
Why Toys? - craigcannon
http://blog.ycombinator.com/why-toys/
======
ujeezy
One of my favorite pg ideas: "When something is described as a toy, that means
it has everything an idea needs except being important. It's cool; users love
it; it just doesn't matter. But if you're living in the future and you build
something cool that users love, it may matter more than outsiders think."

[http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html)

~~~
diminish
while working on our startup [1] this is one of the top pg quotes I like.
However while talking to our customers we regularly face the "toy" critic as
opposed to "feature rich". however approaching it as a toy keeps it simple ,
though for saas it appears as too simplistic sometimes.

[1] we offer games and puzzles as a service to serious marketing clients.

~~~
ryandrake
I think it’s about time we turn “feature rich” around and start considering it
a criticism rather than a compliment. So many products I’ve loved as a
consumer and worked on as a developer were eventually ruined by relentless
feature cram and their never being declared “done”.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Interesting. I wanted to suggest an exact opposite.

I'd love to have seen those products of yours. In the alternate universe I
live in, almost all the SaaS products I see are toys, never progressing beyond
MVP phase.

~~~
marcosdumay
SaaS can not interoperate. Thus feature-poor SaaS are useless.

~~~
k__
Could you please elaborate?

~~~
marcosdumay
UNIX tools can focus on solving a single problem well because they
interoperate between themselves, so you can join tools that solve different
problems and make something useful out of it.

SaaS has no such option. It either does every little thing you need, or it
doesn't solve the problem.

~~~
neeleshs
IFTT, stitch and segment are some companies that try to solve this problem.

~~~
TeMPOraL
They're ultimately limited to which SaaS lets them, which is usually not much.
For many, deep interoperability goes against the core objective of
"engagement" (i.e. trapping the user in the service for as long as possible).

~~~
brucephillips
Interesting. What's an example of deep interoperability you'd to see that
isn't currently available?

------
turingcompeteme
Standard Oil actually did start out as a toy. They provided oil to burn in
lamps. At the time most people thought that was a somewhat silly gimmick and a
fad that would quickly pass. Oil in general was seen as something neat but not
essential for years. But just like facebook, many people soon came around to
the idea and it took over the world.

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. covers this all in incredible
detail, if it is something that interests you.

~~~
loeber
This is plainly wrong. Rockefeller started dealing in oil because the unit
economics were excellent, and because he recognized that no dominant players
had emerged in the market yet, opening it up to vertical & horizontal
integration (both of which he executed flawlessly).

Furthermore, asserting that indoor lighting was a toy -- in an age where other
light sources were dim, prohibitively expensive, or excessively smoky -- seems
mistaken to me.

~~~
brucephillips
I don't see how desirable unit economics refutes GP's claim that the initial
market was lamp oil.

~~~
afarrell
It doesn't, but the lack of other good sources of indoor lighting refutes the
claim that the lamp oil market is a toy.

~~~
hnzix
_> refutes the claim that the lamp oil market is a toy._

GP never made that claim. The point is that lamp oil was perceived as a toy
before people realized the (blindingly obvious in hindsight) utility for
indoor lighting.

~~~
afarrell
What did they use lamp oil for then? I thought lamp oil was always for indoor
lighting...

------
jpwagner
The best dichotomy I've heard for this is:

Are you building [Ice Skates] or are you building [Ear muffs]?

Ice skates allow you to do something new that you didn't even know you had a
demand for. Ear muffs solve a problem that you were already solving poorly
(with your hands).

[Business vs toy] is an insanely counterproductive mental framework which will
create a false sense of security in founders who are actually building crap -
just because you can play with it does not mean it has value.

~~~
fiatjaf
Good point.

I believe you can only do that distinction (business vs toy) after the fact.
So it offers no guidance at all.

Was Dropbox a toy in the beggining? You can argue. Was Google a toy in the
beggining? You can argue. Was Uber a toy in the beggining? You can argue. Was
Airbnb a toy in the beggining? You can argue.

