. Nope, HN is just an online forum. I can't tailor what I see on HN to my tastes, and there's a subset of posters who get preferential treatment on the frontpage (YC companies), so nope, HN is not a recommendation site.
ijustlovemath 1y ago
is there a difference between this and product market fit?
anself 1y ago
I don’t think there’s zero demand recommendation apps, a lot of founders choose this because it’s a problem they want to solve for themselves, and there are a few success stories out there. It’s just that it’s a super-hard problem
- bee_rider 1y ago
  What’s a recommendation app? Like, I’d like to watch this movie, can you tell me if it is streaming on anything?
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    Do you think we've made it to the point that a broker for streaming services would be viable? You pay a 10% premium and they connect you with the media you want to watch without you needing to maintain a monthly subscription to 15 different services. Would probably be worth it even if just to have a consistent UI across services.
    - bee_rider 1y ago
      That would be nice, but I think it is just a licensing issue and the companies that hold the licenses don’t have any incentive to try and simplify things—they’d prefer we subscribe to every service and then watch, like, one show on each.
      - bjelkeman-again 1y ago
        It would be interesting to see data on this. How many people subscribe to multiple streaming services, vs the opportunity to license the content to an aggregator and sell to those that miss a lot of content because, like me they don’t want multiple services. I refuse to subscribe to all the services that have the content I want to watch: Netflix, Apple, Prime, HBO Max, Discovery… the high seas become an inconvenient option at this point.
        bee_rider 1y ago
        I agree (and would also like to see that sort of info if it existed). But, I’m pretty sure the same folks who were in charge of cable when it became insufferable are now in charge of streaming. So, less-annoying business models… I’m not hopeful.
        1y ago
nradov 1y ago
That seems like terrible advice. First, many founders are targeting business or government customers rather than consumers. Second, when it comes to disruptive innovations, consumers don't even know what they want until you show it to them.
- ozim 1y ago
  Even worse if you show it to them they still might not know they want it. You need like critical mass of early adopters so that people would see „hey this is useful, maybe I can use it too”.
nine_k 1y ago
Discovery and recommendation apps for music and videos, such as Spotify, YouTube, and TikTok, are big hits. You just have to have a colossal inventory, and a reasonably good algorithm.
- bryanrasmussen 1y ago
  Discovery and Recommendation in those apps seem to be features, not the purpose of the app itself.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - taurath 1y ago
    The purpose of the app is to sell ads via engagement, recommendation is at least a partial (majority?) driver of engagement, so it’s part and parcel of the purpose of the app. People want what they’re providing, companies want to sell ads, and increase people’s tolerance of ads. Until the next platform without ads comes out (note - tiktok didn’t have ads almost at all for the first year)
- immibis 1y ago
  The main purpose of these apps is to click on them and watch/listen to some $foo. Not to just tell you what to watch/listen to.
- pjc50 1y ago
  You can't have a discovery app _that doesn't host the content_.
  - quinnirill 1y ago
    Google and/or IMDb don’t count as discovery apps or not hosting the content?
  - doubled112 1y ago
    Last.fm did it, or did they host content and I've never realized this in 20 years?
dcow 1y ago
Recommendation apps would work a lot better if we weren’t so collectively hing up on copyright.
f3b5 1y ago
In central Europe our biggest tarpit are sustainability / climate topics. Even founders that are smart enough to realize the difficulties still pursue these topics because of an unfoly feedback loop where government agencies almost exclusively fund those "societally important" areas. There's no other risk capital available so most founders align their goals, just to fold 1-2 years later.
- vanattab 1y ago
  I mean that's better then funding a bunch of startups that try and use psychological traps to capture the attention of your kids and ruining their ability to focus. Most of them also fold 1-2 years later.
- pedalpete 1y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with this - though I'm not in central Europe. Sustainability and climate are not products or businesses in themselves. If you're trying to sell sustainabiity, what is your business? What are you selling? If it's advice on how people can be sustainable, or carbon credits or something, sure, those are things that may be tarpits. But electric vehicles were probably a tarpit idea until they went from being advanced golf carts to being real cars. Environmentally friendly packaging is doing very well. Etc etc.
  - popcorncowboy 1y ago
    > Sustainability and climate are not products or businesses in themselves. Tell that to the funding programs.
Enginerrrd 1y ago
Yeah this is actually a really useful idea in general. I learned this when I was put on a team for a modeling competition in college. You had like 72 hours to solve the problem and write the report. It was really stressful but a LOT of fun. There were a range of topics that you could choose from. Some were really obvious how to apply mathematics to, and some... weren't. I was the math talent on the team... but my team members talked me out of going for one of the problems that were easy to apply math to. We instead picked the problem where it was LEAST obvious. And... we ended up winning the competition against a field of 10,000+. I think that lesson applies in business all over the place. There's actually a lot of good comfortable money to be made in unglamorous industries.

kristopolous 1y ago

I guess. Successful executions become so endemic you have to take a step back and recognize it. Hn is a discovery/recommendation site as is Reddit. Amazon makes a lot of margin on theirs and arguable it's part of the major value add for Spotify and Netflix. Almost everybody looks at food and accommodation reviews and people bring up IMDb and rotten tomatoes when considering whether to watch a movie. Search engines and llms make decisions on what to surface, those are a kind of recommendation as well. So although I understand the sentiment, it's not really a great example - there's plenty of successful executions beyond the dreaded "for you recommendations" engagement bait slop on social media feeds. You're using the successful executions dozens of times a day without noticing it.

