Why Toys? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Toys?

#11

Post by matte_black » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #8

zerostar07 wrote: post #2

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.

Many large tech businesses start out as "toys" because its easier to build a new technology to pursue something trivial than something essential. That's just how development works. Hobbies will pay more for something that might be a novelty than an improvement in efficiency. Tesla started with Luxury cars for the same reason, and those cars could be considered "toys" of a certain type. The next Microsoft or Google co…

VRChat is just a toy right now, but could become the gold standard for online interaction by the next decade.

Re: Why Toys?

#12

Post by rocky1138 » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 6:43 PM UTC

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.

Re: Why Toys?

#13

Post by djrogers » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

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.

Re: Why Toys?

#14

Post by yters » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 6:45 PM UTC

"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...

Re: Why Toys?

#15

Post by Bjartr » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 6:45 PM UTC

zerostar07 wrote: post #2

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.

I'm curious. Why do you believe those statements to be true? Looking back through history there is a constant pattern of each generation decrying the immaturity of the generations that follow it. Either maturity has been on a constant decline for millennia, or the same mistake was being made again and again in drawing that conclusion. How do you know your conclusion isn't due to the same mistake?

Re: Why Toys?

#16

Post by zerostar07 » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

runesoerensen wrote: post #6

zerostar07 wrote: post #2

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.

"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." Y…

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.

Re: Why Toys?

#17

Post by Animats » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #4

> 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 inve…

The Apple II was not a toy. It was what businesses used to run VisiCalc, the spreadsheet program. Huge productivity gain over doing spreadsheets with a big piece of ruled paper and a calculator.

Re: Why Toys?

#18

Post by aaavl2821 » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

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

Re: Why Toys?

#19

Post by zerostar07 » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 6:51 PM UTC

Bjartr wrote: post #15

zerostar07 wrote: post #2

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.

I'm curious. Why do you believe those statements to be true? Looking back through history there is a constant pattern of each generation decrying the immaturity of the generations that follow it. Either maturity has been on a constant decline for millennia, or the same mistake was being made again and again in drawing that conclusion. How do you know your conclusion isn't due to the same mistake?

> Either maturity has been on a constant decline for millennia

personal responsibility has been declining with the aid of comforting technology and it has led to the constant extension of state goverment reach. it's very possible the complaints are valid, and that's simply how history advances.

Re: Why Toys?

#20

Post by jpwagner » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 6:51 PM UTC

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.