Unless, of course, you're talking about the famous SOCIAL NETWORKS. In which
case they were -- and continue to be -- toys.

~~~
afarrell
It is worth noting that Dropbox took a bundle of business problems that
already had been solved in one small community and solved it for a much wider
community. Specifically, the problems of "cloud" file storage were being
solved by AFS in MIT's Project Athena. So, to argue at Dropbox's founding that
it was a toy would require first arguing that businesses didn't have problems
that resembled "All the folks working on this class project need to have one
accessible and shareable place to store files".

------
philwelch
> This trend does not fit with history either. Standard Oil, US Steel, and
> Boeing were all iconically huge companies that were built as businesses.
> None of them went through a phase where they looked like toys.

This is largely because "inventing a new thing" and "building a massive
business from that invention" are more closely linked now than they have been,
historically. Standard Oil and US Steel postdated the invention of steel and
steam engines by centuries. Boeing postdated the Wright Flyer by a few years,
and even then mostly got off the ground due to the World Wars. (And the
Wrights actually did try and make a business out of their invention, but
that's another story.)

The Apple I was a toy computer designed in 1976. The Apple II was a mass-
market personal computer designed in 1977 by the designer of the Apple I.
There wasn't a World War nor any obvious military applications for the early
Apple Computers, and the inventor who designed them (Woz) just happened to be
close friends with someone who was just mercenary enough to try and make a
business out of it (Jobs).

~~~
TylerE
> Standard Oil and US Steel postdated the invention of steel and steam engines
> by centuries.

The first component of what was to become US Steel opened in 1857, only 2
years after the invention of the Bessemer process that made it practical to
produce steel in industrial quantities.

~~~
philwelch
I mean, of course once you invent serious industrial scale processes, you can
set up a serious business. But the lag time between "invention of steel" and
"invention of the Bessemer process" was a lot bigger than the lag time between
"invention of Apple I" and "invention of Apple II".

------
adrian_mrd
Nintendo is often derided for being a ‘toy’ company - as opposed to, say,
Apple which is a ‘real’ hardware company.

Yet look at the big N’s track record of innovative hardware and software
integration: Wii motion controls, Switch’s Joy-Cons and (soon) the cardboard
Toy-Cons _, N64 rumble pack for haptic feedback, battery backup in NES and
SNES cartridges, etc.

(And yeah, lots of misfires along the way like the Wii U, Power Glove_ _,
Virtual Boy, etc).

A massive advantage of being a ‘toy’ company is what I would call the Pixar
effect: products work for kids and adults alike.

Lego is also worthy of a look, but made a major strategic error IMHO by not
purchasing Minecraft and letting Microsoft snap it up.

_ hat tip to Google Cardboard, of course.

 __or maybe that was a success, given its marketing impact post ‘The Wizard’
:)

// edited a few spelling mistakes and added the gCardboard ref and Lego
appendum

~~~
ramblerman
> Nintendo is often derided for being a ‘toy’ company - as opposed to, say,
> Apple which is a ‘real’ hardware company. (...Nintendo, Lego, Minecraft)

I think you are stuck on 'literal' toys, which was not what was meant in the
article.

------
siong1987
This is a really good post but it is disappointing that nowhere in the post it
mentions Chris Dixon's post on this: [http://cdixon.org/2010/01/03/the-next-
big-thing-will-start-o...](http://cdixon.org/2010/01/03/the-next-big-thing-
will-start-out-looking-like-a-toy/)

~~~
rhizome
Eight years on and I'm not sure that essay, while confident, has been borne
out by time.

~~~
tlb
You could add substance to your comment by listing some things that became big
after 2010, and saying whether or not they seemed like toys early on.

One example: Bitcoin (2009, but few had heard of it before 2010),
cryptocurrencies and blockchains. I think these support cdixon's claim.

Another: Snapchat (2011) and other ephemeral messaging apps. These certainly
seemed like toys.

~~~
qbrass
Beanie Babies looked like toys early on, too.

Just because something found a market doesn't mean it's not still a toy.

------
ebspelman
This reminds me a lot of a chapter in Jesse Schell's awesome book, The Art of
Game Design: A Book of Lenses.[1][2]

He recommends occasionally thinking about a game as a toy.

"The Lens of The Toy: To use this lens, stop thinking about whether your game
is fun to play, and start thinking about whether it is fun to play _with_."

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Book-
Lenses/dp/012369...](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Book-
Lenses/dp/0123694965)

[2] PDF version (see book page 90 // PDF page 119):
[http://www.sg4adults.eu/files/art-game-
design.pdf](http://www.sg4adults.eu/files/art-game-design.pdf)

~~~
runevault
I actually just bought this book and it is arriving Friday. Funny to see the
pdf now, but I think in the end this is a case I'll appreciate having a
physical copy.