fakedang 1y ago
> Hn is a discovery/recommendation site as is Reddit. Amazon makes a lot of margin on theirs and arguable it's part of the major value add for Spotify and Netflix. Nope, HN is just an online forum. I can't tailor what I see on HN to my tastes, and there's a subset of posters who get preferential treatment on the frontpage (YC companies), so nope, HN is not a recommendation site.

ijustlovemath 1y ago

is there a difference between this and product market fit?

anself 1y ago

I don’t think there’s zero demand recommendation apps, a lot of founders choose this because it’s a problem they want to solve for themselves, and there are a few success stories out there. It’s just that it’s a super-hard problem

bee_rider 1y ago
What’s a recommendation app? Like, I’d like to watch this movie, can you tell me if it is streaming on anything?
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  Do you think we've made it to the point that a broker for streaming services would be viable? You pay a 10% premium and they connect you with the media you want to watch without you needing to maintain a monthly subscription to 15 different services. Would probably be worth it even if just to have a consistent UI across services.
  - bee_rider 1y ago
    That would be nice, but I think it is just a licensing issue and the companies that hold the licenses don’t have any incentive to try and simplify things—they’d prefer we subscribe to every service and then watch, like, one show on each.
    - bjelkeman-again 1y ago
      It would be interesting to see data on this. How many people subscribe to multiple streaming services, vs the opportunity to license the content to an aggregator and sell to those that miss a lot of content because, like me they don’t want multiple services. I refuse to subscribe to all the services that have the content I want to watch: Netflix, Apple, Prime, HBO Max, Discovery… the high seas become an inconvenient option at this point.
      - bee_rider 1y ago
        I agree (and would also like to see that sort of info if it existed). But, I’m pretty sure the same folks who were in charge of cable when it became insufferable are now in charge of streaming. So, less-annoying business models… I’m not hopeful.
      - 1y ago

nradov 1y ago

That seems like terrible advice. First, many founders are targeting business or government customers rather than consumers. Second, when it comes to disruptive innovations, consumers don't even know what they want until you show it to them.

ozim 1y ago
Even worse if you show it to them they still might not know they want it. You need like critical mass of early adopters so that people would see „hey this is useful, maybe I can use it too”.

nine_k 1y ago

Discovery and recommendation apps for music and videos, such as Spotify, YouTube, and TikTok, are big hits. You just have to have a colossal inventory, and a reasonably good algorithm.

bryanrasmussen 1y ago
Discovery and Recommendation in those apps seem to be features, not the purpose of the app itself.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- taurath 1y ago
  The purpose of the app is to sell ads via engagement, recommendation is at least a partial (majority?) driver of engagement, so it’s part and parcel of the purpose of the app. People want what they’re providing, companies want to sell ads, and increase people’s tolerance of ads. Until the next platform without ads comes out (note - tiktok didn’t have ads almost at all for the first year)
immibis 1y ago
The main purpose of these apps is to click on them and watch/listen to some $foo. Not to just tell you what to watch/listen to.
pjc50 1y ago
You can't have a discovery app _that doesn't host the content_.
- quinnirill 1y ago
  Google and/or IMDb don’t count as discovery apps or not hosting the content?
- doubled112 1y ago
  Last.fm did it, or did they host content and I've never realized this in 20 years?

dcow 1y ago

Recommendation apps would work a lot better if we weren’t so collectively hing up on copyright.

f3b5 1y ago

In central Europe our biggest tarpit are sustainability / climate topics. Even founders that are smart enough to realize the difficulties still pursue these topics because of an unfoly feedback loop where government agencies almost exclusively fund those "societally important" areas. There's no other risk capital available so most founders align their goals, just to fold 1-2 years later.

vanattab 1y ago
I mean that's better then funding a bunch of startups that try and use psychological traps to capture the attention of your kids and ruining their ability to focus. Most of them also fold 1-2 years later.
pedalpete 1y ago
I'm not sure I agree with this - though I'm not in central Europe. Sustainability and climate are not products or businesses in themselves. If you're trying to sell sustainabiity, what is your business? What are you selling? If it's advice on how people can be sustainable, or carbon credits or something, sure, those are things that may be tarpits. But electric vehicles were probably a tarpit idea until they went from being advanced golf carts to being real cars. Environmentally friendly packaging is doing very well. Etc etc.
- popcorncowboy 1y ago
  > Sustainability and climate are not products or businesses in themselves. Tell that to the funding programs.

Enginerrrd 1y ago

Yeah this is actually a really useful idea in general. I learned this when I was put on a team for a modeling competition in college. You had like 72 hours to solve the problem and write the report. It was really stressful but a LOT of fun. There were a range of topics that you could choose from. Some were really obvious how to apply mathematics to, and some... weren't. I was the math talent on the team... but my team members talked me out of going for one of the problems that were easy to apply math to. We instead picked the problem where it was LEAST obvious. And... we ended up winning the competition against a field of 10,000+. I think that lesson applies in business all over the place. There's actually a lot of good comfortable money to be made in unglamorous industries.