

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

Hi,<p>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."<p>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?<p>Thanks for your thoughts!
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dgunn
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 :)

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BillSaysThis
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.

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nudge
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!