------
TeMPOraL
Interesting; I'm surprised to see this comparison made, even though in
retrospect (thanks to 'ujeezy for pointing it out), I recognize the PG quote
about things "described as a toy".

The funny thing is; they've drawn a mostly different comparison using the same
dichotomy ("toy" vs "serious") that I use for occasional rants on this site. I
say mostly different, because here's the intersection:

 _If you give people a tool and tell them it will perfectly solve an important
problem, any imperfection in the tool is going to make them angry. If you give
someone a toy and say “Look what I made! Isn’t it fun? It kinda does this
thing.” then you’ve set yourself up for a positive reaction. It’s much easier
to beat low expectations than high ones, so you’ve materially increased your
chances at having a happy user._

What I _loathe_ about current startups and SaaS companies is that they
seemingly can't - or don't want to - progress past the stage of a toy. I agree
that when I see a random toy on the net, I'll have a positive reaction of
curiosity. But then, at some point, I'll have an actual thing I want to get
done _efficiently_. Suddenly, the toy becomes borderline useless, because it
either can't help me with the task at all, or the help is very weak.

What I mean is: if you're trying to show that something entirely new is
possible, by all means, make it a pretty little toy. But when your site is
full of advertising copy around "helping users" and "making world (of niche
thing X) a better place", then _for the love of $deity_ , make your product
functional and efficient.

The reality is, most SaaS startups seem to be toys in that sense, to the point
(or because of) it infected the modern UX trends! UX people will tell you
about uncluttering, removing functionality, "your user doesn't need that",
"this is confusing", "put this in 'advanced options'", "actually, 'options'
are confusing, drop it entirely"... For example, observe how, over the years,
Google dumbed down its products from actual tools to pretty Material Design
toys with a fraction of original functionality. And then people treat Google
as role model...

So yeah, startup founders: don't treat yourself seriously, but _please_ , try
to actually work on the value you're saying you're providing to your users.

</rant>

~~~
pbhjpbhj
This brings me back to a recent conversation on advertising not being
informational.

If the makers of $tool also said what their greatest deficiencies were then
buyers would be much more able to decide. Instead they're motivated to hide
their flaws and make the sale, hoping -- if it's profitable to do so -- to fix
those errors/flaws/shortcomings later.

In a slightly related note it grieved me to see the presenters/producers of
the SpaceX launch hide the partial failure of landing the core (I swear you
can see one of them set up to tell us, then they get a message in their ear).
I thought it was a more progressive endeavour - targeting the end goal rather
than media gloss.

~~~
TeMPOraL
RE SpaceX, I agree. You could clearly see that the presenters got the info
that the center core landing failed, and they were _just about_ to tell so. I
understand the rationale behind that decision - the 'media gloss' is still
important to the success of their core goal - but it left a pretty bad taste
in my mouth.

------
schnevets
I am constantly thinking about the question: _What is the future tech
entrepreneur 's lemonade stand?_

It would have to be something typical and low-skill so a young entrepreneur
can build it and learn the hard lessons about running a business, but it needs
some special defense to avoid being out-innovated by an Amazon or Google. The
Facebook example as a toy is perfect - the platform was able to thrive by
being hyper-localized, and offering its own personality and levity.

It seems to me like the founders of the future are coding games today.

~~~
zerostar07
has a lemonade stand ever evolved into serious business? I am of the
impression they get abandoned

~~~
aeorgnoieang
Actual lemonade stands (run by children)? They're usually shutdown by the
police, at least in the U.S. [Tho my sources severely skew my sample so as to
entirely neglect counterexamples.]

Metaphorical lemonade stands are almost always abandoned too. But that seems
obviously fine anyways.

~~~
ksenzee
I think "usually" is an exaggeration. I've seen plenty of lemonade stands and
I've never seen one shut down by police. I've seen news stories about it
happening, but the fact that it makes national headlines says something about
how rare it is: [https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/11/politics/lemonade-stand-
shut-...](https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/11/politics/lemonade-stand-shut-down-
texas/index.html)

~~~
aeorgnoieang
Yes, I think you're very likely correct.

