Why Build Toys?: Startup Ideas, Market Size | Y Combinator
Some of the biggest technology companies look like toys in the beginning.1 From a classical business building perspective, this shouldn't happen. Toys are for fun. Businesses, especially huge ones, are for making money. Toys are small and of limited use. Large companies contain multitudes and perform a huge array of functions.
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. Startups can be different, though, because of the expectations of them and the seriousness with which people approach them.
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.
And “happiness” is an important way to think about early users. People spend more time with something that makes them happy, especially when they don't expect it. Happy users are easy to get feedback from, because they know that you can make the product better and make them happier. They're also likely to tell friends about the cool new product that they're using, which means you start to get users without having to dip into the dark arts of marketing.
