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Why Toys?
31–40 of 211 posts
Re: Why Toys?
#32I'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.
Re: Why Toys?
#33His 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.
Re: Why Toys?
#34> 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…
> 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.
Re: Why Toys?
#35I 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-l…
> What is the future tech entrepreneur's lemonade stand?
Likely Wordpress or Wix... as unfortunate as that is the more interesting question is what form the lemonade will take.
Re: Why Toys?
#36My 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
Re: Why Toys?
#37Toys 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'd be surprised if we are truly more childish than historical periods. Indeed, just going off of naive views of life expectancy, we used to spend more of our living time as children. Now, leisure time has certainly increased. To an extent. We now have to spend far less time preparing food/clothing/etc. At least, for the average person. Upper classed people probably had more leisure time in the past, since they had o…
> we used to spend more of our living time as children.
not really, children used to work as soon as they were able to, agriculture or industry from very young ages and get married young. People marry a lot later now. IF for example we assume that ppl married at 18 when life expectancy was 60, and at 32 when life expectancy is 80, they spend a larger fraction of their life unmarried.
Re: Why Toys?
#38Standard 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…
I wouldn't call lamp oil a toy. The defining feature of a toy is that people use it just for the joy of using it, rather than to solve a problem.
Re: Why Toys?
#39Cute 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”
Re: Why Toys?
#40> 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…
> 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.
Yep. And Rockefeller started refining oil soon after the discovery of subterranean oil.