------
djrogers
This nicely highlights one of the huge distinctions between consumer startups
and enterprise startups, and perhaps provides some reasoning behind why these
two types of startups are run differently and have different results in the
market.

If I'm at an enterprise startup, ideally we've identified a business problem,
and created a widget to address it. This falls very much in to the tool
category, and anything I do to make it 'fun' is of marginal value.

Unfortunately, in the Valley I see a lot of devs who want to work on the toys
because they're fun, which means the pool of talent for the 'serious' startups
is that much smaller. This is too bad, because in my experience the likelihood
of having any startup equity attain significant value is much better in the
enterprise startup world.

------
amasad
Closely related is the adage that great ideas often look like bad ones. I
think it's worth thinking about all these nuggets of wisdom in terms of
efficient markets:

Given that there are so many entrepreneurs building startups the best sounding
ideas are already taken and what's left are the bad and seemingly bad ones.
The market-economy is very good at picking low-hanging fruit. If you dropped a
$20 bill in Grand Central station chances are it'll be taken in minutes, while
if you dropped it in a random alley somewhere, you can probably go back the
next day and find it.

So for you to find a good idea that the market hasn't picked up yet it needs
to be somehow hidden in plain sight -- a crumbled $20 bill that looks like a
piece of garbage.

A similar concept that I've been thinking a lot about in the context of my
startup is a "scaling bottleneck". For you to get big and service everybody
you have to first service a demographic that is often thought of as a dead-end
in terms of making money. Say kids, or a hobbyists in a certain field. I think
the Facebook example applies here too: it was hard to see how this toy could
scale beyond college students. Worded as a statement about efficient markets:
good ideas for startups that will initially service and grow on a potentially
non-monetizable demographic will not attract entrepreneurs and therefore will
be available for ones that have that insight.

------
dsimms
I think Tesla is a great example of toy-first strategy. The roadster is
comically niche. But: the electric drive train is super torquey so makes a
great sports car, it's not an every day car so the lack of charging
infrastructure is less critical, nor would the inevitable reliability problems
dissuade that use, quite a few investors were Roadster owners _first_.

------
wlamont
I remember when the first iphone was released in 2007. I had several friends
working at Blackberry at the time and they were dismissive of the iphone as
merely a "toy". I always quiped in response "who doesn't love toys?".

Had Blackberry taken the threat of the iphone more seriously, the smartphone
market would look very different.

~~~
hrktb
I think it’s way more complex than that. Blackberry made attempts at touch
screens but they were all crappy.

Some engineers might have been dismissive, but as a company I think it tried
its best to live in the future. It just didn’t have the insight to take the
right tradeoffs with the more efficient tech.

Japanese phone makers had the same issue. As early as 2005 some maker tried to
have touch screens, some with really innovative interfaces to compensate for
the technology, but it stayed niche devices.

I don’t think anyone really dismissed touch interfaces as non threatening. It
was just damn hard to have anything that was remotely useful.

------
aaavl2821
i'd love to see more examples of SMB software that started either as "toys" or
with "toy-like" features. the only one i can think of off hand is wufoo, but
im sure there are others

im working on a product that (hopefully) will address an important need, but
developing the solution to that need will require pretty robust software and a
services component that will take some time. to get users excited about going
on that journey id like to help them have some fun and get their imagination
stirring. they are used to crappy dry software and have tough jobs, so
lightening their day a bit and inspiring them about the future would make them
happy

~~~
zerostar07
that kind of gamification does not alter the nature of your product though. it
s still some kind of tool and not something people use almost exclusively for
fun/leisure

------
bitwize
Let's not forget perhaps the biggest toy to turn serious business in the past
century or so: the microcomputer itself. Without which there wouldn't even
_be_ a Facebook, or a Y Combinator.

~~~
rhizome
Pretty expensive to call it a toy. The Altair 8800 was $2000 in current
dollars for the kit, $3000 assembled. The Apple II would be $5K now, the IBM
PC $8K.

------
calchris42
It strikes me that SW is a key reason for any shift toward a toy-first
mentality. Most of the arguments in the article make sense when a (SW) product
can be rapidly iterated. Physical products likely tend to be harder to start
too toyish... well, except for when they are toys.

------
rsp1984
_The third thing that goes wrong when you take your toy too seriously is that
you immediately start optimizing on the things that you believe serious
businesses should – profit and margins. While these things are important in
the long run, focusing on them too early injects an impossible set of things
for an early startup to do._

How is this not in direct contradiction to
[http://paulgraham.com/aord.html](http://paulgraham.com/aord.html)?

Can somebody shed some light on this? I don't necessarily disagree with Aaron
but its tough to make any sense of it when one YC person tells you one thing
and another YC person tells you pretty much the exact the opposite.

