5 ms·

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;

by ujeezy 9y ago

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 9y ago
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.
- jamiegreen 9y ago
  Do you have a site you can share? Sounds cool!
  - diminish 9y ago
    We're still in early beta phase - here's a quick showcase for some client here: https://partners.zestoy.com/showcase/home/ https://partners.zestoy.com/showcase/home/ and the main website https://www.zestoy.com https://www.zestoy.com
- jamiegreen 9y ago
  Additional question - what is the value prop for clients? Why do they buy your service?
  - inimino 9y ago
    Lego's "Serious Play" is a good example of this kind of marketing done really well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Serious_Play https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Serious_Play
    - adrian_mrd 9y ago
      Agree, Lego’s Serious Play is a great set of ‘starter toolkits’ for prototyping and design thinking sessions. Somewhat pricey (as all Lego is), but worth it for many scenarios IMHO.
      - a_creative_life 9y ago
        Yes, those starter kits are great, but the real value in LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is the methodology. As a trained facilitator in LSP methods and materials, I’ve seen the power of this methodology at work. It taps into emotion and gets people thinking with their hands, using more parts of their brains than they would just sitting around talking and writing. The LSP kits are great because of the “curated” mix of LEGO® bricks they contain, specially chosen to help people build metaphors. (And actually, if you were to assemble your own set of the same bricks “a la carte” it would be much more expensive, so though they cost a pretty penny, they’re actually a good deal.)
- ryandrake 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      SaaS can not interoperate. Thus feature-poor SaaS are useless.
      - k__ 9y ago
        Could you please elaborate?
        sattoshi 9y ago
        If Google Docs provides featureset A,B,C and Office 365 provides features A,B,D; you can never have both C and D at the same time.
        marvy 9y ago
        Is this specific to SAAS? Suppose Word 2003 has A,B,D and WordPerfect has A,B,C, can you ever have C and D at the same time?
        lmm 9y ago
        You have a single filesystem, so maybe you can open the same document in both one after another to work on the parts that need D and the parts that need C. Of course this relies on having a common format, but in the local-apps world we mostly have those, whereas in the SaaS world we don't even have a filesystem to share.
dalbasal 9y ago
It's a good one. I think it's also true that It's cool; users love it is valuable regardless of importance and that the internet tends to turn "big" into important, or at least impactful and profitable. It's cool & users love it is an easier approach to big than "important." I think this explains why toys now turn into serious businesses.
jaravis 9y ago
Toys are relative -- the iPhone was not a toy compared to other phones but definitely a toy compared to a personal computer. We built a stationary bike called Revvo (http://revvo.co http://revvo.co) -- which does a lab quality VO2Max test but makes it a whole lot more fun. Not a toy compared to other exercise bikes but definitely a toy compared to a $45k metabolic cart used for lab tests.

by ujeezy 9y ago

diminish 9y ago

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.

jamiegreen 9y ago
Do you have a site you can share? Sounds cool!
- diminish 9y ago
  We're still in early beta phase - here's a quick showcase for some client here: https://partners.zestoy.com/showcase/home/ https://partners.zestoy.com/showcase/home/ and the main website https://www.zestoy.com https://www.zestoy.com
jamiegreen 9y ago
Additional question - what is the value prop for clients? Why do they buy your service?
- inimino 9y ago
  Lego's "Serious Play" is a good example of this kind of marketing done really well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Serious_Play https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Serious_Play
  - adrian_mrd 9y ago
    Agree, Lego’s Serious Play is a great set of ‘starter toolkits’ for prototyping and design thinking sessions. Somewhat pricey (as all Lego is), but worth it for many scenarios IMHO.
    - a_creative_life 9y ago
      Yes, those starter kits are great, but the real value in LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is the methodology. As a trained facilitator in LSP methods and materials, I’ve seen the power of this methodology at work. It taps into emotion and gets people thinking with their hands, using more parts of their brains than they would just sitting around talking and writing. The LSP kits are great because of the “curated” mix of LEGO® bricks they contain, specially chosen to help people build metaphors. (And actually, if you were to assemble your own set of the same bricks “a la carte” it would be much more expensive, so though they cost a pretty penny, they’re actually a good deal.)
ryandrake 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    SaaS can not interoperate. Thus feature-poor SaaS are useless.
    - k__ 9y ago
      Could you please elaborate?
      - sattoshi 9y ago
        If Google Docs provides featureset A,B,C and Office 365 provides features A,B,D; you can never have both C and D at the same time.
        marvy 9y ago
        Is this specific to SAAS? Suppose Word 2003 has A,B,D and WordPerfect has A,B,C, can you ever have C and D at the same time?
        lmm 9y ago
        You have a single filesystem, so maybe you can open the same document in both one after another to work on the parts that need D and the parts that need C. Of course this relies on having a common format, but in the local-apps world we mostly have those, whereas in the SaaS world we don't even have a filesystem to share.

dalbasal 9y ago

It's a good one. I think it's also true that It's cool; users love it is valuable regardless of importance and that the internet tends to turn "big" into important, or at least impactful and profitable. It's cool & users love it is an easier approach to big than "important." I think this explains why toys now turn into serious businesses.

jaravis 9y ago

Toys are relative -- the iPhone was not a toy compared to other phones but definitely a toy compared to a personal computer. We built a stationary bike called Revvo (http://revvo.co http://revvo.co) -- which does a lab quality VO2Max test but makes it a whole lot more fun. Not a toy compared to other exercise bikes but definitely a toy compared to a $45k metabolic cart used for lab tests.