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Why Toys?

blog.ycombinator.com

121–130 of 211 posts

Re: Why Toys?

#121
post #111
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Beanie Babies looked like toys early on, too.

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

Re: Why Toys?

#122

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 ? Can somebody…

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.

Re: Why Toys?

#123

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 bu…

Why do I suspect that the global market for ice skates, which now includes ice skating rinks in many areas that don't get ice, and supports multiple sports, such as Hockey, Curling (not to mention the Olympic level sports), is actually (much) more than ear muffs.

I mean, I was honestly trying to figure out which way you were going with that analogy while reading is, because it seemed to cut against your point.

Perhaps instead of this false dichotomy or business vs toy, we should actually consider supply, demand, reach etc and many the other variables that have proven the test of time that they actually help define future success.

Here's a list of toys I can rattle off the top of my head, let me know whether they are crappy businesses to start if they didn't exist: Movies, Video games, Comic books, Frisbee.

Entertainment is a business.

Re: Why Toys?

#124

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 bu…

What does it say about me that I'd rather build ice skates than ear muffs?

That you are more interested in disruptive innovations than you are in sustaining innovations.

Re: Why Toys?

#125
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.

Re: Why Toys?

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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-...

Re: Why Toys?

#127
post #62

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 bu…

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…

The marginal cases can be debated, but it's still a useful framework.

Ex. Facebook obviously felt like a toy at the beginning whereas Salesforce has never been a toy.

Re: Why Toys?

#128

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.

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.

Re: Why Toys?

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN should ban the adjective "cute" from all posts. Does using this adjective make you feel superior? Also, it's kinda amazing how this issue gets brought up so many times on HN and is proven to be false (there are tons of examples where extremely successful entrepreneurs came from poor upbringing, and in many cases the bad condition was what motivated them to push further) and yet you keep seeing the same argument ov…

Bitching and doing something are not mutually exclusive activities. Some successful people being from poor upbringings does not make it commonplace. If your claims were true, by definition we would not have inequality.

Except that your narrative is exactly trying to paint it as "only rich people get to succeed", which will lead to the "not rich" to give up trying, which will only make things worse.

You probably think you're doing justice to the world, but you're actually doing the opposite.

The real successful people succeed DESPITE their perils and in many cases BECAUSE OF their perils, and these people should be encouraged to pour all their passion into whatever they want to achieve and succeed. Instead I see people like you always saying "doesn't matter how hard you try, the world is fucked up because only the rich get richer, so don't tell people to work hard, it's just exploitation". That probably makes you feel better about being "woke", but your argument does nothing but convincing people to give up.

These people who come from bad background, when they do succeed, they they give back to the alienated community they came from. These are the people who actually make progress with inequality, not some guy on HN and Medium.com bitching about how the world is unfair and all the successful companies are shit because of that.

Your narrative only gives people excuse to complain and get distracted from actually building valuable things.

Like I said, the world IS unfair, and nothing will stop it from being unfair for unforeseeable future. The most efficient way to make sure we get out of this situation is to encourage the alienated people to succeed instead of getting them into "me vs. you" mindset, because that mindset is a loser mindset which only leads to wannabe activism, instead of actually creating something valuable.

If you want to prove me wrong, just tell me a single successful person who built a valuable business or product, who spent most of their time playing gender/sex/income/inequality/whatever activist. Unless your business itself is a consulting business to sell to these classes, I have never seen one.

Re: Why Toys?

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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”.

Given enough time, most applications turn from "feature rich" into "feature bloat."
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