~~~
akharris
One of the fun things about advice is that you'll find things that seem in
direct opposition, even from people who generally agree.

In this case, though, context is critical. PG's point here is around startups
that have been around for a while, on which people are working full time, that
are meant to be businesses. I'm trying to get at the part that comes before
that stage.

In this case, the additional context I'd look for would be around what the
creator/founder is trying to do and how successful they've been at doing that.

------
tzhenghao
Depending on the definition of the word startup, most (if not all) successful
open source communities started off as a toy. The Ethereum foundation is a
recent example of this.

I also personally think that "toys" are great for building and sharpening
one's skills, much like Lego in the real world. This can be everything from
you trying to "sell" your toy so other kids will come play with it, all the
way up to learning how to glue software components together and make it work.
Some technical toy projects have steep learning curves, and as an engineer
myself, I see it as an opportunity to learn things I otherwise wouldn't
working on a "serious project".

------
brucephillips
His example of a company that's built from a toy is Facebook. His example of
companies that aren't are all enterprise.

A simpler explanation of the value of a toy is just that being "fun" matters
much more for consumer products.

------
andrew_wc_brown
I have been trying to spin up projects for years since my early teens and the
best project I've have had traction on so far is my open source Tetris Attack-
like clone.

I think it has come the farthest then any of my previous projects because I
didn't take it seriously which made the barrier to entry for contributors easy
since I set my standards very low.

I'd normally try to build something to scale with a monetization plan from day
one, and I was so burned out on failed projects I thought I'd just work on
something I wanted to do, without care of generating money. I figured if I got
one of my serious for cash projects going it would free up time for such a
project but I got tired waiting.

The seriousness has scaled with the project. Some team members stick around,
some sunset, but this is fine because my project keeps attracting people who
are suited for the current stage.

Will my project go from toy to business? I don't care. I'll just ride the
project for as long as I can, and its possible I will sunset from my project
where people better than me will take it somewhere I can't.

[https://github.com/omenking/swap-n-pop](https://github.com/omenking/swap-n-
pop)

------
durandal1
"The third thing that goes wrong when you take your toy too seriously is that
you immediately start optimizing on the things that you believe serious
businesses should – profit and margins."

This is of course only true if you're playing the Silicon Valley VC game, a
lot of healthy businesses has been built by focusing hard on turning profit
early. For an example from recent news, look at IKEA.

~~~
mseebach
Building toys probably requires the VC game. Ikea was never a toy.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
Huh; I was thinking exactly the opposite, i.e. every cool new project with but
a GitHub repo to its name is a 'toy'.

------
quickthrower2
Bitcoin is a good example of a toy. It didn't really solve an immediate
problem at the time.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It still doesn't. But I'll grant it's turning out to be tech's single best
attempt at hastening the climate change and cooking us all on this planet.

