Ask HN: Why are tools for local events a "perennial tarpit"?

11 points·typicalday··3 comments

Hi,

In PG's essay on reasons startups fail (http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html) he mentions in #10 that "...[servicing] People interested in local events...is a perennial tarpit."

I'd like to understand people's thoughts on why. Is the space too crowded? Are the typical solutions simply bad or not specific enough?

Thanks for your thoughts!

View on HN

I think there is a trick to this. If the local event you're developing your product around is actually specific to one location, I would say it's probably a bad idea. For example, I'm in the DC area (for now) and I would consider it to be a bad idea to make a "Lincoln Memorial-centric App" because people can only see the Lincoln Memorial if they are in DC and thus I immediately limit my market to those who live nearby and those who visit. On the other hand, an app meant to socialize something like eating is probably a better idea because while eating is a local event, it happens everywhere. A good example for these "hybrid-local/global" companies would be grubwith.us or geo-caching services. Hope this was clear. Not much time to write :)

I'm not disagreeing with @pg but instead of trying to build a business/startup I'm developing a FOSS project called SmallCommunities (http://github.com/billsaysthis/SmallCommunities). It's written in Rails and is intended, at least at first, to handle groups which have regular events and (paid) members. Always happy to have more collaborators.

My guess would be that there's very little money in it, and for what money there is (advertising of such events, perhaps), competition is fierce.

But if you've got a good way to disrupt it, go ahead!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com