~~~
langitbiru
Bitcoin gives us a way to transfer value which is censorship-resistant. That
is BIG.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Which isn't really "an immediate problem" right now for anyone. Also, the
"solution" isn't particularly good.

~~~
tim333
Or it's more an "an immediate problem" for people doing illegal stuff that it
should be a problem for.

------
psadri
Toy analogy mostly makes sense for online media where attention is valuable.
If a “toy” is loved/used by tons of people, then it has their attention, and
this attention can be monetized. Most likely through the usual advertising
surface that it presents.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Also the usual startup lifecycle: shinier toy -> faster user acqusition ->
your chances of getting acquihired increase.

------
aithoughts-io
While interesting, I felt the essay didn't make a distinction on end users who
eventually decides if the toy product would succeed or not. In an enterprise
world, the end users are not looking for fun and often they want solutions to
boring problems solved in a boring way (any fun way to solve might come across
as being not serious). I can see in a consumer play where the end users are
looking for fun, such toy projects could become a viable business when you
acquire lot of customers (Facebook for example).

Even so, toy projects are a great negative test (does anyone care?). Even when
built for fun, if there are no takers, it's time to quit.

------
dlwdlw
Toys are the stuff of life. What's the point of living if you're not having
fun?

A lot of "serious" things started out as toys. They just became ubiquitous and
expected. The fabric of society becoming the fabric of reality. Especially if
you had strong social needs.

Religions for example started out as stories. philosophy itself is considered
by some people to be toyish.

Serious things often involve money. That their end use case is to eventually
buy some sort of toy is often forgotten. Only with the positive and the
negative electrode do Sparks fly.

------
yters
"There are plenty of mathematicians and engineers who write great papers.
There are fewer of them who, like Shannon, are also jugglers, unicyclists,
gadgeteers, first-rate chess players, codebreakers, expert stock-pickers, and
amateur poets."

[https://medium.com/the-mission/10-000-hours-with-claude-
shan...](https://medium.com/the-mission/10-000-hours-with-claude-
shannon-12-lessons-on-life-and-learning-from-a-genius-e8b9297bee8f)

------
jcoffland
> Standard Oil, US Steel, and Boeing were all iconically huge companies that
> were built as businesses. None of them went through a phase where they
> looked like toys.

Arguably, Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft all started out as toy
companies. I don't buy the basic premise of this article. How a company starts
out often has very little to do with how it ends up. But, I suppose the real
goal here is to whip the incubator into line.

------
ronilan
My favorite example for this is Lego.

It started as a small startup making toys and it became a multi-billion, multi
national business and one of the worlds most loveable brands.

It can happen to you too!

Q.E.D.

;p

------
sien
There is a book about this that they don't seem to mention:

Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30798471-wonderland](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30798471-wonderland)

It's not bad. It pushes the hypothesis to breaking point but there is
something in the idea.

------
Jaruzel
Ironically, it's overloaded.

Text only, cached version:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QrUx_pA...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QrUx_pAX_UQJ:blog.ycombinator.com/why-
toys/&num=1&hl=en&gl=uk&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

~~~
Jaruzel
Huh. Guess you guys don't understand the word 'Ironically'.

 _Irony: "happening in a way contrary to what is expected, and typically
causing wry amusement because of this."_

The site is a ycombinator.com site, and ycombinator is all about helping tech
startups, yet the site was offline due to too much traffic.

Hence, the irony.

------
beatpanda
Pretty tired of startupland using this idea as a shibboleth. Eventually,
you're going to have to answer the charge of "Silicon Valley is just building
a bunch of useless bullshit" with something that actually is not. Moving money
from one industry to another doesn't count.

~~~
roma1n
Maybe because entrepreneurship is not the path to solving humanity's pressing
problems? For many USians, health care is a pressing issue but maybe the best
chance at improvement is through "EU-style" socialized medicine? My main
problem is being afraid to lose my job and therefore my home -- could this be
solved by a combination of basic income, better training schemes, and a
general reduction in working hours? Other than that, my main issues are noise
and pollution -- I guess cleaner and quieter cars would help but fewer cars
would be a lot better. How do you make a profitable company around that?

------
hownottowrite
[http://archive.is/ivZCA](http://archive.is/ivZCA)

------
matheweis
This is funny, because of the half dozen or so startups that I tried to get
off the ground, the couple of random projects where I actually made some money
were 100% toys that I made just for fun with no intention of monetizing at
first.

------
fiatjaf
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Ludens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Ludens)

------
himynameistimli
I think theres a typo. "A startup’s early and heavily engaged users are it’s
only real bse of strength and chance for growth."

Should it be 'base'?

~~~
sjcsjc
and its not it's.

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rocky1138
It might be helpful to have a case study of a "toy company" that became a
"real company." I'd certainly love to read that.

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carapace
:-D I'm working on Magnus-effect flying machines right now, starting with
toys, for pretty much the reasons in this article.

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loorinm
Cute title but this is actually just an extension of “the rich get richer
while the poor get poorer”.

Facebook had TIME to be a toy because Mark Zuckerberg had a rich family, and
plenty of skills to get a job if it didn’t work out.

“Making a toy” is only possible with the resources of money and time.

People who need to make money need to focus earlier on making money, which
stunts growth in the long run.

This is true not only for startups but for individuals, and in nature as a
whole.

It often feels like 99% of “startup wisdom” comes down to “have a rich family
that supported you emotionally and then paid for your college, and then let
you start a company at their house for free”

YC should give a talk at some underprivileged schools in crime-ridden areas to
tell people to “just make toys for like 9 years guys”

~~~
nikanj
Remember being kids and going to the amusement park with your friends? They
had those booths where you could win a cool price, if you successfully hit the
bullseye.

The middle-class kids had the pocket money to try a few times, usually in the
games which seemed the best match for their skills. The rich kids went around
and picked the booth with the coolest prices, then simply tried again until
they won the price they wanted, or got bored. The poor kids were manning the
booths, helping their parents sell popcorn and keep the show running.

Things haven't changed much as we've grown up. If you come from a wealthy
background, you can keep on trying seed ideas until you find traction. With a
more middle-class background, you can put in a small number of attempts,
spread between long stretches of saving more money. If you're poor, you'll
never have the ability to even try.

~~~
HumanDrivenDev
> Things haven't changed much as we've grown up. If you come from a wealthy
> background, you can keep on trying seed ideas until you find traction. With
> a more middle-class background, you can put in a small number of attempts,
> spread between long stretches of saving more money. If you're poor, you'll
> never have the ability to even try.

This is pretty much correct (though I don't think lower than middle class =
poor, but I digress). Some people have better opportunities growing up. Some
people can stay in mummy and daddys comfortable house for free while they try
and make it big with a startup.

Are you implying that the rest of us shouldn't even bother trying? I really
don't want to use "not growing up as rich as mark zuckerburg" as an excuse.

------
free2rhyme214
I've heard the toy analogy with the iPhone or Facebook before. When you look
at the front page of YC, most of the successful companies are either 1)
Enterprise (Dropbox) or 2) Consumer Facing (Instacart, Airbnb, etc.)

It's actually quite rare, Aaron, that they end up like Twitch or Reddit but I
get your point.

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quadcore
_the ability to build something lasting_

Anyone can elaborate on that?

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koskaj
Typo: 'The first is thing that goes wrong'

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koliber
Spelling mistake: "real bse of"

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ouid
I call bullshit. The economy has run on toys ever since we figured out how to
grow food with machines.

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azifali
I don't quite agree with this analogy.

This blog seems to be written by someone who had a deadline to meet.

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cestith
Why proofread?

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zerostar07
Toys are on demand because people have become more childish in a way. Avoiding
responsibility, seeking protection, hiding behind the groupthink, having more
time to engage in juvenile/schoolyard behavior. That is not considered in the
article.

~~~
runesoerensen
_" Unless you are doing cutting-edge research in your daily job, you are not
much different from those indies working on "superficial crap", apart from the
fact that being "part of a company" gives you the illusion that it's more
legitimate. Was google search or skype superficial and trivial? They started
as programmer toys. The point of the article is that a programmer can start
with $0 and build the whole product."_

You, 6 years ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3202808#3203672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3202808#3203672)

 _" Show HN: A cryptocurrency portfolio simulator game"_

You, 28 days ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16122873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16122873)

~~~
zerostar07
This is not the sense of the word "toy" that the article discusses about. He
brings up facebook as a primary example of a toy project, not in the sense
that it was fun for the programmer (aren't they all?) but in the sense that it
was fun for the end user, not serious business. Google for example was not
trying to be fun from the get-go, maybe skype was, i m not sure. Facebook is a
tool that brings adults back to high school, with all the ensuing drama of the
glass house that schools are. In that sense it was a toy, even though from the
get-go it pretended to be the more serious counterpart to myspace (look, real
names!). The article also implies that facebook somehow turned more serious
after growth, which is simply not truth, the sillyness has just moved from
pokes to the collective comment cringe.

now thanks for digging my ancient comments , but it's obvious that i meant
"programmer's toys", in the sense of a fun project back then. Also my crypto
simulator game is indeed a toy in both senses, its a fun side project that a
few people found fun to try.

